Emotional regulation is not a curriculum – and treating it like one backfires

Summary

Emotional regulation is not a curriculum - and treating it like one backfires.

Many pupils can explain their emotions, name calming strategies, and talk confidently about what they “should" do… yet still struggle to cope when things get hard in the classroom.

In this episode of School Behaviour Secrets, you’ll learn why teaching emotional regulation as a set of lessons often doesn’t work, and how schools can accidentally make things worse by confusing facts about regulation with emotional regulation skills.

Using a real-world pupil story, we break down:

• Why recalling strategies often fails when children are dysregulated.
• How automatic behaviours always win under stress.
• Why motivation doesn’t come first – and what should replace it.
• And how regulation is built through repeated, practical, supported experiences, not curriculum content.

You’ll also hear a simple, classroom-friendly model – Co-regulation, Practise, Fade - to help pupils develop regulation through co-regulation, without adding more programmes or workload.

If you’re supporting pupils who “know the strategies" but still struggle in the moment, this episode will help you reframe what’s really going on - and what actually helps.

Important links:

Get your FREE Beacon School Support guide to helping children manage their strong emotions

Get our FREE SEND Behaviour Handbook: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/send-handbook

Download other FREE behaviour resources for use in school: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/resources.php

Show notes / transcription

Simon Currigan

 Have you ever worked with a pupil who can explain emotional regulation perfectly? They can tell you what anger feels like. They can use calming strategies. They can talk you through breathing techniques like a Zen master. And then, 10 minutes later, they're screaming at you in class, or storming out, or hitting another pupil on the playground. And you're left thinking, "But you know this. You know what you're supposed to do. You've just told me the answers."

 My name's Simon Currigan, and for the last couple of decades, I've worked helping hundreds of real schools support pupils who become dysregulated. You've had all the interventions, all the programs, and still they struggle to use the strategies under pressure. And helping them turn those situations around and get those kids back on the right track. So in today's episode, I want to explore why teaching emotional regulation like a lesson often backfires, what's actually going on in the child's brain in those moments, and what really helps pupils move from knowing strategies to using them in real classrooms.

 Hi there. Welcome to School Behaviour Secrets. My name's Simon Currigan, and this week I've been listening to the Proclaimers' Letter to America on repeat very loudly in the car, windows down, in the kitchen, in the living room, over and over and over. And now the kids have Childline on speed dial. So if this is my last week out in the community and it's the last episode of School Behaviour Secrets, it's been a pleasure meeting you.

 This week we're going to focus on why teaching kids about emotional regulation can backfire or just doesn't work. And I know that this is an issue. We see it a lot in schools, especially from our face-to-face work. And it can kind of be summed up by the phrase: when they're talking to us, the kids, when they're talking to us one-to-one about their emotions, they know what to do. They can parrot back the emotional regulation strategies perfectly. So why can't they just do it in the real world? Why are they still hitting people, storming out, whatever it is? So if you're working with a student and they get regulation in theory but can't implement the strategies in practice, this episode is for you.

 But before we get going, I've got a quick request to make. If you find this podcast useful, please hit subscribe wherever you're listening, whatever app you're using. And if you've got a moment, leave us a quick review. That genuinely helps other teachers and school leaders find the show, which means that this stuff reaches the people who need it most.

 Right. Let's get into today's episode. Let's talk about emotional regulation, or more precisely, what happens when we treat emotional regulation more like a curriculum subject, something we teach kids, like the way we teach them facts about science or history or geography. Because on paper, it looks like that should work. There are strategies to learn. We teach the strategies. We timetable in the intervention. And yet, for a lot of kids, that path just leads nowhere.

 Right. So quick example. You'll recognise this pupil straight away. They can tell you what anger feels like. They can name five calming strategies. They can explain breathing techniques. I mean, the way they talk about it, they should have their own mindfulness app or something. And yet, 10 minutes later, they're shouting, walking out, tipping a chair, refusing to work. And everyone, including you, is left thinking, "But why you know this? You know what to do."

 So today I want to unpick why that happens and why treating emotional regulation like something you teach, like a subject, often backfires or just flat out doesn't work for many pupils, not all of them. And I will preface this by saying, if you're using a curriculum approach, and that is working for a student that you're working with right now, don't change that approach for them.

 So let me give you a pupil to think about as I talk this through. Let's call him Josh. He's in Year 6. He's bright. He's articulate. He's a quick thinker. And because of his behaviour and his anger, Josh has had some emotional regulation sessions in school. And that's been delivered in small groups where there are nice resources. He's got a feelings chart with the intensity of his emotions divided into zones, all of that good stuff. And if you sit with Josh one-to-one, he's insightful. He'll tell you exactly what winds him up, what his triggers are. And he'll explain what he should do instead of snapping back or getting angry. He knows the language he should use to ask for help.

 But in class, it's a completely different story. When there's noise or time pressure or demands from adults or a funny look from another student, Josh just explodes. And what's interesting is, from Josh's point of view, a lot of this comes from school feeling unfair. He's got adults telling him what to do and correcting him publicly. And he feels like they move the goalposts with his behaviour. Nothing is ever good enough. So when things go wrong, the story he tells himself is, "It's not me. It's them." He knows the adults are unhappy with them, but it's their fault, not his fault. And that really matters.

 So I want to keep Josh in mind as we talk through this episode because I'm going to keep coming back to him. So let's think about why this really happens and why schools turn regulation into a kind of curriculum in the first place. And to be really clear, they don't do this because they're clueless. They do it because curriculum is familiar. It's part of their everyday work. Teachers, right? They deliver a curriculum. It's part of our vocabulary. And that feels safe. And it feels an obvious way to approach the regulation problem. It's something that you're doing that can be evidenced easily as well. So you can show Ofsted a scheme of work that you're following.

 But that approach has an interesting side effect. Emotional regulation becomes a set of lessons or a programme you follow or progress through. So during one-to-one time or during an emotional regulation group that Josh attends, he engages and he can explain the content factually, in depth. Again, the mother of all irony is because on paper that looks like success. But in reality, we're not seeing behaviour change where it actually matters.

 And I know I've mentioned this before before I start explaining what to do about this, but it's a topic I go into more detail in the book I'm writing on dysregulation. And if you didn't know, we've got a book deal now with the publisher Routledge, which is very exciting. And we're making progress with it. And I'm really happy with the way we're translating these ideas into concrete, practical systems and frameworks that you can use in school. It's going to be a while before it's out, but I just wanted to keep you posted on how it's going.

 So okay. Anyway, back to the core problem. Here's what's happening with that traditional curriculum-focused approach and with Josh's resistance to the adults. The problem we've got is being able to regulate your emotions is not about knowledge. Knowing about emotions is not the same thing as being able to regulate them. Being able to name regulation strategies is not the same as being able to implement them in real life. In theory, I personally know how to hit a golf ball. In practice, my swing is terrible.

 So in a calm room with an adult that Josh trusts, with his thinking, logical brain online and accessible, and he's got access to factual recall so he can recall the information about regulation, Josh can reason. He can explain what's going wrong. He can reflect.

 But in a busy classroom when his body tips into threat, what happens to his brain? Well, his thinking brain goes offline. Because what takes over his behaviour now isn't logical thinking based on facts and recall. It's usually going to be an automatic behaviour. His actions are going to be based not on what he's learned, not on what he's rehearsed, what is ingrained, what has proven to his brain to work in the past in these kind of situations.

 So at some point in his history, he was triggered emotionally. He had an emotional reaction. And his brain spotted the pattern that when I explode, when I hit out at people, or when I storm out in that situation, reacting like that, it kept me safe. And that happened two, three, four times. And because his brain learned from that pattern, what it did was it kind of wrote down a script, an automatic behaviour, a programme for him to execute in that situation in the future.

 And this is where curriculum-based regulation lets us down because factual recall gets much, much weaker when we feel under stress, under pressure, when emotions are high. But automatic behaviours, on the other hand, they get stronger. So Josh defaults back to his habits, whatever he's learned in the group. So we see him arguing, refusing, leaving the room, hitting out. He's following his ingrained script.

 These are behaviours he's practised dozens, potentially hundreds of times because they work. They restore a sense of control to his brain. And his brain sees that those behaviours got him away from the threat, the danger that he was perceiving in the environment. They resulted in safety in the moment, which is the only timeframe his brain cares about in those situations. It only cares about a very short-term window.

 So when we say use your breathing strategy, we're asking Josh to use factual recall to beat this ingrained, evolved, successful, automatic behaviour. And the truth is, it just won't. It's too weak. And this is where things start to go wrong because then adults start saying, "Josh, you know this already. You know what you should do. You can tell me about your breathing exercises or the procedure for requesting time out or whatever the strategy we've agreed is."

 And that conversation between the adult and the child, that feels logical to us. But to Josh, there might then be an element of shame or guilt associated with that. He might be telling himself, "Yeah, I know what to do, and I still can't do it. So maybe there's something wrong with me." So ironically, that kind of thought loop makes him become more resistant to using the strategy in the future because he wants to escape that shame.

 And there might be another layer to this. From Josh's point of view, changing his behaviour might feel like surrender. It feels like admitting to the adults they were right and he was wrong about his behaviour in the past. If school has felt unfair to him for years, then that might be a big ask. So he gives them the right answers in the intervention groups but defaults back to his standard behaviour, his automatic, ingrained behaviour, when he's in the situation where actually everyone wants him to use it.

 So you could look at his resistance as defiance, or you could look at it as self-protection. And those are just two factors. There are lots of other factors here that can feed into the same kind of negative protection loop. So don't get hung up on just the two that I've picked. But here's the important implication for how we work with kids like Josh.

We often say they don't want to change. And sometimes, yes, that is absolutely true. But willingness doesn't come first, even though that might seem logical. Josh doesn't necessarily need persuading. What he actually needs is evidence that he can use these strategies successfully when he needs them, evidence that this time will be different. Proof is what creates and encourages future success, not encouragement, not good intentions, not reminders. Research shows that good intentions fizzle out pretty quickly. And it's why gyms sell a lot of subscriptions in January, but they're empty come March.

 So here's the key bit. We don't teach regulation like knowledge. We have to help Josh build it like he's building a new habit through repeated, practical, supported, coached experiences. This is where co-regulation really matters. And here's a framework to help you implement this in school. And I call it co-regulation practice fade, which marks out the different stages that we go through with Josh.

 So first of all, we need to start from where Josh is, not where we would like him to be. He, rightly or wrongly, can't self-regulate his emotions yet. So that is our starting line. We accept that. So when we see the early stages of him being dysregulated, instead of waiting to see what happens, we jump in and start co-regulating him straight away. We, as the adult, take responsibility for that, whatever his age is.

 And this is going to depend on the age of the child and your classroom. But we see that he's starting to get frustrated. We walk across. We keep our voice low and slow and warm, not cold. And we deliberately use simple language and predictable cues. And then, well, we distract him or we jump into emotion coaching by labelling his emotions for him, using phrases like, "I think you're feeling frustrated because the work's hard," and then pivoting towards a problem-solving conversation. Whatever we do to co-regulate, we engage early.

 Then we have the next phase, which helps us move away from co-regulation. And that's practice. Josh needs to practise the emotional regulation strategies that are going to work for him, but not in the middle of an explosion or a meltdown. We practise when Josh is calm. We find a technique that works for him because everyone's an individual and certain strategies will work well for certain students and others will work better for others.

 So we investigate the different strategies and we agree a strategy that he's going to use that he's comfortable with so he's got ownership. And then we help him rehearse that same sequence again and again, same words, same cues, same movements, same routine. After each successful repetition, there's some form of celebration or recognition or tracking to make him feel good about engaging in that behaviour.

 We might start then to practise introducing that during co-regulation, during or before higher-stakes moments. So if we know there's going to be a bump in the road up ahead, if we know, say, he finds break times hard or transitions to assembly difficult, we preload him with the strategy so it's at the top of his mind. And then gradually, gradually, we start practising it and using it in the tougher moments when he experiences mild frustration or small setbacks, always with adult support.

And crucially, you practise it or help him use it in the actual environment where the struggle happens, not in isolation, not in another room in school, but in the classroom or the playground where he needs it. We're not learning facts from a textbook with this approach. We're practising strategies in the real world where Josh actually needs them. So he's got all the environmental cues, all the routine cues, the same adults and the same kids.

 And then finally, we have fade. So we move from co-regulating for him and with him to building up the strategies. And now when we see the response starting to become automatic, we take a step back. Now, that doesn't mean removing all of his support suddenly, like falling off a cliff edge. We fade out. We reduce our support slowly. Maybe we move further away. Maybe we say less. Maybe we're slower to give him cues and reminders. Maybe Josh starts the routine and all you do is nod in recognition of his actions.

 What's changing isn't his knowledge. We're helping him take on a new default response when he's under pressure. So it becomes muscle memory by approaching our teaching as coaching him through a practical skill rather than kind of transmitting factual information from a textbook. What we've done is help Josh change his script, his automatic script, over time.

 And I'm going to reinforce here that does take time. And in reality, progress doesn't look like a perfect straight line on a graph going from using the strategy zero times to using it every single incident. It's going to be a bumpy one. You aren't going to reach perfection quickly. It might look like some progress with smaller explosions mixed in with a few bigger ones, maybe faster recovery after an incident, but that's not consistent or more willingness to re-enter learning. So although we will want to measure his progress, we have to appreciate that that progress isn't going to be steady. There will be successes and setbacks along the way. And that is part of how humans learn. Humans aren't robots.

 By the way, if this episode is connecting with what you're seeing in school and you're thinking to yourself, "Okay, I get the idea of rehearsing and practising and moving away from a curriculum-based approach to a skills-based coaching approach, but I need some regulation ideas and strategies," then I've got a free resource that digs into supporting kids in a really practical way with a structured approach to helping them stay regulated. It's called How to Help Children Manage Anger and Other Strong Emotions. It looks at things like the difference between self-control and self-regulation, why just holding it together falls apart under pressure, and how to help pupils notice emotions rising early enough to act on them and use pro-regulation strategies. It's very classroom-friendly, and it includes resources to print out and use with your students.

 You can download it free from the Beacon School Support website. There's a direct link in the episode description. You can tap straight through, or you can head to beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/resources. That's beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/resources, and you'll see it near the top of the screen. And again, it's going to be about how you use this resource. Repetition and practise are what will make it successful. So these resources actually complement this episode really well.

So if the emotional regulation work you've been doing with your students hasn't worked yet (inverted commas), that doesn't mean you failed. It doesn't mean the strategies are wrong necessarily, but it might mean you've been implementing a curriculum-based approach when actually what was needed was a skills-based coaching approach. And adapting the strategies you've been using through a curriculum method, through a different teaching approach, can actually make a big impact because it encourages the behaviours we want the children to use in the classroom to become ingrained and automatic over time. It writes a new script for them.

 So as you finish this episode, think of one pupil. Don't focus on what you're teaching them. Focus on how are we practically teaching them to adopt this skill? Is it in an environment where they feel safe enough to practise those skills before introducing them into the classroom? Am I providing evidence with my approach, evidence to their brains, not to a school leader who's monitoring, whether they can do it, whether they're being successful? Remember, co-regulation, practise, and fade, those are the steps to move them through so we get them from where they are now emotionally to a place of stronger emotional regulation where they're taking charge of the strategies and they get feedback for how well they're using them.

 I hope you found this useful today, and I hope you found this is like a practical framework you can use in the real world. If you have, please remember to subscribe to School Behaviour Secrets and leave me a quick review. It helps more people find this show, and it keeps these conversations about children's social, emotional, and mental health needs going. Thank you for listening today. I hope you have a brilliant week. I can't wait to see you next time on School Behaviour Secrets.

(This automated transcript may not be 100% accurate.)