Teachers Learn About Regulation & Dysregulation at B’nai Shalom
At B’nai Shalom, we are lucky to have a Development Specialist and School Counselor who strive to help support our students and staff in the most affirming and compassionate ways possible. Developmental Specialist, Michele Knight, & School Counselor, Sarah Cronin, facilitated a professional development workshop for staff to explore Regulation and Dysregulation and how that shows up in behaviors and responses with our students and ourselves.
When we are regulated, our brain and body are integrated and we are able to manage the situation at hand. According to Lisa Dion at the Synergetic Play Therapy Institute, regulation looks like thinking logically, verbal communication, a wide range of emotional expression, feeling grounded and aware, and stable sleep. When we interpret or misinterpret a situation, interaction, or observation to be a threat or unsafe, we become dysregulated. This can look like hyper-arousal (hyper vigilant, defensive, anxious, irritable, excess motor activity, aggression, increased heart rate, etc) or hypo-arousal (helplessness, lethargic, low motivation, isolation, numbing, non-expressive).
Staff came to the workshop with open hearts and minds as Michele & Sarah challenged some old ways of thinking and offered a new and neuroscience-based way to conceptualize behavior. They first explored Dr. Dan Siegal's hand model of the brain to understand how when one is experiencing a big emotion, it can be difficult to think rationally or make helpful choices. Next we introduced how our brain can perceive things to be unsafe or threatening, and how that impacts one's regulation.
Michele & Sarah explored the importance of reconceptualizing behavior from "bad" or "manipulative" or "attention seeking" to more accurate phrases like "dysregulated" or "need seeking" or "seeking co-regulation." With this reframe, it allows us to respond with more compassion and helps us to respond more appropriately to help facilitate regulation, to help the student meet the need in helpful ways, and to work proactively to mitigate the perceptions of threats.
Interested in learning more? Check out "Brain-Body Parenting: How to Stop Managing Behavior and Start Raising Joyful, Resilient Kids" by Mona Delahooke or "The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind" by Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson."
