He’s so whiny. She’s a hitter. He cries non-stop. She can’t stop talking…if this sounds like your child(ren), they’re not wild—they need help learning how to self-regulate.
When grownups are overstimulated or don’t get their way, we (usually) use tools like taking a deep breath or a walk to make sure we don’t lose it. When we self-regulate, we balance our nervous systems. That helps us access our prefrontal cortex, where logic lives.
When it comes to self-regulation in children, they’ve got two things working against them:
1) They aren’t born with the tools to regulate their nervous systems, and
2) Their prefrontal cortex isn’t fully formed, so they need extra help to reach and dissect that logic.
Enter music!