It was a bank holiday weekend and the schools had broken up. It was lunacy really, I should have known. Heading out onto the M25 it was not unexpected to find there was traffic — but such traffic! Possibly because it was the first opportunity to get away since lockdown or because sunshine was forecasted at last, but it seemed that everybody and their brother was on the M25. The journey that should take me one hour was looking likely to take almost three!
Fortunately, I had my siege rations, as anyone who knows me well will testify to. Ali always carries a nosebag for emergencies such as these, or so I thought! I had tidied the car out and not returned my usual bag of healthy and not-so-healthy snacks to the car. The sat nav was saying I had two hours to go, and my tummy was saying “feed me!”
Scarcity of resources always focuses the mind and I had to find a solution. Fortunately, my car cleaning had not reached the depths of the glove box. There, to my delight, was a pack of bonbons — my favourite kind.
At an appropriate point in the traffic jam, I rescued them from their dark depths and began to devour them, I ate two, three, four… then stopped. I began to think ahead:
What if the traffic does not clear? What if I am stuck here for hours on end?
I began to put aside the short-term PRIZE of enjoying bingeing on my bonbons and realised that the PRICE for this gluttony would be: no bonbons for the rest of the journey.
I looked at it from the other angle...
If I rationed my bonbons, I could punctuate my progress with a bonbon every 10 miles. This would not only give me some landmarks on my journey, but it would make my bonbons last a whole lot longer. The PRICE would be patience, self-discipline and self-regulation. The PRIZE would be that the journey would seem a little shorter and I would enjoy each bonbon so much more along the way.
Self-regulation is a skill that takes us a long time to master, even as adults. Should we binge or should we budget? What is the PRIZE and what is the PRICE? How can we punctuate our progress to make a tricky task a little more palatable?
We know we need to start supporting our children on their journey to self-regulation from an early age, but what exactly does that mean? What does that look like for our children? In our school, setting or family?
How do we meet the new expectations for self-regulation in the New EYFS?
Ali has been supporting people just like you for over 20 years in their schools and settings. Join her on Saturday 12th June at 10am UK time for the first in her new Supporting Self-Regulation series, this time focusing on how we can anticipate, support and respond to our children’s challenging behaviour. This webinar is especially for Early Years’ Practitioners and those supporting children with special needs in primary.