Shanker – down-regulating (part 2)

The most important mechanism for humans is social engagement. So the one thing we don’t want to do is to take away or somehow banish the most important mechanism for a young child, which is that older more regulated brain to help the child.  

Having said that, there are times when we have found that it is enormously beneficial for the child to have that quiet space where the child actually finds social engagement itself overwhelming. Think for example, of a young child with autism. So we know from studying these children that social engagement is a stress, eye gaze is a stress, proximity is a stress and if I have a child who is in this red brain state, this may be too much. So what we do in these situations is we will use a quiet space which is very comfortable and in our practice what we would use at MEHRIT was-we had this sort of huge oversized beanbag chair which is a wonderful punishment tool. The reason it’s wonderful is because the child can nuzzle into it and they’re really calming down their nervous system. And the idea here was that if the child wasn’t ready for engagement, to give the child the space to calm down, to get back into blue brain, to let everything soothe. 

The most important lesson in all this-I mean one of the questions we were continually asked is, “How do I know if I’m doing this right? How do I know if this is meeting what you’re describing?” And the answer is if the child asked for it. If the child says to you, you know, I need to go sit in my-we would make it really cool by the way. We had the large beanbag chair. We would have one of those foot massagers. We would have a weighted blanket or a weighted throw. We would even have noise cancelling headphones-all these things to make this a truly down regulating experience. We actually could use this then as a tool for self-regulation. “How do you feel now? How did you feel this? How did you feel before? The next time you’re starting to feel that way you can quietly get up…” And it’s when children start to do that, that we know they’re learning self-regulation.