Shanker – example of self-regulation

Self-regulation is the story about how much gas a child has in their tank, and what are the things that a child is using up their gas on? The way we started to think about this I put my car in cruise control, and I noticed that I was burning about 8 liters per 100 kilometers, when I was on a flat surface, and then the car had to go up a hill and I suddenly jumped from 8 liters per 100 to 40 liters per 100, and then as I went down the decline it went down to 3. And I realized that, you know, we have this assumption that every child is sort of, you know, they’re on a level footing, they’re all, you know, if they’re not paying attention, if they’re not paying attention it’s because they’re not trying.  

Well, I’ll give you the perfect example, and then I’ll explain its significance for all children. I was in a classroom, I’d been asked to come in, and I’d been asked by the school because the school had a little girl in this class, she was a 9 year old, and she, the school, this child, the child was hyperactive, and the school wanted her placed on a stimulant and the parents were resisting. And the parents were resisting because they had read up about possible side effects etc., sleep problems, aggression, and so really what the school wanted was for me to convince mom and dad that the child should be placed on a stimulant. So, when I came into the class the little girl was sitting in the front row to my right, and I ignored her for about the first 5 minutes, thinking that I could demonstrate how easy it was to control this child’s behavior by inhibiting it, and of course it didn’t work.  

And so finally I turned to her and I said “Yes, sweetheart something seems to be bothering you, what’s the problem?” and she said to me: “Sir, sir, sir, I can’t hear you because of the noise from the fan”. So I looked around and there was no fan on the ceiling, but what there was was an air intake vent, you know, fresh air intake vent, and it was making a slight noise. But this little girl had such hypersensitive auditory processing, that she had to work very hard to block out the distraction from the ceiling fan, from the vent. And she was using up so much energy trying to concentrate on me, trying to inhibit a distraction, that she couldn’t control her behavior. And what it told us was she was just like my car going up the incline, this little girl was burning 40 liters per 100. I can have two children sitting beside each other, and I’ve got one kid who’s ticking along at 8 kilometers, you know, 8 liters per 100, and guess what? Teachers love that kid. That’s the kid that, that’s the kid that we’re going to smile at, you know it’s all unconscious, we’re going to smile at him, we’re going to encourage him, we’re going to say: “Good boy, you did it again!” and then I’ve got the little girl who’s burning 40, and we find it annoying, we find it annoying when this little kid is bouncing around.  

Unfortunately our behavior is now going to make everything worse because of the stuff I was explaining before. The more we arouse negative emotions in that child, the greater the strain becomes on the child, everything is getting worse now, when really all it was was a case where this little girl was working way harder than the little boy beside her. When you think about stressors, we tend to think of you know, like, what kinds of stress could a child have, but we now know, we have tons of research now showing us that the stress on a child; it might be environmental, it might be familial, it might be biological, it might be the stress of finding bright lights or loud noises, or noises, or just the presence of other children requires an enormous amount of energy in order to inhibit these distractions. The key for these children is under no circumstances do we want to be punitive with that child, do we want to try to control, discipline that child, shame that child, instead what we want to figure out is what are the loads on this kid and what can we do to mitigate them.