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Lots of little kids declare "You're not the boss of me!" to their bemused parents.
Yet the kids are on the right track. The sooner parents can instil a sense of "executive function" in their children, the better, psychologists say. Helping even very young children develop ways to regulate their own reactions and emotions has been linked to doing better in everything from school work to getting along with others.
Called "effortful control" by Wanda Boyer, an educational psychologist at the University of Victoria, executive function includes four abilities learned by a child: to keep focused on a task; to shift attention from one task to another whether they want to or not; to initiate actions; and to stop actions whether they want to or not.
"These four areas of executive functioning are very important to the health and well-being of children," she says. They foster awareness at an early age of the benefits of exerting personal control over thoughts, feelings and actions, and can be called upon to resolve conflicts, correct mistakes or plan new actions, she says.
And kids will likely spend less time frustrated and have more time for fun, friends and finding solutions.
Without sufficient self-regulation, a discouraging cascade of events can occur.
"The child who does not have self-regulation at five years of age is the child who cannot follow the teacher's directions at age six or who cannot plan how to solve a problem at age seven," says a report for the U.S. National Institute for Early Education Research. "The child without self-regulation of emotions at age four will not be able to control his temper at five and will have negative peer interactions at age seven."
A former preschool and elementary school teacher, Boyer says she found many children who needed support in self-regulation. And there's even more stimulation and temptation facing them today.
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In one of her studies, 146 Vancouver Island families and 15 early childhood educators identified five factors that foster self-regulation:
1. Optimism -- seeing good events as "permanent, pervasive and personal" and bad events as temporary, specific and not due to the child
2. Empathy -- understanding for the feelings of others. How would you feel if that happened to you?
3. Stability and consistency in daily experiences -- set times for waking, reading, bath and bed help kids understand their world is dependable
4. Channelling reactions and energy through play and physical activity.
5. Ability to use self-talk to comfort and encourage themselves, as in "It's OK -- I am sad because I lost the toy but I have other toys."
- reprinted from Times Colonist