Practicing Regulation with my Toddler

Regulate & Rewire Podcast, regulation tools

Episode 14: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
View transcript on Buzzsprout

Your three-year-old is having a complete meltdown over candy at 9 AM. Your first instinct might be to send them to their room for a timeout, try to reason with them, or maybe even lose your cool and yell. But what if there was a way to help both of you get regulated while teaching your child skills they’ll use for life?

Whether you’re a parent, teacher, caregiver, or working on reparenting yourself, this episode shares practical strategies for staying calm during big emotions and helping children develop self-regulation skills. These same concepts apply to learning how to regulate yourself as an adult in ways you might not have learned in childhood.

What We Cover in This Episode

  • Why self-regulation is a learnable skill (for kids and adults)
  • My step-by-step approach to helping my toddler through meltdowns
  • What co-regulation looks like in practice
  • How practicing regulation tools when calm makes them accessible during crisis
  • Real examples of both successful regulation and times I lost my cool

Self-Regulation is a Skill

Here’s what every parent needs to know: children do not have the ability to self-regulate. When we send kids to timeout alone, they’re not learning to calm down—they’re either crying themselves to exhaustion or shutting down because their needs aren’t being met.

Self-regulation is a skill that requires practice, just like reading or math. It would have been ideal if we all learned this in stable homes with regulated parents who made space for big feelings without shame or punishment. But that’s often not reality.

As adults, it’s now our job to reparent ourselves and learn regulation skills. As we do this work, we can model it differently for our children, giving them less healing work to do as adults.

My Standard Operating Procedure for Meltdowns

When my three-year-old loses his cool, here’s what I do:

Step 1: Containment

I take him to his room and stay with him. Yes, this makes him more upset initially—he doesn’t want to leave the fun space. But I’ve found we both need the containment and minimized distractions to regulate effectively.

Step 2: Stay Calm While He Dysregulates

He starts by pulling on the door handle: “Open the door! I don’t want to be in my room!”

My response: “I will open the door once we can talk about what happened.”

My son: “I don’t want to!”

Me: “That’s okay. I’m here for you when you’re ready”

This continues for several minutes. My job is to stay regulated while he works through his big emotions. And honestly, the hardest part about that is managing my own emotions towards his emotions. I’m not always great at it. I’ve lost my cool back, I’ve yelled, I’ve had to walk away. I’ve created ruptures and I know its my job to step back into the repair. I have a few parenting mantras that help anchor me.

My Two Parenting Mantras

When I’m sitting with a screaming toddler for 20 minutes, feeling like I’m “wasting time,” these mantras keep me grounded:

  1. “Firm but kind” – I can set boundaries while being compassionate about it. This is particularly helpful coming from a childhood where I think I was often placated or volume increased.
  2. “How developmentally appropriate of them to…” – …push boundaries, …be upset about this, …not be able to handle this on their own. Insert whatever is happening in the moment because likely for them it is. I often internally say this in a bit of a sarcastic tone to help me take the edge off and validate my own frustration in the moment while also reminding me that their context for the world right now is different than mine.
  3. “The parenting I want to do is inconvenient” – Choosing to be the parent I want to be means accepting that it takes time and energy.

When I Lost My Cool

Like I said, I’m not perfect at this. A few months ago, my capacity was toast after a long day. When my son wasn’t listening while bike riding, I yelled his name sharply to get his attention. Instead of shocking him into compliance, my dysregulation escalated his. He looked scared, came over, and hit me—something he’d never done before.

A week later, I tried the same approach (yelling) and got the same result. That’s when I realized:

My escalation becomes his escalation

Understanding nervous systems, part of me was actually glad he felt safe enough to fight back rather than shut down. We set a boundary about hitting, but I also took responsibility. I acknowledged that my yelling scared him and taught him he could tell me “Mommy, please don’t yell” if it happened again.

Since then, I haven’t yelled at him, though I did holler at the dogs once and he immediately said, “Mama, please don’t yell!” I was proud—he was advocating for himself.

Building Regulation Skills When Calm

Another point I want to make here is that these tools only work during meltdowns because we often practice them when calm:

Daily Bedtime Routine (10 minutes or less):

  • “Wiggles” to discharge leftover energy from the day
  • Self-hug with affirmations
  • Legs up the wall (mostly for me, but he joins)
  • Deep breathing and snuggling

I’ve been doing deep breathing with him since he was about a year old, starting with having him “blow mama’s hair” to practice long exhales. I invite you to find some fun ways to practice them with your kids too. This is something we talk about a lot inside my Regulated Living Membership.

Co-Regulation in Practice

Here’s the bottom line, our children are dependent on co-regulation—one person staying calm while the other experiences something challenging. Instead of dismissing, threatening, or rescuing them from big feelings, we need to teach them how to compassionately gain control over their bodies.

Just like math or reading, self-regulation must be taught through modeling and co-regulation. This requires one person (usually the parent) to stay calm and present while the child experiences difficulty.

Three Tangible Takeaways

  1. Your Healing is Their Foundation. Children are dependent on you for regulation. Your regulated nervous system and ability to stay calm during their big emotions is the greatest gift you can give them. The healing work you do on yourself directly impacts your capacity to hold space for others.
  2. Regulate First, Then Reason. You cannot reason with anyone—child or adult—until you’re both calm. The process is always: regulate first, then talk. When someone is escalated, they don’t have access to logical thinking. Focus on calming the nervous system before trying to problem-solve or teach lessons.
  3. Practice When Calm to Access When Dysregulated. Consistent practice of coping skills when calm creates familiarity and builds neural pathways. The more you practice regulation tools during peaceful moments, the more accessible they become during crisis—for both you and your children. Self-regulation is a skill they’re learning from watching you.

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or qualified mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

Self-regulation is a skill that must be taught, and children learn it through co-regulation with calm, present adults. The healing work you do on yourself creates the capacity to hold space for others’ big emotions.

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