My young son who has CP, struggling with emotional regulation and settling into nursery

stephanievin

I’m looking for support/advise for my young son who has CP, struggling with emotional regulation and settling into nursery

Albus_Scope

Hey there @stephanievin and welcome to the community. We're all here for support whenever needed and we have the excellent @SaraC_Scope and CP Network for all your CP questions and needs. 😊

forgoodnesssake

My son is now 26 and has always been quite "emotional". It is a common aspect of CP that just doesn't seem to get the attention or recognition it should. Luckily when my son was young he was quite happy, but also cried easily. As he got older this has become more obvious and I don't want to go into detail, or to alarm you cos everyone is different, but if you possibly can try and get some support from a neuropsychologist who actually understands CP and brain injury, rather than just a generic one. Ask your paediatrician for a referral and/or the education authority if you are looking into EHCP. Lots of people will tell you that "all kids do that" or "my daughter was just like that, she grew out of it". It's rarely helpful if their kids don't actually have CP, so again trying to connect with other CP families will be a great support and source of info.

SaraC_Scope

Hi @stephanievin

Welcome to the community. It's a tough period settling our children into a new environment and a new chapter of their life. Especially harder when they have a disability.

Action CP is a good place for additional advice and Parents of Children with CP Scope and Cerebral Palsy UK Families are two great Facebook pages where you can connect with other parents and families.

I've tagged my colleague @Doris_Scope who has some techniques around emotional regulation for nursery age children.

Take care

@SaraC_Scope

Doris_Scope

Hi @stephanievin

A warm welcome to the community.

Struggling with emotional regulation is so common but can be incredibly difficult. This is because as not only is your child very young, his condition may make it harder for him to understand what he is feeling at any given time.

The most best thing to do is to try and identify what his emotional outbursts mean. With a child, it is easier to do by identifying his physical actions and reactions and linking them to his possible emotions. Examples would be if he is starting to jump on the spot does he mean he is excited or getting anxious. Another example would be if he started to grind his teeth is that a sensory seeking need or if he getting angry. Every child is different in how they show their emotions.

Once you know what his actions mean, including his actions when he is calm and in a good place, then you can start to look at his actions leading up to the outbursts and try to put things in place before they escalate. Don't worry or expect to know straight away, it can sometimes take some working out.

https://www.theottoolbox.com/zones-of-regulation-activities/ is a great site that talks about emotional regulation and how to go about it.

If you were thinking of trying to gain a better insight into your son's emotional actions and needs, you could start off observing him and noting when he is calm, worked up, upset, angry, and note down all of the physical actions he displays. Put the emotion that you think it links to next to it and so on. These will probably change the more you do it until you settle on a final answer. It may also change with age. Also ask the nursery to do this so you have a rounded view.

As I said, once you have a clearer view of what he does when he is calm and what he does when he is in other emotional states, you will be able to see the escalation at the beginning as you will see when he comes out of the regulated emotion. You can then start to put things into place that you know calm him or settle him at an earlier stage.

https://zonesofregulation.com/ is the official site for this, but talks mainly about the curriculum for it. It might give you some thoughts though.

If you want any further information on this I am happy to answer any questions.

I hope that this helps in some way and don't hesitate to ask anything else.

@Doris_Scope

stephanievin

thanks so much, this is great information for me to look into! Really appreciate it!