Zones Of Regulation Have you ever had a moment, big or small, when you have become overwhelmed by your emotions, happy or sad, and found it difficult to work through this moment? We all experience moments at various stages in our lives, whether we are adults, teenagers or young children. There are times in our lives where our emotions take over, and we find ourselves needing to manage our thoughts and feelings to move forward.
Learning to recognize the different emotions you can have and how these emotions affect your body and your mindset is the first step to regulating your emotions.
When we ‘co-regulate’ with students using this program, we journey together, taking the steps along ‘the road to regulation’. Step 1 is to see how we feel and notice our body signals and level of energy. Step 2 is to figure out what zone we are in. Step 3, we ask if we need to regulate ourselves. Do you need to STOP/PAUSE, use CAUTION/SLOW DOWN, GO, or REST/ ENERGISE? Once the students have recognized some of the situations where they may have moved between the zones and need to regulate, we explore a myriad of strategies they may use to regulate themselves and be more comfortable and have more control within the zone they are in. The students develop their own ‘toolkit’ of strategies for each zone. The ‘Zones of Regulation’ is just one program that helps us with the emotional development of our students.
As adults, we have had life experiences to look back on to assist us in regulating our own emotions or know where to go to seek help. However, children and teens need others to support them and work with them to ‘co-regulate’ and help them recognize their different emotions and find the tools they need to help them manage their different feelings. The Learning Enrichment Department explores a variety of resources to help support the individual needs of all our students. One of these resources is a program called “The Zones of Regulation”, written and created By Occupational Therapist Leah M. Kuyers. Our department has been working with some staff and students to familiarize themselves with this program and implement some of the components to assist our students in navigating their emotions and developing their own ‘road to regulation’. The program highlights for students the different emotions they can have and outlines four zones to fit these emotions. The Blue Zone is our go-slow zone and where we may feel sad, sick, bored etc. The Green Zone is our good to go zone, which is the optimum zone for learning. We associate the Green Zone with feeling happy, calm, focused. The Yellow Zone is associated with feelings such as frustration, worry, and silliness. Here is where we may start to lose some control. The final zone is the Red Zone. It is important to note that having emotions related to the red zone is not a bad thing; they are just heightened emotions that mean that we have lost control and can’t function properly within this state. Such emotions are ones like elation, anger, being terrified, Page 13ww yelling etc.
By Mrs Hilary Harvey Director of Learning Enrichment Resources: The Zones of Regulation – A curriculum designed to foster self-regulation and emotional control Leah M. Kuypers, 2011 The Road to Regulation, Leah Kuypers and Elizabeth Sautter, 2021 The Regulation Station, Leah Kuypers and Elizabeth Sautter, 2021
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