Just about three years ago today I stood in a parking lot at Trent University waiting for Susan Hopkins. It was the day before the very first Self-Reg Summer Symposium and Susan and I were about to meet in person for the first time. I’d worked off and on with Stuart...
I have many reasons to look forward to the Self-Reg Summer Symposium each year. One of them is meeting people: I work on my own out of a home office, so I don’t get the daily face-to-face contact with colleagues and clients that is one of the social benefits...
When I was 21, my buddy Tom and I had this half-baked, youthfully idealistic notion that a lot of the world’s problems and conflicts could be solved if people would just be more playful and have more fun. As I grew older and took on more responsibilities, I gradually...
I have spent almost thirty years writing about parenting. That includes: over 150 magazine articlesmore than a dozen parenting bookletsbrochures, blogs and web contentinterviews with over 100 educators and researchersinterviews with several hundred parentshours of...
Psychiatrist Jean Clinton has been an internationally renowned expert and advocate for children’s mental health for over 30 years. We were thrilled to have Dr. Clinton at our Self-Reg Summer Symposium once again last summer. In her keynote address, Dr. Clinton drew...
When I was a kid I had a very negative view of manners. I was taught manners and forced to use them. But I didn’t understand what they were for. To my 10-year-old self, manners felt like a form of social control, rules dreamed up by adults who felt driven to make kids...
This article was inspired by Dr. Shanker’s keynote lecture at the 2017 Self-Reg Summer Symposium. If you’ve ever seen Stuart Shanker give a talk you’ll notice a couple of things before long. First, he never sticks to his script. Second of all, there’s always a...
There’s a certain kind of stress that comes with being alone within a group. This can happen for numerous reasons, but the one I’m thinking of is the feeling of being the only person in your group who is passionate about an idea — like Self-Reg, for...
Praise for Stuart Shanker’s new book, Self-Reg: How to Help Your Child (and You) Break the Stress Cycle and Successfully Engage with Life, continues to proliferate on media of various kinds. Dr. Shanker’s second in a series of blogs for Psychology Today, about...
Controlled crying, graduated extinction, Ferberization, cry-it-out. These are some of the names given to methods designed to “teach” babies to sleep through the night. I have done a lot of pondering, writing and research on this topic, including academic research. I...
Stuart Shanker’s new book, Self-Reg: How to Help Your Child (and You) Break the Stress Cycle and Successfully Engage with Life created an instant buzz when it was released on June 21. In fact, on that very day, the first day it was available for...
I have spent more than 25 years writing about fatherhood, and I am a father of three grown young men. Getting into self-regulation has given me a new way of looking at fatherhood issues. I’m particularly interested in how father involvement affects the self-regulation...
From the Self-Reg People column of the TMC Newsletter by John Hoffman Most people know Stuart Shanker as a child development guru, a leading voice in the Self-Reg movement, or an inspiring and persuasive speaker and teacher. Some even know that he keeps...
Summary of Dr. Stuart Shanker’s Keynote Presentation, Self-Reg Summer Symposium, July 2015. A focus on self-regulation can support the four main pillars of education: literacy, numeracy, social/emotional learning and safe schools. With respect to safe schools, the...
Adolescence and self-regulation. What do we know? What myths are ready to be banished? How long did you say it lasts? Keynote presentation Self-Reg Summer Symposium, 2015. Presented by Jean Clinton, Associate Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry and...
A Summary of Dr. Shanker’s Keynote at the Self-Reg Summer Symposium 2015 What is a paradigm revolution? A paradigm revolution is more profound than a paradigm shift. What people refer as a paradigm shift is often the result of bouncing around trying to find the best...