The Steps: There are 5 steps in The Shanker Method of Self-Reg: → Reframe the behaviour → Recognize the stressors → Reduce the stress → Reflect: Enhance stress awareness → Restore energyThe Shanker Method As this Self-Reg diagram converys, the 5 steps are not a linear...

Stuart Shanker
Self-Regulation: Science Backgrounder
What is self-regulation? Recent research in neuroscience and physiology has profoundly altered our understanding of the mechanisms behind a child’s response to stress, and has also reinforced what physicians have intuitively understood for generations: that children’s...
Self-Regulation: The Early Years
Self-regulation in preschoolers The early years are a time of extraordinary growth and development. Children’s capacity for self-regulation—how they manage energy expenditure in response to stressors and then recover from the effort—is wired during these critical...
The Self-Reg View of Constant Craving
Experiments are all around us, if only we take the time to observe and reflect on them. We just had one with our 16-year-old son that would have been so easy to dismiss as yet another absurd teenager annoyance. But this one clearly demanded a bit of serious thought....
Self-Regulation: The Five Domains
The Shanker Self-Reg® Framework Self-regulation refers to the manner in which an individual deals with stress, in all its many forms, and then recovers from the energy expended. An individual (child or adult) exposed to too much stress in the early years, may develop...
Self-Reg: Looking to the Future
There is a widespread tendency to see resilience as a trait. For Self-Reg, it is an aspiration. We are constantly looking for ways to build a child or teen’s resilience: their capacity, as Ungar puts it, to access the resources that sustain wellbeing. And, Lord knows,...
Why Does My Child Hate Math?
Neuroscientists have recently made a startling discovery as to why so many students these days are having trouble with math. Brain imaging has shown that starting at a young age, a simple problem in arithmetic can trigger a fight-or-flight reaction. When...
Psychology Today: Why Does My Child Hate Math?
Math shouldn’t be seen as just a tool, or a compulsory subject. It is an enriching mental experience. Yet more and more young children are fleeing from it, right at the start. Read the Self-Reg view from Dr. Stuart Shanker in this three-part series on math for...
The Self-Reg View: Calm Begets Calm
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Biblical aphorism that one should “Pour oil on troubled waters” began to be seen in literal terms, as an empirical phenomenon worthy of study. Benjamin Franklin performed an experiment on a pond to prove the wisdom of this practice,...
Perseverance vs. Compulsion
This is an excerpt of Dr. Shanker’s monthly article for Psychology Today. Read the full article, When to Push a Child, here. There is a fundamental difference between perseverance and compulsion. Perseverance is Blue Brain. It is fueled by interest and desire....
Psychology Today: When to Push a Child
We all want the best for our kids, and these days there is a growing chorus of voices telling us that this means pushing them to work harder. Just about every aspect of a child or teen’s life these days is a competition. But to excel at school, sports, the arts,...
The Self-Reg View: Willpower Is Not the Secret to Success
We are in the midst of one of the most exciting and profound revolutions ever seen in our understanding of human functioning and development. As a result of striking advances in neuroscience, physiology and psychology, we are unravelling the complex interrelationship...
Psychology Today: Reframing IQ
If Self-Reg teaches us anything, it is that it is next to impossible to ever be certain about a child’s intellectual potential: even when this might seem to be set in stone. Children are forever surprising us, and for that matter, themselves. And the whole point of...
The Self-Reg View of: Overcoming Barriers
Back in 2001, David Sobel, an Education Prof at Antioch University in New England, published a fascinating book called Children’s Special Places. He was interested in the question of when and why children build forts. This typically begins around the age of 5 or 6....
Self-Regulation vs. Self-Control
Purpose: The practice of Self–Reg draws a fundamental distinction between self–regulation and self–control. Self–regulation seeks to identify and reduce the causes of problems in mood, thought, and behaviour. Self–regulation is always searching for hidden stressors....
Self-Reg and the Anxiety Epidemic
This Self-Reg Information Sheet is based on ideas and content developed by Dr. Stuart Shanker. It is intended to increase educators’ and parents’ understanding of anxiety and how to support children dealing with anxiety on a day-to-day basis. It is not meant to...
The Self-Reg View of ADHD
The first question that we need to ask is perhaps the most important: are we, in fact, witnessing an ADHD epidemic? T he data certainly seems to indicate that this is the case. The percentage of 4-17 year-olds in the U.S. diagnosed with ADHD has risen from 7.8% in...
Self-Regulation: The Impact of Trauma
Trauma and the brain To this day, many children are still experiencing the effects of the trauma that their grandparents and parents went through in residential schools. Other events in a child’s life can also be traumatic and have a similar long-term impact....