Girls, Body Image, and Food
Susan Hopkins initiates a discussion on how best to help girls develop healthy and positive relationships with their bodies and food. She shares some of her own experiences around this issue and talks about the [...]
Reframing Is Ageless
By: Nancy Niessen When I began formally learning about Self-Regulation I was an educator in the public school system looking for ways to better support my students. In particular, I wanted to find more ways [...]
When Not Complying Is The Self-Regulated Choice
Today was a Day 4, which means that I have a prep period at the end of the day: it's music. Since we don't have a separate music room at our school, our music teacher [...]
What Is the Most Important Factor in Good Parenting?
This post is part of our Everyday Self-Reg series. I have spent almost thirty years writing about parenting. That includes: over 150 magazine articles more than a dozen parenting booklets brochures, blogs and web content [...]
Can Self-Reg Help Me Brave the Before Care Program?
For the past 1 1/2 years, our Kindergarten classroom has been used for a Kindergarten After Care Program. As somebody that likes organization in the classroom, and the ability to come in early and stay [...]
Supporting My Daughter Through a Big Disappointment: How We Respond to Strong Emotion as a Self-Reg Parent
Susan Hopkins and Stuart Shanker use a situation from Susan’s parenting experience as a teachable moment about the Self-Reg approach to helping children deal with strong emotions. They discuss the difference between the cognitive approach — [...]
The Self-Reg View of Constant Craving
By: Dr. Stuart Shanker 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 [...]
Is It Our Fears That Are Stopping Kids? A Self-Reg Look At Risky Play
The snowfall over the winter holidays led to lots of amazing snow structures at our school. One morning, when we made our way out to the forest to play, students saw this structure that a [...]
See A Teenager Differently
A Self-Reg Reframe of a Teen "At-Risk" My teenage years remain a blur. I was one of the troubled ones. I was “THAT” teenager—the at-risk kind of kid that neighbours whispered about and relatives avoided [...]
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 [...]
Our Top 10 Self-Reg Blog Posts of 2017
As we come to the end of another calendar year, Stuart Shanker, Susan Hopkins, and The MEHRIT Centre team have been reflecting with gratitude on our ongoing Self-Reg journey and the many lovely lessons learned [...]
Crisis Averted, Trajectory Changed
By: Cathern Lethbridge Four years ago, I was following a Twitter feed that literally changed my career and my life. I started seeing people posting tweets with photos of slides from a man talking about [...]
A Happy Holiday Musical That’s Much Happier Thanks To Some Co-Regulation
I'm very lucky! I work with amazing and talented people on the Kindergarten team at our school. But when one of these great people suggested that we put on a Kindergarten Musical for the holidays, [...]
The Head, The Hands and The Heart: In Conversation with John (Jack) Miller
Reflections on Well-Being In Ontario K-12 Education: Part II By: Stefani Burosch It’s funny how sometimes we get introduced to people or ideas at just the right time or at just the right moment in [...]
Are We Really The Only Ones That Care? A Self-Reg Look At Self-Assessment
I remember many years ago when I taught Grade 6. There were a couple of students that I probably worked with more than others. I wasn't the only one. Prep coverage teachers also worked with them a lot. [...]
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 [...]
What If? Series: Reframing Report Cards
Sparked by recent news about upcoming changes to Ontario’s Elementary report cards, Susan Hopkins and Stuart Shanker muse about how reframing the idea of report cards could make them a more enriching and informative experience [...]
Everyday Self-Reg: Manners and Courtesy
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 [...]
Who We Are, Where We Come From
Reflections on Well-Being in Ontario K-12 Education By: Stefani Burosch “Literacy is the ability to share our life story, by whatever means that we are able do that.” - David Bouchard, Acclaimed Métis Author, Literacy [...]
What If? Series: Chew On This
Because of our modern diet, today’s children (and adults) spend considerably less time chewing than our early human ancestors. In this vlog, Dr. Shanker and Susan Hopkins discuss the self-regulatory and educational implications of this [...]