Seeds
Quilt
Haven
If you have been working with children and youth lately, you already know something is different. The outbursts are bigger. The shutdowns are lasting longer. The kids who used to bounce back now seem to stay stuck. And the adults supporting them? Many are running on empty.
Something Has Shifted for Children, Youth, and the Adults Supporting Them
This is not your imagination. And it is not a failure on your part.
At the 2026 Self-Reg Summer Symposium, we are starting exactly there, with the honest acknowledgment that something has shifted in the world children and youth are growing up in. Before we can talk about what to do, we need to understand what we are actually seeing.
What Self-Reg Reveals About the World Children Are Growing Up In
Susan Hopkins will open the symposium with a talk called “Why Everything Feels So Hard Right Now,” and it is not a rhetorical question. She will walk us through what the science of Self-Reg reveals about this moment: that excessive stress does not just live inside one person. Through something called the interbrain, our nervous systems are constantly shaping one another.
The Interbrain: How Stress Spreads Between Nervous Systems
When children are around adults who are carrying high stress loads, that state is contagious, not because anyone is doing anything wrong, but because of how human brains are wired.
Restoring Our Own Regulation Changes the Environment Around Us
This is actually good news. Because it means that when we restore our own regulation, something shifts for the people around us too.
The symposium opens on July 6 with this big picture framing, and it gives everything that follows a foundation. We are not just collecting strategies. We are building a new way of seeing.
Moving Beyond Strategies Toward a New Way of Seeing
If you have ever sat with a child who is falling apart and thought, “I have tried everything,” this conversation is for you. And so are the four days ahead.
Sessions related to this post:
- July 6, 1:00 PM: Why Everything Feels So Hard Right Now, Susan Hopkins
- July 6, 1:45 PM Block 1: Why Behaviour Feels More Intense Now, Joel Gunzburg
- July 6, 1:45 PM Block 1: Big Emotions, Big Behaviour in the Early Years, Leigh Anne Jacques
Join Us at our 12th Annual Self-Reg Summer Symposium (SRSS) July 6-9, 2026
Join us for the 12th annual Self-Reg Summer Symposium at Trent University – live in person for the full embodied experience, and online with key sessions live-streamed worldwide – to bust myths, practice five-domain Co-Reg in real cases, and leave re-skilled and re-energized for what kids need now.