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FEATURED ARTICLE

School-Based Mindfulness Intervention to Foster Childhood Self-Regulation

Jennifer Ishaq, MA, TLLP, CEI Intern and Christine Mason, Executive Director

Self-regulation abilities are related to various outcomes, including risk of anxiety and depression (Buckner et al., 2009; Kim et al., 2013). Fostering self-regulation in childhood can serve as a protective factor for anxiety, depression, and harmful impacts of stress (Troy & Mauss, 2011). School-based mindfulness and yoga programs have been shown to reduce adverse impact of stress, anxiety, and aggression, all while improving physical and mental well-being (Smith et al., 2020; Velásquez et al., 2015).

Self-Regulation Skills in Children

Self-regulation is multi-faceted. To be self-regulated in essence is to have the ability to control one's own emotions and behaviors. Consider time management and sticking with something even when it's not your number one preference. That's a good life skill to have. Children with good self-regulation skills usually are also adept at time management. They turn homework in on time partly because they have managed their time well and also because they have the ability to persevere, even when they may have an urge to be elsewhere.

Currently we are seeing an increase in students who simply don't want to sit in desks six hours a day. Pre-Covid most students had followed an expected norm, and kept their attention on instruction, even when they may have preferred being elsewhere. However, with remote learning, children became attuned to a different pattern and many students became disengaged from instruction and learning. Now that they are back in schools, many students have not yet acclimated to spending long hours in school focused on academics. Many educators are describing these students as "dysregulated." They are seeing outbursts of behavioral disruptions and many students and teachers alike are struggling to find a new norm.

What We Can Learn from Psychology

Self-regulation is defined by social-cognitive theorists as a function of self-monitoring, affective self-reaction, and self-judgment through social and personal standards (Bandura, 1991). One implication of this is that teachers could intentionally insert assignments and instruction to build self-monitoring and give students more opportunities to self-reflect on how they are doing.

More recently, neuropsychologists have examined self-regulation. They have found that it is a higher-order function involving prefrontal cortex activity as individuals plan and engage in particular behaviors (Banfield et al., 2016). Following this line of thought, teachers could assist students in planning and follow-through, starting with rather simple tasks—perhaps even with preferred tasks. For example, teachers could ask students to plan a leisure activity and then check to see how well their planning worked. Building on what may be relatively easy because of high student motivation, teachers could then ask students to plan for a group academic project, and later compare the process and results between the two. Simply bringing planning and follow-through into conscious awareness may be one simple procedure to increase self-regulation.

To examine self-regulation holistically, it is commonly measured through three sub-constructs: the attentional/cognitive, the behavioral, and the emotional (Raffaeli et al., 2005). Each facet relates to different domains of adaptive functioning in one’s life.

To help students with the self-reflection that may be necessary to increase adaptive behaviors, teachers can ask students to rate their own attention, performance, and attitudes for a variety of tasks, ranging in complexity. Through self-rating, students can then move onto goal setting for areas they target for improvement.

The Why

Building strong self-regulation skills in childhood is associated with better outcomes including:

• Stronger academic performance (cognitive)
• Social skills / social competence (behavioral)
• Stress management (emotional)

One study that outlines this is by Bruckner et al. (2009), who found a positive link between self-regulation in 12-year-olds and their adaptive functioning outcomes, academic achievement, and social competence. The adolescents’ self-regulation was also associated with fewer reported problem behaviors and linked to higher psychological well-being (e.g., scores on depression and anxiety measures).

Strengths and Deficits in Self-Regulation

Most people have seen the social media trend of placing a tasty treat in front of young children and telling them to wait to eat it. To make matters more difficult, the parent leaves the room and the child is left to squirm and contemplate whether the immediate gratification of taking a bite beats the delayed gratification of having two marshmallows. Mischel and Ayduk (2004) found that preschoolers who were able to wait out the delayed gratification were also rated as better able to cope with frustration and stress than children who did not successfully regulate.

Self-regulation skills that are promoted and taught in early childhood can be carried throughout one's life. Raising the younger generation to have strong self-regulation skills could lead to a societal shift where adulthood presents less adverse outcomes such as the following (Montroy et al., 2016; Moffitt et al., 2011):

• Health problems
• Substance abuse
• Criminal convictions
• Lower income

Deficits in self-regulation during childhood are related to difficulty focusing, aggressive behavior, and poor communication and coping skills. Students with lower rated self-regulation were more likely to respond to situations with impulsivity and anger (Buckner et al., 2009). But there is hope in terms of interventions that help boost self-regulation skills. Teachers can facilitate self-regulation through some of the strategies mentioned earlier, and in particular increasing instruction, self-reflection, and helping students to self-monitor. However, self-regulation skills in childhood and early adolescence can also be enhanced through the implementation of school-based mindfulness and yoga programs.

School-Based Mindfulness Programs

Jon Kabat-Zinn in 2003 proposed a common definition of mindfulness as “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment.” 

Mindfulness or conscious awareness is a vital skill involved in self-regulation. Using mindfulness techniques that also incorporate physical activity such as yoga may add an important tool to teachers' toolboxes. Mindful yoga defined as “quieting the mind through physical activity” (Gordon, 2013), has an added benefit of being extra engaging, since it is hands-on and interactive. 

In recent years, many researchers have investigated the efficacy of school-based mindfulness programs (Mason, et al., 2022). Dariotis et al. (2016), for example, analyzed fifth and sixth graders after a 16-week in-person yoga intervention program. In focus groups, the students claimed to have experienced benefits in:

• Stress reduction
• Anger identification in self and others
• De-escalation of negative emotions
• Avoidance of violent conflict
• Strengthened peer connections

The study found that youth developed and learned emotional regulation skills. Youth felt more empowered to use such skills when taught the associated health benefits. Further, youth preferred and better recalled skills that utilized a combination of breathwork and poses. This and other studies have shown that yoga may strengthen behavioral and emotional self-regulation in children and improve prosocial behaviors.

Beyond the benefits students received from the school-based intervention, teachers also reported improvements in the classroom (e.g., more positive relationships with their students, feeling personal benefits from yoga practices). Teaching children yoga and mindfulness practices can be engaging and provide long-term improvements in self-regulatory abilities to both students and educational staff.

References

Bandura, A. (1991). Social cognitive theory of self-regulation. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 50, 248-287.

Banfield, J.F., Wyland, C.L., Macrae, C.N., Munte, T.F., Heatherton, T.F. (2016). The cognitive neuroscience of self-regulation. In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and applications (p. 62–83). The Guilford Press.

Buckner, J., Mezzacappa, E., & Beardslee, W.R. (2009). Self-regulation and its relations to adaptive functioning in low income youths. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 79(1), 19-30.

Dariotis, J.K., Mirabal-Betran, R., Cluxton-Keller, F., Gould, L.F., Greenberg, M.T., & Mendelson, T. (2016). A qualitative evaluation of student learning and skills use in a school-based mindfulness and yoga program. Mindfulness, 7, 76-89.

Gordon, T. (2013). Theorizing yoga as a mindfulness skill. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 84, 1224-1227.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (2003). Mindfulness-based interventions in context: Past, present, and future. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 10(2), 144–156.

Kim, P., Evans, G.W., Angstadt, M., Ho, S.S., Sripada, C.S., Swain, J.E., Liberzon, I., & Phan, K.L. (2013). Effects of childhood poverty and chronic stress on emotional regulatory brain function in adulthood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110(46), 18443-18447.

Mason, C., Donald, J., Kaur, K., Rivers Murphy, M, & Brown, V. (2022). Cultivating happiness, resilience, and well-being through mindfulness, meditation, and movement. Corwin.

Mischel, W. & Ayduk, O. (2004). Willpower in a cognitive-affective processing system: The dynamics of delay of gratification. In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and applications (p. 99–129). The Guilford Press.

Moffitt, T.E., Arseneault, L., Belsky, D., Dickson, N., Hancox, R.J., Harrington, H., Houts, R., Richie Poulton, R., Roberts, B.W., Rossa, S., Sears, M.R., Thomson, W.M., & Caspia, A. (2011). A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(7), 2693-2698.

Montroy, J.J., Bowles, R.P., Skibbe, L.E., McClelland, M.M., & Marrison, F.J. (2016). The development of self-regulation across early childhood. Developmental Psychology, 52(11), 1744-1762.

Raffaeli, M., Crockett, L.J., & Shen, Y. (2005). Developmental stability and change in self-regulation from childhood to adolescence. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 166(1), 54–75.

Smith, B. H., Esat, G., & Kanojia, A. (2020). School-based yoga for managing stress and anxiety. In C. Maykel & M. A. Bray (Eds.), Applying psychology in the schools. Promoting mind–body health in schools: Interventions for mental health professionals (p. 201–216). American Psychological Association.

Troy, A.S., & Mauss, I.B. (2011). Resilience in the face of stress: emotion regulation as a protective factor. In Southwick, S.M, Litz, B.T., Charney, D. & Friedman, M.J. (Eds.), Resilience and Mental Health: Challenges Across the Lifespan, (pp. 30-44). Cambridge University Press.

Velásquez, A.M., López, M.A., Quiñonez, N., & Paba, D.P. (2015). Yoga for the prevention of depression, anxiety, and aggression and the promotion of socio-emotional competencies in school-aged children. Educational Research and Evaluation, 21(5-6), 407-421.