Zones of regulation

Within Redgate, we recognise and value the importance of promoting positive mental health and emotional wellbeing to our children and their families, and so we aim to create an open culture around the discussion of mental health and wellbeing, which empowers our children be able to regulate their emotions. By implementing the Zones of Regulation framework we aim to teach our children to identify emotions in themselves and others and provide them with bank of strategies to help regulate their emotions and improve their overall wellbeing.

The Zones of Regulation support our children to develop skills in the area of self-regulation. Self-regulation can go by many names, such as self-control, self-management and impulse control. It is defined as the best state of alertness of both the body and emotions for the specific situation. For example, when your child plays in a football match, it is beneficial to have a higher state of alertness. However, that same heightened state would not be appropriate in the library or within a classroom environment.

The Zones of Regulation is a framework based around the use of four colours to help children self-identify how they’re feeling and then categorise it based on colour. The Zones also help children better understand their emotions, sensory needs and thinking patterns. The children learn different strategies to self-regulate and manage their emotions based on which colour zone they’re in. Additionally, the Zones of Regulation helps children to recognise their own triggers, learn to read facial expressions, develop problem-solving skills, and become more attuned to how their actions affect other people.

Developing the children's ability to self-regulate will ultimately also support their readiness to learn.

Why use the zones of regulation at home?

It supports the use of a consistent shared language to discuss emotions together.

They are simple for children to understand. 

It supports children to label emotions and identify how they are feeling.

It helps children to understand that there are no bad emotions.

Children learn healthy self-regulation strategies which allow them to, eventually help themselves when they lose control of their emotions, become stressed, anxious or sad. 

Typically, children who can self-regulate will turn into teens and young adults who can self-regulate. 

Understanding the emotions of others helps with empathy and friendship skills.

UNDERSTANDING THE ZONES

How to use the zones to co-regulate with your child 

Talk through the zones with your child - ask them how they would feel in each zone?

Discuss what emotion they feel in each zone e.g. in the yellow zone I may feel worried

How they physically feel e.g. in yellow zone I may have butterflies in my stomach or have sweaty palms (if feeling anxious).

Then discuss what might they be doing- what be their actions e.g. in yellow zone would they be pacing around, snapping at others, fidgeting?

Then discuss how to help them move into the Green zone e.g. if I was in te Yellow zone and feeling anxious I might find competing some yoga stretches/ breathing techniques helps me get back into the green zone.

Create a list of strategies that work for the child- Remind the child that we are all unique and the strategies that work for one person might not help them so they need to think about what would help them.

Remind them that we will experience all zones and there are no good or bad zones- however our success in regulating our emotions depends on us recognising our emotion, understanding it and putting a support strategy in place.

Talk to your child about how they are feeling, help them to label and name their emotion. Identify your own feelings using Zones language in front of your child (e.g. “I’m frustrated, I am in the yellow zone”)

Talk about their body cues when they feel that emotion. What are the physical feelings behind the emotion (e.g feeling butterflies in our tummy when we feel nervous or worried.) Recognising emotions is the first step to regulating them.

Here are some examples from the four zones:

Blue- I can see and hear that you are crying, your mouth is turned down, are you feeling sad?

Green- I can see your big smile and hear your laughter, are you feeling happy?

Yellow- You have become very quiet and I can see that you are reluctant to speak, are you feeling worried?

Red- I can hear that you are breathing heavily and I can see that your eyebrows have bunched together, are you feeling angry?

Discuss why they are feeling a certain way, has anything happened?

Talk about times when you, a family member or a character from a film or book felt that way.

You might like to share some of the stories below which explore feelings and emotions.