Self-Control (SC)

Definition: Doing what’s best in the long run despite short-term temptations. I make thoughtful choices. "Self-control is useful in steering our attention toward one thing and away from another." ¹ What am I navigating in my day?

Motto: "I manage my feelings and actions and am disciplined and self-controlled." ²

From Character Lab: Self-control means doing what’s important to you in the long run instead of what feels good in the moment but is later regretted. For example, scrolling through your Instagram feed might be fun but not worth falling behind in your work.

Self-control is self-initiated: if you turn off the phone to focus on work, that is an act of self-control; but if someone else tells you to do it, then it is compliance.

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We are using the Character Lab strength of "self-control" for this site versus the VIA use of "self-regulation" which in fact incorporates the use of self-control in their definition. It can be a bit confusing. "Self-control" is more student-friendly language and is probably heard more frequently by children than the term self-regulation.

Ashely Soderlund, a child psychologist, offers:

“There is one life skill that is the most important one to teach our children. To call it one skill, however, is a little misleading. It’s really a set of skills– a whole host of skills. At the center of those skills is the ability to control something– a behavior, a thought, an impulse, a movement, or a feeling. Generally, this is called self-regulation.”

Healthline offers:

In the world of education and psychology, self-control and self-regulation are often used together, but they’re actually quite different in terms of what they mean.

Self-control is an active behavior. It’s primarily considered a social skill. When it comes to kids, self-control is about inhibiting impulses.

Self-regulation, however, allows kids to manage their behaviors, body movements, and emotions while still focusing on the task at hand.

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The Strengths Spotlight Podcast Series: Listen to the Institute of Positive Education descriptors of the strengths that include integration strategies.

What it Looks Like and How to Encourage:

• Getting to work right away (initiating), rather than procrastinating

• Avoiding and resisting distraction to stay focused (selective attention)

• Planning ahead

• Making choices that won’t be regretted later

• Developing and using a self-talk algorithm around how to self-regulate

• Promote a classroom language around SC and wellbeing

• Situational analysis (Teachable Moments)

Attention and Focus: Author Johan Hari adds a fourth community layer of attention to the three layers of attention developed by author James Williams. This section of this page will expand in time with resources and strategies. Our children just like us live in a world of distraction. They are given fewer and fewer opportunities to naturally grow their ability to attend and focus.

Focus is central to self-control in our world of distraction. It is critical to grow student awareness of their ability to dial up focus while expanding their ability to see times when they lose focus.

Four Layers of Attention>

1. Spotlight - Focusing on immediate actions like 'I’m going to work on my math problems now.’ It involves narrowing one's focus while keeping distractions out of the spotlight.

2. Starlight - Taking time to focus on longer-term goals. A student school example is a research project and a personal example is improving a sport.

3. Daylight - This is being able to spend time seeing the big picture to reflect and decide what your goals are. To my thinking, this for children means time to play, to explore, to connect with nature and people, all coming together to make meaning.

4. Stadium Lights - This involves our strength of social intelligence being able to connect and work with others often working towards common goals.

Teacher Strategies to Personally Strengthen Their Self-Control:

• Grow your awareness of your strengths by making them more visible. Depending upon your learning style and preferred modality, choose tools from your instructional toolkit to apply to yourself. Examples: Audio Recording (have a friend interview you to record your very own "strengths podcast"|Concept Mapping|Outlining|Sketchnoting. Find ways to show how you combine strengths in some situations while also connecting to your talents/abilities, skills, interests, and values.

• Start with the CL construct of model, celebrate and enable to develop some strategies.

• Take a deep dive into self-control research and supporting practices.

Character Lab Self-Control Teaching Strategies and Tips: How to offer age-appropriate versions of the strategies? Note: There are dozens and dozens of tips from Character Lab. These choices are filtered for elementary school and practicality to bring this strength into the culture of one's classroom.

• Attention Is Selective

• Environments, Past and Present

• Hack Your Space

• High Anxiety

• Preach What You Practice

• Self-Monitoring

• Situations Are Objective

• Temptation Bundling

• The Adaptability Advantage

• The Best-Laid Plans

• The Other Side of Stress

• Uncertain Incentives

• Use WOOP to set goals supported by Character Strengths. (WOOP Worksheet from Character Lab. A more scaffolded worksheet.) Grades 3-5 lesson. WOOP App: Android | IOS

• Agency - "Although no one has absolute control over destiny, we can do a great deal to control how we think, feel, and behave. By assessing our life situations realistically, we can make plans and preparations that allow us to make the most of our circumstances. By doing so, we gain a sense of mastery." (Hales, D., 2021)

The term "agency" is used a lot these days in describing the empowerment and self-confidence we want our students to experience as they make decisions in their lives. It connects to growing their sense of self-efficacy and understanding concerning their locus of control. These two concepts connect to the self-talk in whether we see ourselves as internals or externals regarding our belief regarding whether we are in charge of how we affect our lives or if we see life affecting us. No set strategy is offered here other than to continue to expand the vocabulary of your students by adapting these psychological terms to their developmental levels. You can search the web for lots of resources offering strategies to support student agency.

• Character Day - Find ways to participate and elaborate on the activities offered for this annual event.

• Expert Practice - Review and adapt the Character Lab resource to support focus and sustained practice with your students. Look to use the terms "focused" and "sustained" to help them construct their understanding of what on-point practice looks like in our distractible world.

• Flow - "Psychological Flow captures the positive mental state of being completely absorbed, focused, and involved in your activities at a certain point in time, as well as deriving enjoyment from being engaged in that activity." (Positive Psychology) "Flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel and perform our best. More specifically, the term refers to those moments of total absorption, when an individual becomes so focused on what they’re doing that everything else just disappears, and all aspects of performance are significantly amplified." (Flow Research Collective) You might have heard of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who is known as one of the founders of Positive Psychology who also is known for his research on flow. It is really worth one's time to take a deeper dive into his work. Here are some articles that overlap: What is Flow in Psychology? | 8 Characteristics of Flow | Flow Theory in Psychology | Flow is listed here as it puts one in a distraction-free state and with some of the other Character Strengths as an opportunity for you to expand the wellness vocabulary of your students while using the term in the language of your classroom. We want to be very purposeful to model and acknowledging the wellness benefits that flow can offer us. If you feel inclined, you can work to design and coach your students into potential flow experiences. This article offers some strategies.

• Focus Five - Focus 5 is a set of exercises that provides students and teachers with skills to minimize distraction and develop a greater sense of focus and awareness. The exercises range in length from one to five minutes. Download the cards.

• Games - Playworks provides a wonderful list of group games to help students grow their strengths of emotional intelligence, self-control, and social intelligence.

• Indistractible - Thought leader Nir Eyal is a leader in the field of digital wellness. Look to draw from his book Indistractible and this article to formulate ways to bring the term "indistractable" into the language of learning in your classroom. Work with students to come up with strategies to assist in their ability to focus with an emphasis on doing one task at a time. Brain research teaches us that multitasking is inefficient and not productive. In other words, it doesn't work.

• Lesson Databases - Find lessons at the Heart-Mind Online resource site provided by the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education. Find lessons at the Greater Good in Education resource site provided by the Greater Good Science Center (University of California - Berkeley).

• Learning Strategies (Personalized) - 1) Help students draw up their personal learning strategies list to help them be more focused. 2) Personal Learning System (PLS) - Guide students to design their PLS in how they use information and technology.

• Mindfulness Activities (Also included in Emotional Intelligence Character Strength strategies) - Design activities that help your students identify their physical and emotional states while practicing being present. Here is a video to introduce mindfulness to your students. Help students be present and aware of how they feel when interacting with others. Here is a lesson page with a few ideas. Positive Psychology provides research and a long list of activities to try in your classroom. Smiling Mind provides PDF downloads of lesson ideas for the different age ranges of our elementary school. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the links to the PDFs.
  
  Build in a few times during the day for students to stop, be mindful, and think about their emotions. You can announce the moments or possibly use a chime at set intervals or sound off randomly. Here is a digital chime. Choose from the many meditations for children at Insight Timer to take a longer mindful moment with your students.

Research supports the mind and body benefits of intentional breathing. You might already work with your students to do breathwork. Examples are belly or 4-7-8 breathing which supports their mindfulness practice. Here is a full listing of breathing techniques that you can incorporate into the wellness practices of your class.

ReachOut.com (focus on MS and HS students) provides a few apps that can help students manage their feelings of anxiety and worry. Take a look at their main app ReachOut Worry Time. They have more apps at the bottom of the page. Also, look to A Little Guide to Mindfulness PDF for some mindfulness strategies. VIA provides a mindful/meditative strategy for each Character Strength.

• Self-Control Calendar - Choose a month to post a daily self-control activity for everyone to try. Here is a kindness example for February.

• Self-Regulation - Review the article "What is Self-Regulation? (+95 Skills and Strategies)" to further your understanding and to come up with strategies to help students with their self-control as well as their engagement with their emotional and social intelligences. There are several aspects of self-regulation that we can support with classroom accommodations. Go to the Learning Support section of my Web Resources for Learning website for a lists of support strategies. Also, look to review the article "20 Classroom Accommodations That Target ADHD Challenges". Don't let the term of "ADHD" stop you from reviewing the list. We know that a great many of the accommodations that help ADHD students also help non-ADHD students.

• Six Thinking Hats - No specific strategy is offered here other than to unpack the thinking hats to see how your students in using them can better understand themselves and their efforts to self-regulate. Collaboration, creativity, decision-making, emotional intellect, intellectual humility, mental models, and perspective-taking are just a few of the internal processes that can be supported by guiding students to use the thinking hats. Here is an article about one teacher's learning in teaching the thinking hats to her students.

• Sketchnoting to Paint the Strength Picture - Guide your students to make visible their self-understanding of how they currently engage with each strength. A secondary activity is to have your students sketch out new ways they can exercise each strength. We know that going from thinking about ideas to then make them visible often leads to taking action with the ideas. The first step to this strategy is to teach your students about sketchnoting. You will find applications of this tool across all areas of your curriculum. :) Students can take pictures of their sketches to upload to Seesaw to then explain their thinking.

• Spotlighting for Focus - Work with your students to think of their eyes sending out a circle of light as a flashlight does. Guide them to use the light of their focus to work on the task at hand while everything outside the light is excluded. Embed the use of this phrase into the language of learning in your classroom as in "it is time to work individually on the activity. Remember to turn on your spotlight (of focus) to not be distracted". (This strategy is drawn from the work of Johann Hari.) An additional step is to have an object that students can put on their desks to communicate they are in spotlight mode. It probably works best for it to be something that stands on the desk so that it can be seen from a distance.

• Strength Chart - Teachers have lots of ways to bring strengths into the language and culture of their classrooms. A teacher at one of my schools connected to the school's core values by having the names of students on small sticky labels that he stuck to the core values poster. He would place the student's name by the value on the chart in the following ways that are adapted here for the strengths. One technique is for students who want the class to support his/her effort to grow their strengths to have his/her name placed beside the designated strength(s). A second strategy is for teachers to verbally highlight students who are applying their strengths at the moment in class. The teacher then puts the student’s name by the strengths on the chart.

• Superhero Creation - Challenge your students to create a superhero who maximizes this strength. One approach is to have your students draw a picture of the character with a biography that describes how the superhero uses the strength in his/her life. You can provide categories such as physical, intellectual (thinking), emotional, and social as to how the superhero demonstrates the strength. This activity could take the form of playing cards that students then create games around.

• Other possibilities - Self-Control Superhero marketing design projects, Student-created videos highlighting self-control stories, building practices into class cultures, high school IB students using CAS time to produce age-appropriate videos for ES students answering questions of “What is self-control? What can I do to have more self-control?”, older student buddies and their ES partners from time to time share personal self-control stories, incorporate into co-curricular activities like field trips, after school activities, assemblies, etc.

Grade(s) Specific Teaching Strategies: The following ideas are offered as jumping-off points for teachers to build from and adapt to their needs.

EC-K>

• Lesson Listing - Access teacher-created lessons and those from other providers.

• Self-Control wall in each classroom where students post drawings of their efforts.

• Storybook readings, digital media, and share time by teachers and students to build understanding.

• Use visuals of toolkits and tools engaging language of creating our "strength toolkits" with strengths as tools.

1-3>

• Grades 1-2> possibly do some storybook readings and use of digital media. Eventually could lead to students writing their own storybooks that involve self-control.

• Lesson Listing - Access teacher-created lessons and those from other providers. (To be developed)

• Self-Control wall in each classroom where students post examples of their efforts.

• Student Agency - Work with students' ideas to learn about self-regulation and how they can take steps to have more self-control.

• Use visuals of toolkits and tools engaging language of creating our "strength toolkits" with strengths as tools.

• Weekly mini-goals for teachers and students.

• Weekly Self-Control Seesaw Journal post: will need to develop prompt and potential categories for students to draw a picture of and/or take a photo of their examples of self-control. They then voice-record their response. Include the use of weekly mini-goals and long-term goals.

4-5>

• Design a lesson around the question “How do you think people succeed?”.

• Journal - Google Doc or paper version. Use prompts if needed to support reflection about using self-control around school activities, transitions, time in specialist classes, etc. In time work with students to create new prompts. Could be a section of their portfolio.

• Lesson Listing - Access teacher-created lessons and those from other providers.

• Student Agency - Work with students' ideas to learn about self-regulation and how they can take steps to have more self-control.

Learning About SC:

Websites>

Character Lab

What You Need to Know About Willpower (American Psychological Association)

Books>

Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence by Laurence Steinberg

Indistractible: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life - Nir Eyal puts the responsibility of how one uses technology into the hands of the reader. His guidelines for managing time in using technology apply in all aspects of our lives.

Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation by Gabriele Oettingen

The Marshmallow Test: Why Self-Control is the Engine of Success by Walter Mischel

Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy - James Williams shares this book as a free download in which he offers his insights on the deep dangers of tech companies and their effects upon our attention.

Parent Engagement:

• Ask someone to video record the strength in action and publicize the efforts via social media (#----------) and the school website.

• Family Tree of Strengths: Provide parents with definitions and what strengths can look like in action. Provide a family tree graphic organizer with space for names and the individual’s main strengths. Offer prompts to guide parents to explain how family members and earlier generations lived specific strengths.

• Have students take their character cards home to teach their parents about their strengths.

• Strength-based Parenting - Share with your parents the Dr. Lea Waters website which includes resources and information on her book. Here is an article to help with your understanding of strength-based parenting.

• Teachers send specific reminders to have family talks around the self-control reflection products the students produce.

• Teachers offer ideas for parents to share with their children examples of their self-control actions.

• Use our various communication pathways to inform parents of their children's strengthening of their self-control.

• VIA Strengths Survey: Send parents information about the strengths and the English language Strengths Survey that they can take. The results can offer a discussion starting point for families.

Character Lab Research References

Character Lab Image Source

CASEL Image

¹ The Strength Switch: How the New Science of Strength-Based Parenting Helps Your Child and Your Teen Flourish, by Lea Waters, Scribe Publications, 2018, p. 207.

² Niemiec, R. M., & McGrath, R. E. (2019). The power of character strengths: appreciate and ignite your positive personality. Cincinnati, OH: VIA Institute on Character.

³ Embedding Character Strengths. Institute of Positive Education. With permission.