Emotional regulation and executive functioning are two sides of the same coin, and understanding how they work together changes how you respond to almost every difficult moment with your child. Children are not born with the capacity for self-control. Helping your child build it is one of the most important tasks in parenting, and in ourselves too. Emotional regulation and executive functioning are closely linked, and understanding helps make sense of a lot of challenging behaviour.
What is self-regulation?
Self-regulation is the ability to manage emotions and behaviour to match what a situation actually needs. It includes calming yourself when upset, and staying flexible when a routine or expectation changes. A well-regulated child can stay focused on a goal even when things shift around them.
This capacity takes years to build. If you’re parenting a toddler, big feelings and tantrums are simply part of that process, not a sign anything has gone wrong.
Why emotional regulation is so complex in children
A baby’s brain is not yet well developed. Think of it like building a house, a downstairs and an upstairs. The upstairs, home to executive functioning skills, sits in the prefrontal cortex, and takes years to construct. This is the last part of the brain to fully mature, often not until the mid-twenties.
Our ability to think clearly, and to actually use executive function skills, depends heavily on what we’re feeling and how intensely we’re feeling it. When a child becomes dysregulated, their prefrontal cortex effectively goes offline, and problem-solving becomes temporarily impossible. This is your child’s Guard Dog, the amygdala, taking over from their thinking brain. It is why reasoning with a child mid-meltdown rarely works. It genuinely is pointless to discuss or reason in that moment. Wait until everyone is calm instead. My free guide Understanding Your Child’s Guard Dog Brain explains this properly, and Holding in the Storm covers exactly what to say, and what not to say, in these moments.
Anxiety often complicates this picture further too, an anxious child’s executive functioning is already under extra strain before anything else happens. If anxiety is a regular feature in your house, Anxiety in Children: Recognising the Key Signs is worth reading alongside this one.
The three core areas of executive function
Working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control, which includes self-control, sit at the heart of executive functioning.
The six domains, in more depth
These three core areas break down further into six practical domains, drawing on the work of Marion Allen at Family Futures.
Inhibit is the ability to pause before acting, our internal “edit” button. Children who struggle here often shout out in class, or find unstructured time at school particularly hard. This is a common feature of ADHD.
Shift, or sequencing, is the ability to move smoothly from one thing to another. Children who struggle here often seem disorientated by a change in routine, particularly visible at bedtime, or heading out to school or nursery.
Emotional control is exactly what it sounds like, the capacity to regulate feelings. All children are developing this, but some find it much harder, with emotional states shifting quickly into anger, distress, or over-excitement.
Working memory is the ability to hold information in mind while completing a task, following a recipe while cooking, for example, without losing track partway through.
Planning and organising covers setting a goal and working through the steps to reach it. Many teenagers struggle here, not knowing where to start a task, or what they need to bring with them.
Self-reflection and monitoring is the ability to notice your own behaviour and its effect on others, and to check your own work. Children who struggle here often experience life through a lens of unfairness, genuinely unsure why their effort wasn’t recognised.
What’s normal at different ages
Every child’s brain develops at its own pace, so a three-year-old will simply have less regulatory capacity than a seven-year-old, and that’s exactly as it should be. As a rough guide, drawing again on Marion Allen’s work:
Every child’s brain develops at its own pace, so a three-year-old will simply have less regulatory capacity than a seven-year-old, and that’s exactly as it should be. As a rough guide, drawing on the work of Marion Allen at Family Futures: babies begin showing the very first signs of self-control, and early ways of calming themselves, somewhere between five and twelve months old, though this is only the beginning of a very long process. Between three and five, children start being able to hold and use language around their feelings, though it often takes until nine or twelve before that ability feels properly natural to them, rather than something they’re still reaching for. From around six onwards, children generally become more flexible and creative in how they think and respond, better able to adapt when plans change or something doesn’t go as expected.
Teenagers
Adolescence brings its own particular shift. Teenagers rely heavily on the emotional, limbic part of the brain, which makes decision-making more impulsive, quicker to anger, prone to bigger mood swings, and more inclined towards risk and sensation-seeking. This partly explains why teenagers can seem to act on gut instinct rather than clear reasoning. It genuinely is, in large part, “a brain thing.” That said, holding limits still matters alongside understanding. I go into this properly in Surviving the Teenage Transition, if you’re parenting a teenager right now, that’s worth reading alongside this one.
A note on neurodiversity
Many of these domains show up differently, and often more intensely, in neurodivergent children. Difficulties with inhibition, shifting between tasks, or working memory are frequently central to ADHD, while autistic children often experience real strengths alongside genuine struggles in specific domains, sometimes needing far more energy to manage transitions or unstructured time than a neurotypical child would. None of this reflects effort or character, it reflects how a particular brain is wired. If ADHD or autism is part of your family’s picture, my blogs What if Not All Attention Problems Are ADHD? and Does My Child Have ADHD? go into this further, and it’s worth knowing that masking, working hard all day to hold things together, particularly at school, is itself a significant drain on a neurodivergent child’s executive functioning capacity, which is often why the hardest moments show up once they’re safely home.
How you can help
Positive interactions in the early years genuinely shape how a child learns to regulate emotions and trust relationships, the brain adapts directly to what it experiences.
How you talk to your child matters enormously too. The goal is to talk with your child, not just at them, a real back-and-forth conversation, rather than simply delivering language. Interestingly, research suggests parents often do better talking less and listening more.
Keep your expectations developmentally appropriate rather than aspirational. A simple weekly planner helps enormously, particularly for anxious children and younger children whose working memory is still developing. Give instructions one at a time rather than stacking several together.
Resist the urge to solve every problem for your child. Instead, hand the thinking back to them with open questions: what do you need to do to finish this? How might you clear that up? Which of these two options would you rather choose? How could you and your sister sort that out between you? What would you need to wear if you don’t want to be cold outside?
Visual charts help enormously with sequencing and expectations, a simple morning routine chart, for example. For older children, post-it note reminders can work just as well.
Don’t forget sleep
Sleep matters enormously here too, arguably more than anything else on this list. A tired child has far less executive functioning capacity to draw on, everything on this page becomes harder when sleep is poor. If sleep is a struggle in your house, my blogs Why Won’t My Child Sleep? Understanding Insomnia and What Actually Helps and The Importance of Self-Soothing for Sleep are a good place to start, and my free guide When Darkness Comes was written specifically to help.
Take breaks seriously too. Self-regulation and executive functioning are genuinely limited resources, they deplete with sustained effort, homework, tests, a long school day, and need refuelling. Breaks of around ten minutes during demanding tasks make a real difference. This is exactly where self-soothing tools earn their place, a self-soothe box, or a few simple vagal tone exercises, can help your child recover that capacity more quickly. I cover both in Create a Self-Soothe Box to Enable Calm Down and 7 Five-Minute Vagal Tone Calm Down Exercises
And whatever your child’s age, individual play as dedicated special time offers real, lasting benefits for connection and regulation both.
A final thought
None of us are parenting under easy circumstances all the time. Letting go of the idea of the perfect parent matters, good enough really is enough.
When something goes wrong, try to look for the need underneath the behaviour rather than reaching straight for blame, yours or your child’s. Stay with the big feeling, yours and theirs, and validate it before problem-solving. Sometimes the right first move is simply to pause, regulate, and come back to the conversation once everyone is calm.
Interested in working with me?
If you would like more tailored support for your child or family, I offer one to one therapy for children and young people, therapeutic parenting support for parents, and training and consultation for professionals working with children and families. Please do get in touch if you would like to find out more.
You can reach me via my contact page.
Free resources
Understanding Your Child’s Guard Dog Brain explains what is happening in your child’s nervous system when big feelings take over.
Holding in the Storm is about staying steady as a parent in the hard moments.
When Darkness Comes includes specific support for sleep difficulties and anxiety at night.
All free to download.
Related reading
Is Your Child Emotionally Dysregulated?
Anxiety in Children: Recognising the Key Signs
Why Won’t My Child Sleep? Understanding Insomnia and What Actually Helps
The Importance of Self-Soothing for Sleep
Create a Self-Soothe Box to Enable Calm Down
7 Five-Minute Vagal Tone Calm Down Exercises
What if Not All Attention Problems Are ADHD?
Family Meetings for a Calmer Summer
References
Allen, M. Attachment, Developmental Trauma, and Executive Functioning Difficulties in the School Setting. Family Futures.
And if you would like occasional guidance and support straight to your inbox, you are very welcome to join my newsletter.
With warmth,
Catherine
