Children develop foundational
skills for self-regulation in the
first five years of life (Blair 2002;
Galinsky 2010), which means
early childhood teachers play an
important role in helping young children regulate thinking
and behavior. Fortunately, teaching self-regulation does
not require a separate curriculum. The most powerful way
teachers can help children learn self-regulation is by modeling
and scaffolding it during ordinary activities. In this
article I define self-regulation and discuss how it develops.
I then describe an interaction I observed in a kindergarten
classroom and explain how the teacher used an everyday
experience to strengthen children’s self-regulation.