Does your child get distracted easily and need to be repeatedly reminded to complete a simple task?
Emotional regulation is one component of executive functioning, which also includes behavioural management skills such as planning, attention, and flexibility. These are the skills that you need to manage your own behaviour.
Emotional regulation is an ability to understand and feel emotional state and to adapt behaviour when engaged in situations that might provoke emotions such as stress, anxiety, and frustration.
This is an issue for children with ASD who can have larger emotional reactions to stimuli and presents with strong negative feeling.
Parents can help children with ASD manage their emotional sensitivity. It’s vital to explain that a strong reaction is a feeling and that feelings will pass.
An Occupational Therapist can help children with ASD to develop skills to initiate self-calming behaviour. Children with ASD can actively develop emotional self-regulation using strategies to manage sensory stimulation to reduce the negative emotional reaction.
It is important to remember that children with ASD can experience anxiety when they face unexpected or upsetting situation, it can be at school or home. Hence it important to help them to minimise the level of anxiety by using right strategies.