How to Help an Emotionally Dysregulated Child: What I Learned as an Elementary Teacher
The pencil snapped halfway through Leo’s third division problem, the lead skittering across his worksheet in a thick gray smudge. He slammed the pencil down on his desk hard enough that his neighbor’s crayon box toppled off, and before I could cross the room, he’d crumpled the worksheet into a ball and hurled it at the trash can. It hit the edge, bounced across the reading rug, and Leo leaned back in his chair, jaw clenched, eyes shiny, breathing so loud I could hear him across the room.
I’ve been teaching third grade for 12 years, and for the first 8 of those, I would’ve walked over right then and started with the same lines I’d always used. “It’s just a pencil, Leo. Let’s take a breath and start over. We don’t throw things in this room.” It never worked. He’d clamp his mouth shut, shake his head, and refuse to talk for 20 minutes, sometimes longer, until I sent him down to the office to cool off. By the time he came back, math block was over, he’d missed the lesson, and he was still just as wound up as when he left.
That morning, I’d stayed late after a parent meeting the night before, flipping through a booklet of behavior strategies our school counselor left out, and I figured I had nothing to lose. I walked over, picked up the crumpled worksheet, smoothed it out on the corner of his desk, and pulled the extra chair we keep for reading partners next to him. I didn’t say anything about throwing things, I didn’t ask him to calm down. I just said, “That really stinks, didn’t it? Three broken pencils in one morning is so frustrating.”
He blinked at me, like no one had ever said that to him in the middle of an outburst, and then the tears spilled over. He told me his mom had left for a work trip at 5 a.m. that day, so he’d ridden the bus with a neighbor and forgotten his favorite hoodie at home, and he couldn’t get division to make sense no matter how hard he tried, and the broken pencil was just the last thing. The whole time I just sat there, nodded, and said “mmhmm” once in a while. I didn’t fix any of it. I didn’t tell him division would get easier, I didn’t call his mom to bring the hoodie, not right then. I just let him say it all.
After a couple minutes, he wiped his face on his sleeve and said he wanted a new pencil to try again. That was the first time he’d recovered from an outburst in under five minutes all year. That’s when I started changing the small things in my classroom that make a big difference for kids like Leo. I moved the calm down bin from the corner by the closet, where it felt like a timeout spot, to a small nook right by my desk, where any kid can get to it without walking past every other student’s desk. I stocked it with a weighted lap pad, three textured stones to squeeze, a cold water bottle that lives in the classroom fridge, a pack of sour candy, and a piece of cardstock with five big circles to trace with your finger while you breathe. I always offer a choice: do you want to sit here alone for five minutes, or do you want me to sit with you while you breathe? Giving a small choice brings back a little bit of control, which is almost always what’s missing when a kid melts down.
I’ve given this same advice to dozens of parents over the last few years, including my sister, who has a 7-year-old son who melts down multiple times a week over things like wrong cereal or socks that feel itchy. She used to send him to his room every time, telling him he could come out when he was calm. That just led to him screaming through the door for 20 minutes, slamming his toys. Now she sits down on the living room floor next to him when he starts to lose it, names the feeling out loud first (“You’re really mad that the socks feel scratchy, that’s the worst”) and then asks if he wants to try a different pair or go get a glass of lemonade to cool off first. She told me last week that their outbursts are half as long as they used to be, and half the time he stops crying right after she says how he feels. Most kids don’t need you to fix the problem right away. They just need someone to see that the problem feels big to them.
A couple weeks after that broken pencil incident, Leo forgot his lunch, and the cafeteria ran out of the peanut butter sandwiches he will actually eat. I watched his face turn red, his fists clench at his sides, and then he looked over at me. I just nodded toward the calm down nook. He walked over, spent six minutes there tracing the circles, and then walked back to me and said “I’m okay with a cheese sandwich now, I think.” That’s the kind of progress no lesson plan can teach.
Leo still has outbursts sometimes. Last month, he kicked the soccer fence after his team lost the class recess tournament, and he wouldn’t talk to anyone for 10 minutes. Some days, we still lose 10 minutes of math to a small thing that pushes him over the edge. I don’t think he’ll leave third grade never getting upset again, and that’s not the goal. The goal isn’t to make kids stop feeling big feelings. It’s to teach them that big feelings don’t have to break anything, that someone will sit with them while they feel them, and that they can get through it and come back. It’s not fancy, it doesn’t happen overnight. Most days it just looks like sitting next to a kid who’s upset, and saying you get it, instead of telling him to hurry up and be fine.
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