The Basics Of Emotional Control

Before we talk about the basics of emotional control, let’s begin with a story:

Sam is a sixteen-year-old student with autism and ADHD who struggles with homework tasks. Sam likes
drawing complex sketches of buildings and wants to be an architect someday. However, her smartphone
sometimes gets in the way after school, and she regularly procrastinates with projects and assignments
late into the evening. Her parents must ask her repeatedly to get started on her homework, each time
more and more insistent. Sam thinks her parents are constantly nagging at her, so she spends as much
time in her room as she can.

On a typical Tuesday evening, it’s around 10 pm when Sam finally gets around to doing homework. She’s
tired and rushes through the project so she can go to sleep. The next day Sam turns in her assignment.
Her teacher can see that Sam didn’t do her best work, so while her friends get time to talk and text at the
end of class, Sam has to keep working.

Frustrated and angry, Sam yells at her teacher. “You’re just another person out to get me!” storms out of
the classroom, bumping another student hard into the wall on her way out the door. As Sam storms
down the hallway, she knows her teacher is already calling the principal…

The example above showcases a breakdown in emotional control. Sam’s response to her teacher’s
feedback and not getting to relax at the end of class happens in thousands of homes and classrooms
every day. As students like Sam grow into adulthood, the negative consequences for challenges in
emotional control only increase.

As a parent, educator, or coach, what we know about emotional control can be a game-changer in
promoting success and achievement in students like Sam.

What Is Emotional Control?

Sometimes known as emotional regulation, emotional control describes how we manage and respond
to emotional experiences in the environment.

We know that teens and young adults experience both positive emotions (excitement, joy, happiness,
pride, etc.) and negative emotions (disappointment, sadness, guilt, frustration, overwhelm, etc.).
Experiencing emotions can include thoughts and different sensations in the body.

Teaching our children to respond to positive and negative emotions is the essence of emotional control.
Examples Of Emotional Control
Teens and young adults can rely on healthy and unhealthy behaviors to respond to stress and
challenging situations. Even though your teen might be controlling emotions outwardly, they may be
using unhealthy strategies to cope. Here are some examples of how we regulate our emotions
successfully:

 Using conversations or statements to express emotions and actions.

 Using perspective-taking to see another’s point of view.
 Talking or writing about past events and reflecting on how to manage
emotions in the future.
 Talking to a trusted friend about challenges and concerns.
 Noticing and asking when it’s necessary to take a break.
Here are some ways teens and adults fail to respond to emotional situations successfully and instead
choose behaviors likely to cause additional harm:

 Avoiding work or school activities.

 Excessive social media use.
 Procrastinating on other responsibilities.
 Physical or verbal aggression.
 Self-injury or self-harm.
 Abusing food, alcohol, or other substances.

Emotional Control And Challenging Behavior

While the behaviors above might happen after a stressful event, individuals with unique learning needs
may also have heightened responses at the moment. Ask yourself if any of these challenging behaviors
related to emotional control describe your child:

 Does your child have frequent outbursts?

 Get in trouble at school for blurting, hyperactivity, or out-of-seat behavior
when excited?
 Over-reactions or violent/aggressive behavior when upset?
 Does your child struggle to bounce back after a set-back?
 Engage in high rates of negative thoughts?
All of these may contribute to a need for increased development of emotional control. By
improving emotional control skills, your child can begin to use strategies other than challenging behavior
to respond to emotions. While in some ways, it is developmentally appropriate for children and teens to
rely on adult support for emotional control. However, developing greater emotional control allows
children to recognize emotions as physical sensations in the body, rather than being controlled by them
or act upon them.

Emotional Control & Executive Functioning Skills

Improving your teen’s emotional control may ultimately mean targeting other executive
functioning skills. For learners like Sam in our introduction, emotional outbursts and challenging
behaviors may be related to skill deficits in planning and organization. If we address the root issues
related to these other skill areas, challenging behaviors decrease.

For other learners, teaching skills in time management, organization, and task initiation may be more
difficult without addressing emotional control first. Learners who don’t have strong skills to respond to
frustration and failure may need to work on those strategies first. For these learners, focus first on
keeping emotions in check and ultimately learning other executive functioning skills becomes more
manageable.

How To Evaluate Your Child’s Emotional Control

Decide from reading the information above that you need to take a closer look at your child’s emotional
control skills? Want to know how to take steps forward? Here are three ideas for how you can proceed
ahead with learning more about emotional control. Start here and then check back for the other articles
in our Executive Functioning 101 series on emotional control.