Regulation Before Education

Join us for the Parent Sense Lunch & Learn, our monthly webinar series for professionals, as Meg Faure hosts infant mental health clinician Kelli McDermot and occupational therapist Beryl Smith for a practical conversation about regulation in young children.

We often expect children to calm themselves down, follow instructions and manage big feelings long before their brains are ready to. But a child who is dysregulated can't learn, and can't behave in the way we hope, no matter how much they want to. Regulation comes before behaviour, and before learning.

This panel brings together infant mental health and occupational therapy perspectives from the US, Australia and South Africa. Together, they'll untangle what regulation, self-regulation and co-regulation actually mean, when it's fair to expect a child to self-regulate, and how to spot dysregulation before it shows up as behaviour, including in pre-verbal and non-verbal children.

They'll also step into the messy, real-world side of co-regulation: using play as a regulation tool, why trauma-informed practice is best practice for every child, and what repair looks like when an adult loses it in the moment. Because getting it wrong is recoverable.

Whether you're a clinician, teacher, early childhood practitioner or support worker, you'll leave with a clearer framework for reading a child's state and practical ways to respond.