Intervention Strategies in ASD: Skills needed to be addressed in preventing school failure and absenteeism - Module 3

3.2. HELP TO REGULATE YOURSELF EMOTIONALLY

Self-regulation can be defined in various ways. In the most basic sense, it involves controlling one's behaviour, emotions, and thoughts in the pursuit of long-term goals. More specifically, emotional self-regulation refers to the ability to manage disruptive emotions and impulses. In other words, to think before acting. It also reflects the ability to cheer yourself up after disappointments and to act in a way consistent with your deepest held values.

Self-regulation involves taking a pause between a feeling and an action—taking the time to think things through, make a plan, wait patiently. Children often struggle with these behaviours, and adults may as well.

Self-regulation is also important in that it allows you to act in accordance with your deeply held values or social conscience and to express yourself appropriately. If you value academic achievement, it will allow you to study instead of slack off before a test. If you value helping others, it will allow you to help a co-worker with a project, even if you are on a tight deadline yourself.

• Create an emotional levels chart: create a visual aid that depicts the different levels of emotions that a child may feel, allowing the student to create their own labels for each level.
• Teach the students to assign emotional levels to certain situations.
• Talk about what appropriate reactions should be to different scenarios.
• Teach to coping strategies and be a model
• Mindfulness skills: encourages core mindfulness techniques—learning to accept life as it is in the moment. These skills use all the senses to pay attention to and participate fully in the present, are practiced non-judgmentally, and focus on what is necessary to be successful.
• Distress tolerance skills: recognize when urges to do ineffective things, such as to threaten suicide or self-harm or to act impulsively. It also focuses on skills necessary to cope with stressful situations, tolerate and survive crises, and consciously control problematic urges and re-frame thoughts.
• Interpersonal effectiveness skills: tools to assess need from a relationship; to establish and sustain healthy relationships; to maintain self-respect (e.g., being able to say, “No,” assertively); and to learn to cope with inevitable loss and interpersonal conflict.
• Walking the middle path skill: learns to see other sides of the story, how to negotiate and compromise, and how to validate others.