Co-Regulation: Helping Foster Children Manage Big Emotions

Children are born with the same emotions as adults, but without the understanding of what they are and how to process them. They learn how to manage these emotions through the safety and comfort of their caregivers. As they get older, they internalise these moments and learn how to regulate themselves.

Many children and young people in care have missed out on this stage of development, making it more difficult for them to cope with emotions and express them in healthy ways. As a foster parent, co-regulation is a powerful way to help children in your care learn new ways of coping with big feelings that can feel intense and overwhelming.

Join us as we explore what co-regulation means, how it works, how it supports young people in care and strategies to help you get started.

What is co-regulation?

Co-regulation means offering your calm and steady presence to help your young person through big emotions and regulate their nervous system. It’s about being attuned to their thoughts and feelings, then using your body language, tone of voice, and gentle touch to comfort and soothe them.

By consistently doing this over time, they’ll learn how to regulate themselves. This is called self-regulation.

Co-regulation vs self-regulation

Self-regulation is an important skill that many of us use without even realising it. It’s our ability to manage and control our responses in everyday situations.

However, everyone has a limit. For example, there have probably been times when things have been going well, but then you suddenly face stress after stress, piling on top of each other until you feel completely overwhelmed.

You may then find yourself snapping at your nearest and dearest or getting more frustrated than usual in a traffic jam. Psychiatrist, Dr Dan Siegel, describes this as ‘flipping your lid’.

What does flipping your lid mean?

Flipping your lid means that the part of your brain that’s responsible for thinking clearly and making rational decisions (the prefrontal cortex) goes ‘offline’, and your emotional brain (the limbic system) takes over. This makes it difficult for you to think clearly, which is why you may say or do things that are out of character.

As an adult, when you’ve flipped your lid, you may instinctively turn to something you know will help make you feel better, whether it’s a walk in the park, the warm embrace of a friend, or chatting with a loved one. This happens because your prefrontal cortex is fully developed, and you’ve learned how to self-regulate.

A child’s brain, on the other hand, is more strongly driven by their limbic system because their prefrontal cortex is still developing. In fact, it won’t fully mature until around the age of 25. This means they need your help to regulate their emotions and understand the consequences of their actions. Over time, they’ll internalise the strategies used during co-regulation and begin regulating themselves.

How co-regulating supports young people in care

Many young people in care have experienced difficult relationships with the adults they trusted most. Whether due to abuse, neglect, or other adverse childhood experiences, many develop trauma as a result that impacts the way they see the world, themselves, and those around them.

The Secure Base Model teaches us that a child’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are shaped by the responses of their caregivers. If, in the past, a child expressed their emotions and was met with anger, frustration or silence, they may have had no choice but to adapt the way they manage their feelings.

Trauma also physically affects the developing brain. When a young person has lived in an unsafe environment, their brain adapts to help them survive. This can leave them in a constant state of fight-or-flight, easily triggered by their environment, people, or sensory inputs.

As a foster parent, co-regulation can help your young person learn to trust again, form healthy connections, and cope with emotions that feel intense. It can also support them in building resilience, understanding their triggers, and returning to a sense of calm when their fight-or-flight response is activated.

How does co-regulating emotions work?

There have probably been times when you’ve been around someone who’s dysregulated. They might be stressed, anxious or upset about a situation, and you find yourself feeling the same way too, especially if you have a lot going on yourself. But if you remain calm, perhaps offering them a cup of tea, a listening ear, or a hug, they start to feel better, and so do you.

In this moment, you are co-regulating your friend or family member by offering your calming presence and reassurance. This helps bring the prefrontal cortex back online and regulates their nervous system, allowing them to think clearly again.

Turning co-regulation into self-regulation

It works in the same way for young people in your care. If they’re upset about something that seems trivial but feels big to them, responding with an eyeroll, minimising their feelings, or telling them off for behaving that way is unlikely to help. Even if they then seem calmer in the moment, they haven’t learned how to self-regulate and may feel unsafe to communicate their feelings in future.

This not only affects your bond, but also when they reach adulthood, they could face relational difficulties or turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as alcohol, to manage strong emotions.

However, when you respond with compassion, using a gentle tone to validate their emotions, sitting close by, and encouraging them to take deep breaths, you help regulate their nervous system and bring them back to the present.

If you do this consistently, they’ll start to internalise the strategies you used to help them feel better, gradually learning how to regulate themselves on their own.

Co-regulation strategies for foster parents

Let’s look at how to apply co-regulation when your young person is experiencing an emotional storm:

Regulate yourself first

When you co-regulate with a young person, you lend your emotional state to them. If you’re feeling frustrated, tense, and a bit irritable, they’ll pick up on this through your tone, body language, and even your breath and heart rate.

So make sure you check in with how you feel before attempting to co-regulate. Pause, take a few deep breaths, and ground yourself, so you feel more in control of your own thoughts and emotions.

Create a sense of safety

When your young person is triggered, their body and mind are reacting to a perceived threat. Part of co-regulating is helping them feel safe again.

Here are a few ways you can create a sense of safety:

Use a soft tone and reassure them by saying something like ‘I’m here, and you’re safe’
Ask them if they need a bit of space or comfort.
Avoid any sudden movements.
Give them choices, such as ‘Are you okay here, or would you prefer to sit down?’
Offer them a comforting item, such as a weighted blanket or a warm drink.

Validate their feelings

When someone is experiencing intense emotion or fear, the worst thing you can do is say something like, ‘Calm down, it’s not that bad.’ Firstly, this doesn’t actually help anyone calm down. Secondly, it invalidates feelings that are very real for them.

Take someone who has arachnophobia, for example. If they find a big spider in the bath and are overcome with intense fear, telling them ‘The spider won’t hurt you’ won’t suddenly switch off their fear response. Instead, they might become defensive or more distressed about the situation.

Validating your young person’s emotions helps you stay connected with them in the moment so they feel less alone. It also shows them that you’re trying to understand what they’re going through. In these moments, validation can be as simple as saying, ‘Your feelings make sense.’

This approach can help them feel heard and make it easier for them to open up about what’s causing their response.

Help them tune into their body

We all have a physiological response to our emotions, from our heart racing and muscles tensing up to headaches and tears. When we’re aware of how our emotions affect the different areas of our bodies, we can take steps to self-regulate before things get too much, and we ‘flip our lid’.

That’s why part of co-regulation is helping your young person tune into the physical sensations that emerge when they’re feeling overwhelmed and dysregulated.

For example, you might say, ‘Place your hand on your chest and notice your heartbeat, is it beating fast or steadily?’ Focusing on these sensations can also help ground them, as it shifts their attention from their emotions to a specific part of their body.

Redirect their attention

Sometimes the best thing you can do to help a young person in an emotionally charged situation is to redirect their attention to something else. This can help settle their nervous system, reduce the intensity of the moment, and bring their prefrontal cortex back online. It also teaches them self-regulating strategies that they can eventually use on their own as they grow.

You could try the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique, encouraging your young person to use their senses to name five things they can see, four things they can feel, three things they can hear, two things they can smell, and one thing they can taste.

Alternatively, you could listen to a soothing song together, paint a picture of something in the room, or bake a simple recipe. Anything that will shift your young person’s focus from their internal world to the physical world around them, bringing them back into the room.

Remember: we’re here to support you

As a therapeutic fostering agency, at ISP we understand the challenges young people in care face.

That’s why, as part of our support for children in foster care, every child is assessed by one of our in-house therapists, before creating a therapy programme tailored to them. For example, if your young person is really struggling to manage their emotions, even when you support them through co-regulation, they may receive cognitive behavioural therapy.

We also support children by ensuring you have the knowledge and skills to meet their emotional needs. Regardless of the type of fostering you provide, you’ll enrol on our City & Guilds Therapeutic Pathway Programme, which will prepare you for every stage of your fostering journey.

From support groups and activities for the whole family to our 24/7 helpline and regular supervision, we’re by your side, supporting you as you help children heal from their trauma and work towards a brighter future.

Ready to help a child heal?

If you’re ready to help a child heal from their trauma by becoming a foster parent, we’d love to hear from you. Call us on 0800 0857 989 or submit an enquiry form, and one of our fostering advisors will contact you.

If you’d like to learn more about trauma, including its impact on a young person’s emotions, relationships, behaviour and their developing brain, check out the full resources in our knowledge hub.

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