2e Self Regulation

REEL's community consistently voted self-regulation as a top topic of interest. Self-regulation was a complex concept that was often referred to in discussions about how to manage emotions, behaviors, and reactions to various stimuli that could lead to a stress response. 2E children’s (and 2E adults’!) experience of self-regulation was often more complex and unique compared to their neurotypical peers.

Attendees joined Teresa Nair, REEL's Parent Community Program Manager and expert, at this lunchtime event to explore:

- What is Self-Regulation?

- A 3-Step Pathway to Better Regulation Management

- The Role of Co-Regulation

- Examples and Scenarios

Transcript below

Yael Valek: Welcome, everyone, to REEL Self-Regulation Lunchtime Chat with Teresa Nair. We do have a Spanish translation going in another channel, so you can access that at the bottom of your Zoom screen. And Callie will write that in Spanish in the chat.

So, in case you're not familiar with REEL, we are a local nonprofit in Silicon Valley trying to help twice-exceptional students thrive in school by raising parent awareness through events such as this, and educator awareness as well, to address the needs of 2E learners successfully.

So what is 2E? This is a definition that we often use from Bridges, which is students that have both distinguishing strengths, high abilities, or potential in one or more areas, and complex challenges such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, and others at the same time. And it's critical to address both the strengths and the challenges simultaneously—not only the yellow or the blue, but the green. And so it makes these students complex to address their needs in the classroom, and that's why REEL exists.

REEL provides parent services, almost all of them are free, such as the Expert Speaker Series like you're attending today, a bi-monthly online parent support group, a Google group with hundreds of parents that ask and answer each other's questions and share resources. A lot of online resources, such as our IEP guide, a schools list and school guidance, and parent toolkits that I'll show you in one moment. We also have small paid facilitated groups run by Teresa, and we do one-on-one consultations on a variety of topics as well, if you need to dive more in depth.

The parent toolkits are something relatively new on our site. You can download a kit on any subject. These are all free. Do you need to know how to speak to your school more? Do you need to know how to lean into your child's strengths? We have toolkits on about 10 different topics. The material covered in this guide is applicable everywhere. REEL a

We also have an IEP guide, which is 46 pages, with every information you could want to know about getting an IEP for twice-exceptional learners. This is the California Bay Area edition, but we say 90–95% of tlso provides custom professional development resources and talks and an educator newsletter. You can bring REEL to your school to do a learning difference simulation, or to discuss our Educator Dear REEL model, how developing connection, embracing flexibility, attending to strengths, and reframing behaviors can help 2E and neurodivergent learners.

Just so you know, most of these events have passed and are now recordings on our YouTube channel, but you can still sign up for our Behind the Mask: Understanding Anxiety, Perfectionism, and Masking in 2E Kids on November 12th, and our November 6th Parent Support Group on our site.

You can join REEL on our Google group, you can follow us on a variety of socials, and watch all our past events on our YouTube channel.

And without further ado, I will stop sharing and introduce Teresa. Callie, if you want to… I don't know if you want to pin Teresa?

Teresa Nyer: Thanks, Yael! It's a pleasure to be here. I'm excited to have this opportunity also. So I'm going to put my slides up real quick. Give me a thumbs up if you can see my slide deck. Perfect.

Welcome! I'm excited to be here today to talk about self-regulation through the twice-exceptional lens. What I think is important to note, just from the get-go, it's a complex idea with a lot of different layers, and then you add our twice-exceptional kids on top of it, and even more so. So, let's take this time to share some thoughts together, introduce some concepts, and hopefully get a little bit more of an understanding of self-regulation through the twice-exceptional lens.

So, once again, my name is Teresa Nyer. I am the REAL Parent Community Services and Program Manager, and mother, teacher, neurodivergent myself, and I joke that I'm a 2E wannabe, because, you know, back in the 80s and 90s, we didn't have that really cool term, but I'd take it. And so, as I think my kids' journey has led me to believe, twice exceptionality—that's something I'd like to be. So, I joke that I'm a 2E wannabe.

So, what is today about? Well, first, let's welcome everybody. Thank you for taking this time in your afternoon to be with us. It's really exciting to see how much interest we have. So what I'm going to do is just go over why this topic matters. We'll go into a little bit about what is self-regulation, touch on what I call the three-step pathway, and then the importance of co-regulation. So, that one is going to be a big one. Real-life scenarios, and then a short Q&A.

So, if you do have questions or something comes up during the chat, feel free—or during the talk—feel free to put it in the chat. I've got both Kelly and Yael from my team keeping their eyes on that. They'll be putting links in there too, so keep the chat busy. Tell me who you guys are, what you're interested in knowing, hearing, or understanding a little bit more about.

So, as we go further, keep in mind this is about compassion, curiosity, and community. One of the biggest things that I love about REAL is our community. So, thank you for being a part of that today, and hopefully, thank you for continuing to be a part of that as we go forward on this exciting journey.

So why does self-regulation matter in a twice-exceptional lens? First and foremost, it's a topic that many of you want to know more about. When we do our community surveys and we ask, “What topics are you interested in? What do you want to know more about?”—literally 75% of the people who take the survey want to know more about self-regulation. They want some more insight and understanding. That's a really big number for our community. But it's happened year after year. So that's why we always try and make space and room for these conversations about self-regulation, the concepts and ideas behind it.

Recently, we did a four-part facilitated small group discussion. That's where a lot of this material will come from. I had a group of eight parents and caregivers, and we spent four weeks together walking through ideas such as self-regulation. Other topics are executive functioning—we have another motivation group coming up. So some of these ideas that you're going to see in here are topics and experiences that parents and I have shared through these discussions, and also many years of working with kiddos.

Why self-regulation and twice exceptionality? Well, many twice-exceptional kids and parents feel deeply, right? This is just something that we see, and that can lead to—whether it is deeply felt emotions around excitement, or frustration, or injustice, or curiosity—here they are, diving in and really putting a lot of energy towards this experience. Experience of frustration, experience of injustice, experience of curiosity. Our kids come at it with an intensity. That intensity is part of their gift.

So without these regulation tools, it can lead to misdirection of where they're putting that energy. Instead of in their dance routine, instead of in their chemical equations or programming languages, they're misdirected, and they're putting way too much energy into their frustration, or way too much energy towards this injustice instead of solving the injustice.

So we're gonna learn some tools so that we don't run into exhaustion, shutdown, and misunderstandings—because this intensity is magnificent. So let's make sure that we can help with the right regulation tools to show up as the child that they want to be, that we know that they can be.

Another good thing I want you guys to keep in mind is you're already doing self-regulation, right? So this is just a way of—how can we be more intentional about applying it to our kids? Because, like Dr. Ross Greene says, “Kids do well if they can.” So what can we do to support that, so that they can do well?

So, another good thing I want you to keep in mind is that the brain is developing—and with that, so are the skills. I use this analogy quite a bit: it’s the idea that there is always a lion in the room with our children. So if we take the idea of a dyslexic, twice-exceptional student, they may be delightfully involved in the discussion about characters and loving the idea of talking about who’s doing what and why. The classroom is very exciting for them because they’re having this great discussion. Their vocabulary is off the charts as they dive into these concepts verbally and just really enjoy it.

But in the back of their mind, there is a lion there. There is this anxiety, this tension of knowing that it’s possible, very soon, that what they can’t do well is going to jump out in the middle of their enjoyable time. They’re having this great time, but maybe they’re going to have to write about it. Maybe they’re going to have to be in a small group and read paragraphs out loud to each other. Or maybe they’re going to have to share their writing. So there are so many other things that can be interplaying at the exact same time—feeling this wonderful joy of this gifted brain, but then knowing that at any moment, they could be called on, which could bring shame and embarrassment and anxiety.

So with that becomes a challenge for regulating. How do we regulate those high highs?

What is self-regulation? In our group, we came at it from a lot of different ways. If you Google self-regulation, you’re going to get hundreds, if not thousands, of definitions. So what I did is I took some of the ones that I felt really helped us move toward a healthy framework for our twice-exceptional students. We can start with something like: self-regulation is the ability to understand behavior, and your reactions and your feelings, and things like that. That’s probably a familiar one from Raising Children Australia.

Then we have our go-tos, like Dr. Stuart Shanker and his Self-Reg framework. He describes self-regulation in a lot of different ways. He’s got books on it, he’s got workshops on it, he uses five domains. What’s nice about Dr. Stuart Shanker is I love the fact that he oftentimes will say the ability to self-regulate only begins in a child around the age of seven. Before that, they don’t even have the cognitive ability necessary to start the process of learning how to self-regulate. So at the age of seven is when you can start to expect maybe some self-regulation starting to come online cognitively.

Let’s pause there. Once again, come back and experience this through our twice-exceptional kids. David Yun recently put out some information on research that shows gifted children stay in the “sponge phase” of their synaptical exuberance in their brains sometimes two to three years longer than their neurotypical peers. So a gifted brain doesn’t even begin to prune the pathways to the prefrontal cortex—it’s all connected, sometimes for three to four years. ADHD brains are also lagging three to four years, possibly behind their neurotypical peers when it comes to a lot of this work.

Dr. Stuart Shanker starts with it. There are other organizations such as Autism Level Up, who also talk about self-regulation, but they don’t use that word. For them, they use it in the framework of energy regulation. So I kind of take all of this into consideration because we have information that comes to us—but does it really apply to us, and how can we make it apply? Because there will be this constant interplay between our children’s struggles and their strengths at the same time.

So what is that doing to the regulation, the dysregulation? How does our child show up as their best self? As Dr. Stuart Shanker says, he wants children to thrive, not just survive. So what does that mean for our twice-exceptional kiddos?

So, as I mentioned, we kind of put this into a way to streamline the complexity of it all. These are simple three steps—but they’re actually a little bit more complex. Hang in there with me, because what I want to do is say: let’s look at what happens when the world is both too easy and too challenging at the same time. How do we begin to even approach that?

Step one is going to be to identify indicators. I recommend that parents—even in my discussion group, we talk a lot about this—start with yourself. Use yourself, maybe, as the first experience of walking through this three-step pathway. Because indicators can be somewhat hidden. But if we’re listening to ourselves, if we’re paying attention, indicators start to show up.

Well, what’s an indicator? Indicators are when you start to notice that this behavior is trying to tell me something. There’s a misalignment between what’s going on and what the child is experiencing. It can be a misalignment in a lot of different ways. But acknowledging that behaviors are communication—what is being indicated during this particular time?

We see things starting to wobble the wrong way, let’s say. Common 2E indicators are often behavioral, emotional, or physical. Examples of that can be behavioral outbursts or irritability. Physical could be headaches, stomachaches—things that are indicating to us that we need to look a little bit deeper into starting to regulate.

A good example is an after-school meltdown. Before the meltdown happens, most likely there are some indicators that are stepping up into this purview. It might be that the child is irritable and snapping in the back, and all of a sudden, it just starts to go downhill quickly from there. What we’re going to want to do is look at this as data—not defiance. This is information. This is actually good information that’s going to help us as we take these steps to realize it’s not about defiance. We’re actually gathering information here so that we can start to help our child show up as the person they want to be. Where their energy is going is where they want to direct it. So: data, not defiance.

That brings us to the second step. First, we’re looking for indicators—whether it’s indicators in ourselves (“Gosh, my heart is pounding, what’s going on here?”). That’s the second step: curiosity. What’s going on here? And we want to shift it from right or wrong, good or bad, into curiosity. What’s happening?

There’s also another phrase that’s used: “Why now?” Like, what’s happening? Why now? Curiosity—not “That behavior is wrong,” or “I don’t want you to do that,” or “That’s not good.” It’s more like, hmm… we’ve got some data here. Why? What is going on that’s showing us indicators of stress, that’s showing us indicators of dysregulation?

That curiosity is going to be our second step. It’s going to take us a little bit further into the experience. This is where reflective questions come into play. Asking questions like “What’s happening?” or “Why now?” is just the start. But are these questions going to help us identify some of the triggers? We might need to do a little bit more detective work. So: when did this start?

Dr. Shanker has the five domains that I mentioned, and there’s a worksheet. We created a 20-some-page self-regulation document, and within there, there’s a link to the domains. I encourage that throughout this process, you involve your kids—because when they’re not dysregulated, when they’re in a state where they can have these conversations, you’re going to be able to get a lot from them.

Was it something that emotionally occurred? Cognitively? Is it that, once again, this is way too easy while it’s being way too challenging? Is there something physical? Are there fine motor issues going on when your child already struggles with that?

Keeping in mind, often as we ask these questions and we’re getting curious—not only knowing ourselves if we’re doing this reflection step, these three steps for ourselves—but also as we get to lean into supporting our children. Curiosity and asking questions.

So, examples of some of what might be the “why now” or “what’s happening” can be what we call hidden drivers. There could be hunger going on. This is actually not my child extremely upset about traffic—I don’t know, actually they’re hungry. Could we look at this and try the HALT tool? Can you ask: Is it Hunger? Is it Anger? Are they Lonely? Thirsty? Tired? So going through some of these questions, digging a little bit deeper, figuring out what’s going on and why now.

So that’s the second step. You’ve got indicators, and now you’re curious as to why now. Why are these showing up now?

Another thing that I like to talk about is that there are some common 2E triggers, and I’d be curious if you guys have some of your own. So go ahead and put in the chat—do you know that there are some common triggers in your child, in your home, for yourself even too?

So one of my kiddos is extremely sensitive to wind. Like, who knows, but for some reason, wind makes them very angry. So it’s one of those things that I’ll be like, “I see that this conversation is getting really tense, what’s going on?” Then I might notice we were sitting outside, and they’re cringing because the wind is blowing at them too hard.

Showers can be another really big moment of “something’s going on here.” Like, I don’t know that this is necessarily about the shower. Is this about the shower? Is it about the sounds, the water temperatures? Showers have a lot—there’s a lot going on with showers. So what’s happening? What are the indicators?

My child knows that shower time is coming up. All of a sudden, they’re starting to get irritable. It’s starting to escalate. Why? Is it the shower? What’s going on there?

Sounds can be another one. What’s happening? Well, there’s a lot of background noise, or they’re sitting next to grandpa who eats with his mouth open. That could also be something that just sends self-regulation out the window.

And frustration—when tasks are too easy and too difficult at the same time. I think we’ve seen our kids’ experiences. How do we help them through that? How do we help them show up in the best ways that we can?

Boredom can also be another one. Why now? Well, maybe because they’re bored, and we might need to look a little bit more into that.

So ask questions. Go through some of the hidden drivers that you know your child has, or start to be that detective—looking at what could be hidden here that I don’t know, that has thrown my child’s self-regulation abilities out the window. Hungry, angry, lonely, tired—those kinds of things.

And then we’ll go into the third step. So we have identified that there are indicators of stress, there are indicators of a misalignment of expectations or experiences for that situation or where the energy is being placed. Two, we got curious and we started to ask, “What’s happening?” And we come up with a couple different things like, “Okay, we know it’s X, Y, and Z—that’s what’s happening right now.”

Then we have our third step: let’s mitigate with the three R’s.

The pathway will take us to the idea of the first R: Reduce. Can we remove any unnecessary stressors? Is that a possibility—to reduce some of these triggers or some of the things that are causing the regulation and the energy to go in a direction that’s not as productive as our child wants it to be?

They might want to be building Legos, but all of a sudden, they’ve gotten extremely frustrated. Self-regulation has gone out the window. Is there anything that we can remove so that they can get back to creating their amazing creations?

So one of them is Remove—tags, noises, expectations. These things, once again, like I said, can get somewhat complicated, but they play a role. So if we simplify it by identifying, getting curious, and then working through mitigating it through reducing and removing…

Restructuring. Can we adapt the environment? Can we change different timing? Can we use different tools?

This is something—I had a conversation with some parents in our group. We were talking about… I think it was showers once again. One parent had a lot of dysregulation for their child around not wanting to get out of the shower. Another one had trouble getting into the shower. So even the same situation can mean different things.

But finding out—well, timing actually worked for one of our parents, because they made the shower earlier in the evening so that the transition was easier. Because they looked forward to bedtime, or they looked forward to being able to read after the shower. So for them, it was changing the timing, kind of getting curious as to how can we restructure this misalignment so that the energy gets put in a healthy way toward what our child’s hoping to accomplish.

So… Last one is a morning routine, but I want to think about it in the idea that this can be more complex. Let’s say you notice the indicators started right away—this was as soon as the kid got up. It was a challenge. You might be dealing with something more than shoes.

What’s happening behind the scenes could be something more than just where you place your backpack or slip-on shoes. School refusal can be part of this role. Social dynamics at school might be happening. So really, as things get more complex and as your child really starts to expand in those different five domains, asking questions, sitting with them, exploring when things are okay, and talking about what works, what didn’t.

“I noticed the other day it was a little bit smoother.” “Yeah, because I didn’t have P.E. I hate P.E.” “Blah blah blah. ”All of a sudden, you’re like—whoa, okay, detective work got me to P.E. What’s going on in P.E.?

Trying to understand that it might not be right in front of you, but with that curiosity, hopefully you can get a little bit further into, “Okay, now we know it’s a bit deeper. How do we start to reduce, restructure, and restore?”

Maybe they need a change in their schedule so that they have a study hall before P.E., because they’re already exhausted. They don’t want to go into a loud gym. Maybe they’re already shot before P.E. even starts. So strategizing once we know a little bit more.

You’re going to have to do this over and over again, but hopefully the framework will get you through even the complex times.

So, once again, we’re going to go through the three steps: Step 1 – Identify indicators. Step 2 – Get curious. Step 3 – Mitigate with the three R’s: Reduce, Remove, Restructure.

Now, I want to talk a little bit about co-regulation. This is a big one. Co-regulation is the idea that we are not just helping our children regulate—we are regulating with them. This means our own nervous system, our own tone, our own body language, our own energy is part of the equation.

If we’re dysregulated, it’s going to be very hard for our child to regulate. So we need to be mindful of how we show up. That doesn’t mean we have to be perfect. It means we need to be aware. Are we escalating the situation? Are we modeling calm? Are we providing a safe space for our child to land?

Sometimes co-regulation means just sitting quietly next to your child. Sometimes it means narrating what’s happening: “I see you’re really frustrated right now. I’m here with you.” Sometimes it means breathing together, or offering a sensory tool, or just being present.

This is especially important for our twice-exceptional kids, because they often feel misunderstood. They often feel like their reactions are “too much” or “wrong.” Co-regulation helps them feel seen, accepted, and supported.

So, as we wrap up, I want to remind you that this is a journey. Self-regulation is not a switch—it’s a skill that develops over time, with support, with practice, and with compassion. You’re already doing so much. These tools are here to help you do it with more intention, more clarity, and more connection.

Thank you for being here today, for showing up for your kids, and for being part of this community. We’ll move into Q&A now, so feel free to drop your questions in the chat.

💬 Q&A Highlights

Q: Criticism seems to be a major trigger for my child—even when it’s gentle or constructive. Any suggestions? Teresa: If criticism is a known dysregulator, ask: is it necessary? Do they already know and are working on it? If so, repeating it may just escalate things. Try restructuring: offer space to explore or self-correct. For example, I’ve given students answer packets so they could check their own work privately. That way, they weren’t receiving correction from me—they were building confidence through self-reflection. Also, if criticism must happen, follow it with restoration—humor, quiet, or space.

Q: When my child is in full meltdown mode, my presence seems to make it worse. How can I co-regulate when they just want me to leave? Teresa: If leaving works, honor that. But you might also try sitting quietly nearby—low to the ground, non-threatening, no eye contact. Just being present can signal safety. Co-regulation doesn’t always mean talking—it can mean simply staying close, showing you’re there, even when things are hard.

Q: My child knows all the self-regulation tools in theory but can’t use them in practice. How do we make it instinctual? Teresa: First, consider their age. They may not yet have the cognitive development to apply these tools. Gifted kids can recite strategies but still lack the executive function to use them. Scaffold the process: support them step-by-step until they can do it independently. Practice tools when they’re calm—not just in crisis. Ask them what they need when things go well, so you’re prepared when things don’t.

Q: My child shows gifted traits like perfectionism and fear of mistakes, but meltdowns only happen when they’re hungry. Is it hunger or deeper feelings? Teresa:It’s likely both. Hunger lowers their threshold for handling stress. The underlying perfectionism is still there—it just surfaces more easily when they’re depleted. Address both: meet physical needs and support emotional regulation. And yes, perfectionism deserves its own deep dive—it’s a big topic for 2E kids.