How do children describe learning self-regulation skills in the Kids’ Skills intervention?

In this chapter, 26 Finnish children between 4 and 14 years old described how they learned self-regulation skills after participating in the Kids’ Skills programme in an early childhood education (ECE) setting. Kids’ Skills is a programme aimed at developing children's self-regulation skills in a solution-focused and narrative way (Furman, 2016). The participating children were diagnosed as having difficulties in their self-regulation. Following the Kids’ Skills intervention, the children described their learning in the form of narratives and drawings. The data were analysed using thematic content analysis framed by Hicks’ (1996) sociocultural model. The findings show how the children described how learning self-regulation skills created new opportunities to have playmates. The children described learning as regulating their behaviour so that their previous challenging behaviour could turn into a strength, such as their bullying behaviour turning into friendship. In addition, the children described a change in their group membership when they were accepted to participate in joint action, and they learned to express themselves more courageously. The results indicate that learning self-regulation skills is relevant to the child, and interventions to promote the child’s self-regulation skills are recommended.