Have you ever seen a child sucking his thumb? Have you ever seen someone rock herself in a steady rhythm? Have you ever seen a boy biting his nails? Have you ever seen someone stroking their skin, holding their body, or moaning softly? Have you ever seen someone gorging on food? Have you ever seen a man nodding off from the heroin in his system? These people were soothing themselves, and there are many ways to do that. Some might call it self-medicating, and that probably is part of what's going on, but that's not all there is to it.

Self-soothing has been defined as using the body or an object to provide self-comforting stimulation, including sucking on a body part or an object, clasping hands together, or rocking.

That is in contrast to comfort seeking, which is trying to obtain relief or security from others through relationship ? drawing attention to one's feelings, initiating proximity or contact with another person, or by directly asking for what is wanted.

In young children rocking and thumb-sucking are frequent self-soothing behaviours. They help the child cope with stress. In young children, they are seen as rather normal, but in older children and adults they are signs that something has gone wrong.

Quite simply, the normal process got interrupted and remains unfinished. A pattern of self-soothing became stuck. So, when an older child begins to feel overwhelmed, they soothe in the habitual fashion. In such older children one may also observe impulse control deficits, which in later life show up in such behaviours as overeating, spending money recklessly, gambling, going into angry rages, having impulsive and unsafe sex, or using addictive substances.

Self-soothing is an adaptive behaviour which is most helpful. It can be traced back to some of the first actions observed in young babies. Indeed, it's been seen in children before they are even born.

According to a study reported in the in December of 1995, the ability to manage negative emotional events is an important developmental achievement.

The ability to maintain positive feelings in the face of emotional challenge is associated with the cognitive and social competence young children usually acquire by the time they enter school. Research into the function of executive centres of the brain indicates that early emotional self-regulation in pre-verbal infants likely leads to more involved cognitive self-regulation in children and adults.

That is, if a baby can learn to deal with the emotions flying around his or her room, that baby will likely grow into a person who can pay attention when needed, stay on task, and then disengage when needed in order to attend to something else.

If a baby is overwhelmed and cannot cope with the emotional tone of his or her environment, he or she may not develop the executive capacities needed later for the cognitive demands encountered when life becomes more complicated in school.

This is the connection researchers and clinicians increasingly suspect to such things as ADHD.

Given all this, infancy and the toddler years are extremely important and set up much that follows when a family's children enter school. Parents can teach children how to regulate emotions by showing positive emotions and by teaching children how to handle their negative emotional experiences. This instruction includes allowing a range of emotional expression and responding to children with acceptance and a largely measured and positive emotional tone.

It is emotional intensity that young children often don't understand, so they take their cues from how others are doing under those circumstances.

Thus, modelling emotional self-regulation is not just about communicating the idea of what is expected; it's about creating a context in which a child might feel safe and acquire some of the first and very basic skills of self-regulation. Very important.