Self-Regulation

Developmental Task of Early Childhood: Initiative vs. Guilt

The trust and autonomy that infants and toddlers worked on during previous developmental periods scaffold the desire of young children to take initiative or to intentionally pursue their own goals during early childhood (Erikson, 1982). Once children reach preschool age (3–6 years), they are capable of initiating activities and asserting control over their world through social interactions and play. Children may want to build a fort with the cushions from the living room couch or open a lemonade stand in the driveway or make a zoo with their stuffed animals and issue tickets to those who want to come. Or they may just want to get themselves ready for bed without any help.

According to Erikson, preschool children must resolve the task of initiative vs. guilt. By learning to plan and achieve goals while interacting with others, preschool children can master this task.  Initiative, a sense of ambition and responsibility, occurs when parents allow a child to explore within limits and then support the child’s choice. To promote initiative, caregivers should encourage children’s efforts and avoid being critical of messes or mistakes. Placing pictures of drawings on the refrigerator, purchasing mud pies for dinner, and enjoying towers of legos will facilitate the child’s sense of initiative. Through such activities and interactions, children will develop self-confidence and feel a sense of purpose. Those who are unsuccessful at this stage—with their initiative misfiring or stifled by over-controlling parents—may develop feelings of inadequacy and guilt.

Behavioral Self-Regulation

One of the places that the developmental task of initiative vs. guilt is negotiated involves preschoolers’ struggles to learn to control their behaviors and emotions. Behavioral self-regulation refers broadly to the self-control individuals use to channel their actions. Sometimes behaviors need to be modified so that they are socially appropriate (e.g., minding parents or following preschool rules), and sometimes so that they better meet an individual’s own goals (e.g., getting a fort built or joining a pretend game). Adaptive behavioral regulation involves staying in touch with your genuine goals while at the same time making intentional decisions about the actions you are going to show in service of those goals. In recent decades, a great deal of research has focused on children’s self-regulation (De la Fuente et al., 2022; Inzlicht et al., 2021; Kim et al., 2023; McClelland et al., 2015; Nigg, 2017; Ross & Ascetta, 2025).

In general, there are two kinds of behavioral self‐regulation:

1. “Do” regulation: The performance of actions that we don’t spontaneously want to do (“Put away your toys”), and
2. “Don’t” regulation: Stopping ourselves from doing something we really want to do (“Don’t eat that cookie!”).

During toddlerhood, we see the start of behavioral self-regulation. It is one of the central tasks of early childhood, but these processes take many years to fully develop (McClelland et al., 2015). Executive function refers to self-regulatory capacities, such as cognitive flexibility or the ability to inhibit a behavior, that enable constructive responses to reach specific goals or adapt to new situations. Executive function skills gradually emerge during early childhood and continue to develop throughout childhood and adolescence (Fombouchet et al., 2023). Like many cognitive changes, brain maturation, especially the prefrontal cortex, along with experience influence the development of executive function skills. Interpersonal interactions and relationships with parents and teachers are especially important (Koşkulu-Sancar et al., 2023). As executive function improves, children become less impulsive (Traverso, Viterbori, & Usai, 2015).

When do children start self-regulating and what affects how it develops?

Children start regulating their behaviors in infancy, beginning with physiological regulation and regularity in behavior patterns such as sleeping and eating. However, as infants move into toddlerhood, they are faced with the challenge of intentionally regulating their behavior as it relates to others in social situations. This type of self-regulation is typically not seen with any degree of consistency until a child’s second year. However, the capacity to self- regulate may develop earlier or later depending on:

1. Developmental progress in other areas, such as language, cognition, and working memory, which help children construct a second track besides impulse, that they can use to remind themselves of alternative behaviors, like adult demands or socially acceptable behavior.
2. The child’s temperament, both reactivity and effortful control.
3. The quality of parent-child interactions.
4. The quality of the general home and/or preschool (daycare) environment.

To develop self-regulation and executive functions skills, young children need support at home (Hanlin & Zhou, 2024) and at preschool (Sankalaite et al., 2021). For example, children show higher executive function skills when parents provide cognitively stimulating environments, are warm and responsive, and use scaffolding when the child is trying to problem solve (Fay-Stammbach, Hawes & Meredith, 2014). It may be helpful to think of self-regulation as a “muscle” that needs exercise to become stronger (Muraven, & Baumeister, 2000). To develop their capacity for self-regulation, children need consistent developmentally appropriate demands and opportunities to practice regulating their behavior, along with scaffolding and support as they become more skillful.

Why is self-regulation important? 

Healthy behavioral self-regulation (compared to having difficulty regulating one’s behavior) is associated with many positive outcomes for children (Robson et al., 2020; Spiegel et al., 2021; Stucke & Doebel, 2024), including:

1. More success in the transition to school and better academic achievement once they start school.
2. Higher levels of social competence, as seen in greater success developing school-based peer relationships.
3. Fewer problems with externalizing behaviors such as anger and impulsivity.
4. Higher levels of prosocial behaviors as children move from infancy into toddlerhood and early childhood, and increases in prosocial behavior throughout childhood.

How do we study it?

One assessment of self-regulatory ability involves delay of gratification, measured using the now classic “Marshmallow Test” (Mischel, Ebbesen, & Zeiss, 1972) in which children are confronted with the choice of a small immediate reward (a single marshmallow) versus a larger delayed reward (several marshmallows) they must wait for. Walter Mischel and his colleagues over the years have found that the ability to delay gratification at the age of four predicted multiple long-term outcomes, such as better academic performance and healthier behavior later in life (Mischel, et al., 2011).

The developmental trajectory for self-regulation can also be investigated by directly observing the nature and frequency of children’s compliant behaviors. Compliance, simply stated, is a child’s cooperation or “going along with” the rules and standards of behavior for their immediate environment (e.g., home or school).

Internalization: How do self-regulation and compliance develop?

As a child’s ability to self-regulate develops, so does the nature of compliant behavior. Let’s use getting ready to eat a meal as an example:

1. When self-regulated behavior is beginning to emerge, compliant behavior requires a high degree of caregiver support: A very young child will need assistance with hand washing, putting on a bib, and getting seated
2. Compliance needs less support as self-regulation continues to develop. A child of two may be able to perform these tasks with less or no assistance, but will likely require a reminder and perhaps direct supervision to do them.
3. Compliance needs very little direct support as children develop more and more self-regulatory skills.
4. Self-regulatory competence: An older child will be able to get ready for a meal without prompting or assistance.

In other words, as a child develops the ability to self-regulate, the nature of compliance shifts from assisted, externally motivated behavior to independent, internally motivated behavior. The development of independent, internally motivated compliance is referred to as “internalization” and represents a child’s understanding and acceptance of, and willingness to behave in accordance with, the rules and standards of their environment.

Self-regulation, Poverty, and Prevention Programs

Because of its centrality to so many aspects of functioning (Robson et al., 2020), both early childhood education curricula and intervention programs have been designed to help children develop healthy self-regulation (Bockmann & Yu, 2023;  Kim et al., 2023; Pandley et al., 2018). These programs have especially targeted children from low income families or those living poverty, because in the US low socioeconomic status entails a set of risk factors for the healthy development self-regulation (Attanasio et al., 2023; Evans & Kim, 2013; Johnson et al., 2021; Mousavi & Gharibzadeh, 2022; Palacios-Barrios & Hanson, 2019).

A recent review of 20 years of research on preschool interventions aimed at improving young children’s self-regulation and executive function (Muir et al., 2023) examined 85 studies and came to two conclusions. First, some intervention approaches had more consistent and robust evidence of efficacy; these included mediated play, physical activity (Liang et al., 2021), and mindfulness (Bockmann & Yu, 2023). Second, across all approaches, certain program  “ingredients” were present in the more efficacious interventions; these included cognitive challenge, physical movement, and consistent attendance.

Emotional Self-Regulation

Emotion regulation refers to an individual’s ability to recognize and name how they are feeling, and to express their emotions constructively. Adaptive emotion regulation involves staying in touch with how you are genuinely feeling while at the same time making intentional decisions about how you are going to express those feelings (Crowell, 2021). Three- and four-year-olds learn new ways of expressing their feelings verbally.

They also learn how to cope with negative emotions in ways that make them feel better—they put their heads down to reduce sensory input that may be overwhelming or unpleasant, they talk out loud to reassure themselves that things will be okay, and they recalibrate their goals or desires to match the options that are available to them, rather than continuing to pursue something they cannot have (Thompson & Goodvin, 2007). These strategies, and others, reduce the frequency and severity of tantrums, feelings of loneliness, and other unpleasant emotional responses. They can also help children remain calm when they are very excited or happy.

The same cognitive processes related to self-control and executive function (response initiation, response inhibition, delay of gratification, effortful control, and cognitive flexibility) are responsible for regulating children’s emotions (Gagne et al., 2021). However, emotions are “hot,” meaning that they are full of energy and desire, and so they require more effort and skill to guide and channel. Hence, developmentally, the regulation of emotion lags the regulation of behavior (Fernández García et al., 2021; Zelazo et al., 2024).

Caretakers can help facilitate adaptive regulation by using goal-focused language (e.g., want, need, don’t like) in everyday conversations, by validating children’s goals and preferences as real and important, by explaining prosocial strategies that allow everyone in a given situation to have their goals and preferences taken into consideration (e.g. by taking turns or sharing), and by being patient. Compared with children with poor regulation skills, those who develop adaptive behavioral and emotional regulation strategies learn more, like school better, and are disciplined less frequently. They are also less anxious and stressed, more empathetic, and get along better with parents, teachers, and peers (Chang et al., 2003; Colman et al., 2006; Eisenberg et al., 2005; Morris et al., 2011; Raikes et al., 2007; Rothbart et al., 2006).

Social and Emotional Competence

Social and personality development is built from social, biological, and representational influences (Wong et al., 2021). These influences result in important developmental outcomes that matter to children, adolescents, parents, and society. They include a young adult’s capacity to engage in socially constructive actions (helping, caring, sharing with others), to curb hostile or aggressive impulses, to live according to meaningful moral values, to develop a healthy identity and sense of self, and to develop talents and achieve success in using them. These are some of the developmental outcomes that denote social and emotional competence (Malti & Davidov, 2023).

These achievements of social and personality development derive from the interaction of many social, biological, and representational influences. Consider, for example, the development of conscience, which is an early foundation for moral development.

Development of Conscience

Conscience consists of the cognitive, emotional, and social influences that help young children to construct and act consistently with internalized standards of right and wrong (Kochanska, 2002; Schuetz & Koglin, 2023). It emerges from young children’s experiences with parents, particularly in the development of a mutually responsive relationship that motivates young children to respond constructively to parents’ requests and expectations (Kim & Kochanska, 2025).

Biologically-based temperament is involved, as some children are temperamentally more capable of motivated self-regulation (a quality called effortful control) than are others, while some children are more prone to the fear and anxiety that parental disapproval can evoke. The development of conscience is influenced by having a good fit between the child’s temperamental qualities and the ways parents communicate and scaffold behavioral expectations (Kim & Kochanska, 2025).

Conscience development also expands as young children begin to represent moral values and think of themselves as moral beings. By the end of the preschool years, for example, young children develop a “moral self” by which they think of themselves as people who want to do the right thing, who feel badly after misbehaving, and who feel uncomfortable when others misbehave. In the development of conscience, young children become more socially and emotionally competent in a manner that provides a foundation for later moral conduct (Thompson, 2012).

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“Lifespan Development: A Psychological Perspective, Second Edition” by Martha Lally and Suzanne Valentine-French is licensed under a CC-BY-NC-SA-3.0

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