How Infants Learn to Regulate Part 2: From Co-Regulation to Self-Regulation

How Infants Learn to Regulate Part 2:

From Co-Regulation to Self-Regulation

Regulation is often misunderstood as our ability to be calm or quiet.  In truth, self-regulation refers to the way in which we regulate our emotions (both positive and negative emotions), our levels of arousal, our stress levels, and our levels of attention so that we can carry out the things we need and want to do in our daily life (read more at SIE.com).”  This means it is beyond being calm, and that true regulation requires the ability to ‘balance’ these feelings and inputs while staying socially engaged and interactive (i.e. daily life).  This challenges the notion that a child looking at screen, flipping through a book, or playing with rice and beans in a self-involved manner is truly regulated. 

Additionally, the development of self-regulation in a child is also misunderstood. True self-regulation does not ‘grow’ in isolation; it is a deeply interpersonal and neurological achievement. Researchers have identified 3 foundational elements that lead to the development of a child’s ability to self-regulate,

• caregiver-child attunement,
• co-regulated interactions, and
• neural synchrony.

These 3 elements work in concert to shape a child’s emotional resilience and brain architecture.

Here is a closer look at how these three experiences interrelate to support the development of self-regulation, supported by current research.

1. Caregiver-Child Attunement

At the heart of any developmental progress is responsive caregiving, which relies on deep emotional attunement to a child’s individual needs. Responsive caregiving is a dynamic, reciprocal process where the adult is highly sensitive to the child’s verbal and nonverbal cues. This requires empathy, active listening, and the ability to interpret a child’s communication through facial expressions or body language.

All Infants are born with limited self-regulatory and communication capacities, meaning they fundamentally require caregiver support to stabilize their physiology and emotions, especially when experiencing negative affect or unmet needs.

Attunement refers to the caregiver’s sensitivity and responsiveness to these needs. Research shows that caregivers promote a secure attachment relationship when they are consistently available, highly sensitive, and appropriately responsive to a child’s cues. This attuned behavior serves as the key determinant of the child’s internal working model of attachment, teaching the child that relationships are safe and that they can rely on others for protection and comfort.

True attunement demands self-reflection from the caregiver. By exploring their own subconscious and understanding how past experiences influence their current reactions, caregivers can provide more compassionate, empathetic, and effective care. Acknowledging these internal drivers allows the caregiver to be more present and aware, creating an environment where the child feels secure, seen, and valued. This sense of safety is the vital prerequisite for the child to actively participate in their own emotional development.

Without this foundational attunement, adverse or unpredictable caregiving can set into motion a developmental pathway characterized by deficits in social-emotional competence and relationship difficulties across the lifespan.

2. Co-Regulated Interactions

Building directly upon the foundation of attunement is the active practice of co-regulation. Caregiver-infant co-regulation is defined as the bidirectional process of organizing physiology, emotion, and behaviors in response to moment-to-moment interactions. Children first learn to ‘regulate’ through emotional interactions (co-regulating) with their caregivers, not through a lack of feedback or being left to “cry it out” in isolation.

Co-regulation occurs when a caregiver and a child sustain a continuous affective interaction, feeding off of each other’s emotional states to maintain joint equilibrium. In certain moments, the adult may need to deliberately use their physical and emotional presence to balance the child, a technique called counter regulation. When infants and toddlers experience strong feelings, they cannot self-soothe independently; instead, they need to “borrow” the caregiver’s calm.

For example, if a child is under-aroused or withdrawn, the caregiver provides up-regulation through excitement, enthusiasm, and playfulness. Conversely, if a child is escalating toward a meltdown or becoming hyperactive, the caregiver ‘counters’ this over arousal by slowing down and being calm. This involves softening their affect, decreasing the volume of their voice, slowing down language patterns, and providing soothing physical input to help the child slow down. These on-going (continuous), back-and-forth emotional exchanges demand that children adapt and adjust, ultimately giving them the tools for long-term self-regulation.

Developmental models propose that self-regulation actually evolves directly from these co-regulated experiences. There is a gradual developmental transition from interpersonal regulation (co-regulation provided by the caregiver) to intrapersonal regulation (self-regulation managed by the child). When children consistently experience co-regulation during moments of stress, they begin to conceptualize and internalize these soothing strategies in their own minds and brains, gradually learning to apply the strategies themselves over time.

3. Neural Synchrony: The Biological Handshake

The behavioral magic of attunement and co-regulation is mirrored biologically through interbrain neural synchrony. Neural synchrony refers to the simultaneous activity of neural networks across the brains of people who are socially interacting, such as when they are talking, playing, or learning together. The neural networks of two people temporally align during social interaction.

When a mother and child engage in naturalistic, collaborative play, their brain activity becomes synchronized. Crucially, this synchrony is especially strong in the brain’s prefrontal cortex—a hub responsible for decision-making, planning, and emotional regulation. In a recent study involving bilingual families, mothers and their three-to-four-year-old children wore fNIRS caps while engaging in naturalistic play. The study revealed statistically significant neural synchrony between the mother-child pairs, and this brain-to-brain connection was stronger during interactive play compared to independent play.

Fascinatingly, the researchers found that this synchrony remained equally strong whether the mothers and children played in the mother’s native language or an acquired second language (English). This demonstrates that the neural foundation for bonding and effective communication is highly resilient and not disrupted by the use of a second language, provided the interactive and emotional connection is maintained.  This proves that the biological mechanism for bonding operates independently of language context; it is the interactive collaboration itself that links the two brains.

What does this mean for non-speaking autistic individuals? 

Synthesis: Forging the Path to Self-Regulation

Caregiver-child attunement, co-regulated interactions, and neural synchrony are inextricably linked in the journey toward self-regulation.  Attunement provides the empathetic awareness necessary for the caregiver to accurately read the child’s cues and current emotional state. Armed with this awareness, the caregiver participates in co-regulated interactions, adjusting their own affect and energy to balance the child’s arousal. As the caregiver and child engage in this shared social problem-solving and continuous flow of emotional interaction, their brains quite literally sync up.

The neural synchrony achieved during these co-regulated interactions actively engages and stimulates different parts of the brain. Research shows that during these interactive moments; neural synchrony is especially strong in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is a major hub responsible for reasoning, planning, problem-solving, decision-making, and emotional regulation. Because the prefrontal cortex typically helps regulate the amygdala’s more extreme emotional responses, exercising this region through synchronized social play builds the exact neural pathways the child needs for impulse control and emotional balance. By repeatedly exercising this specific brain region through synchronized, co-regulated social play, caregivers help build and strengthen the exact neural pathways the child needs to eventually transition from relying on interpersonal co-regulation to mastering independent, intrapersonal self-regulation.

**Another name for unstructured child-directed synchronized co-regulated social play is Greenspan Floortime®. 

The Transition of Co-Regulation to Self-Regulation: As young children develop, they undergo a crucial transition from relying heavily on the caregiver as an external, biological regulator to utilizing more self-directed regulation attempts. Basic control of these biological processes is a necessary prerequisite to supporting the use of emotional regulation and behavioral strategies later in life.

Ultimately, a child does not learn to self-regulate in a vacuum. It is through the synchronized dance of emotional attunement (caregiver responsiveness), co-regulation, and aligned brain activity that a child builds the secure foundation and neurological architecture required for lifelong self-regulation.

Experience Personalized Guidance: Accelerate your progress with virtual individualized coaching, tailored to your unique needs and goals.

Earn a Greenspan Floortime Certificate: Take your expertise to the next level and earn an official Greenspan Floortime Certificate, recognized worldwide.

---

References

Di Lorenzo, M. G., Bucsea, O., Rumeo, C., Waxman, J. A., Flora, D. B., Schmidt, L. A., & Pillai Riddell, R. (2022). Caregiver and young child biological attunement in distress contexts: A systematic review and narrative synthesis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 132, 1010–1036. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.10.045

Lunkenheimer, E., Kemp, C. J., Lucas-Thompson, R. G., Cole, P. M., & Albrecht, E. C. (2017). Parent–child coregulation of affect and behavior in early childhood: A variable- and person-centered approach. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 45(3), 579–593. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-016-0185-y

Murray, D. W., Rosanbalm, K., & Christopoulos, C. (2019). An applied contextual model for promoting self-regulation enactment across development. Duke Center for Child and Family Policy. https://childandfamilypolicy.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/MurrayRosanbalmetal2019-1.pdf

Nguyen, T., Schleihauf, H., Kayhan, E., Matthes, D., Vrtička, P., & Hoehl, S. (2021). Neural synchrony in mother–child conversation: Exploring the role of conversation patterns. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 16(1–2), 93–102. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaa079

Papoutselou, E., Harrison, S., Mai, G., Buck, B., Patil, N., & Wiggins, I. (2024). Investigating mother–child inter-brain synchrony in a naturalistic paradigm: A functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning study. European Journal of Neuroscience, 59(5), 1019–1038. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.16233 (Note: Your text listed this as 2026, but the published study on this specific fNIRS/play topic appeared in 2024.)

Administration for Children and Families (Murray et al.) Murray, D. W., Rosanbalm, K., Christopoulos, C., & Hamoudi, A. (2015). Co-regulation from birth through young adulthood: A practice brief (OPRE Report #2015-82). Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/opre/report/co-regulation-birth-through-young-adulthood-practice-brief

Birth To 5 Matters Early Years Coalition. (2021). Birth to 5 matters: Non-statutory guidance for the Early Years Foundation Stage. Early Education. https://birthto5matters.org.uk/

PMC8801237 Paley, B., & Hajal, N. J. (2022). Conceptualizing emotion regulation and coregulation as family-level phenomena. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 25(1), 19–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-022-00378-4

Child Mind Institute Child Mind Institute. (2022, February 7). What is co-regulation? https://childmind.org/article/what-is-co-regulation/

PMC10453544 Bornstein, M. H., & Esposito, G. (2023). Coregulation: A multilevel approach via biology and behavior. Children, 10(8), Article 1323. https://doi.org/10.3390/children10081323