The Vagus Nerve, Children's Regulation and the Playful Activities I Use in Early Childhood

One of the things I have spoken about with early childhood teams for many years is the importance of noticing smaller changes before we immediately move into correcting behaviour.

A child may begin rubbing their face, pulling at their clothing, chewing something, clenching their hands, becoming louder, hiding in a smaller space, seeking more movement or suddenly finding it much harder to process what we are saying before the larger behaviour appears.

These are the moments that interest me most, because rather than waiting until a child is completely overwhelmed and then asking how we can calm them down, I would much rather we become better at noticing what their body may have been communicating earlier and thinking about whether there was something we could change in the environment, interaction or activity.

I often explain regulation using the idea of a river. There are times when we are moving through a calmer section where we can look around, connect with other people, listen, think, play and cope with small frustrations. Then there are the rapids, where our body is working much harder and our attention becomes much narrower because getting through that moment has become the priority.

Children do not all have the same amount of space in that calmer part of the river, and their capacity is not exactly the same every day either. Temperament, sensory needs, sleep, relationships, stress, illness, life experiences, the environment and what happened before they even walked through the door can all change how much they have available.

What happens before the big behaviour?

Before a child reaches the point where we are seeing the behaviour that worries us, there are often smaller body cues that are incredibly easy to miss when we are managing a busy room.

A child might start touching their face more, pulling at their collar, chewing their sleeve, tightening their fists, changing the way they move, becoming much louder or becoming unusually quiet. They may seek upside-down movement, hide under furniture, climb higher, move faster or suddenly struggle to respond to language that they would normally understand.

I do not look at these signs because I expect educators to prevent every difficult emotion or challenging moment. Children are meant to become frustrated, excited, angry, tired and overwhelmed at times, just as adults do.

What I want us to become more confident at doing is noticing when the child may be moving towards the edge of what they can manage and offering support while there is still enough capacity for connection.

Why I do not want regulation to become another instruction

This topic is professional for me, but it is also personal. I grew up with childhood trauma, so I know what it can feel like when your nervous system is already carrying a great deal and somebody gives you one more instruction to follow.

When I was already overwhelmed, somebody telling me to calm down or take ten deep breaths was unlikely to be the thing that suddenly helped my body feel connected again.

Music was different. I played the clarinet for years and I did not think of it as a regulation strategy at the time. I simply knew that I loved it and often felt different while I was playing.

Looking back now, I can see that I was naturally taking deeper breaths, controlling my exhalation, using the muscles around my mouth and throat, concentrating on rhythm and sound and staying connected to something that mattered to me, all without somebody standing beside me repeatedly reminding me that I needed to breathe.

That experience has shaped the way I introduce regulation activities to young children. I do not want a child to feel as though every time they become overwhelmed they are removed from their friends and given a special exercise because their body has become a problem.

I would much rather weave these experiences through play and everyday routines so that buzzing, blowing, singing, squeezing, moving and noticing our body are things everybody gets to experience.

So where does the vagus nerve fit into this?

The vagus nerve is one part of a much bigger nervous system. It is involved in communication between the brain and many areas of the body, including systems involved in heart rate, breathing and digestion.

When people talk about vagus nerve activities online, the language can sometimes become much more definite than I am comfortable with. No single activity is a magic switch that instantly regulates a child, and I would be cautious about describing one playful activity as though it directly “activates” or “stimulates” the vagus nerve in a predictable way.

What I find more useful is looking at what is happening during these experiences. A child may be extending their exhalation, using their voice, feeling vibration around their mouth and throat, moving their body, receiving proprioceptive or vestibular input, paying attention to an internal sensation or sharing an enjoyable moment with another person.

Those experiences can form part of a much broader approach to regulation and co-regulation. The vagus nerve gives us one piece of the physiological story, rather than the whole explanation.

I also do not want educators trying twenty strategies at once. I would much rather you choose one idea, introduce it when the children are relatively settled, allow it to become familiar and then watch what happens.

Some children will be drawn to an activity immediately, some will want to observe first and some will clearly show you that a particular activity does not feel good for their body. All of that information is useful.

Try these activities before the difficult moment arrives

One of the biggest changes I encourage educators to make is to stop saving regulation activities only for the moment when a child has already reached the point of screaming, running, hitting, hiding or refusing everything being offered to them.

By that stage, their capacity to process another instruction or try something unfamiliar may be very limited.

I would rather introduce these activities during easier parts of the child's day, when they are still available for connection and can discover what the activity feels like without the pressure of somebody expecting it to fix their behaviour.

A bee can become part of arrival, bubbles can come out after a highly active outdoor experience, animal walks can become part of a transition and humming or singing can simply be something the whole group does together.

When the activity is already familiar, we are then much more likely to notice whether the child begins to seek it themselves or whether a gentle invitation from an adult feels supportive when their capacity is starting to change.

The adult nervous system is part of the room as well

As much as I talk about what the child's body may be communicating, we also need to notice ourselves.

An educator who has been interrupted twenty times, has three children needing support, is worried about staffing and has not had a break is also bringing a nervous system into that interaction.

Sometimes the most useful regulation support is not another activity for the child at all. It may be the adult slowing their voice, reducing the amount of language they are using, giving more processing time, moving closer without immediately adding another demand, changing where the interaction is happening or noticing that the whole room has become too loud and busy.

Co-regulation is relational, which means we cannot keep looking only at what is happening inside the child while ignoring the adults, routines, spaces and expectations surrounding them.

I would rather you notice than rush to fix

The part of these activities that matters most to me is not whether we can confidently say that we have activated or stimulated a particular nerve.

I am much more interested in what happens when we slow down enough to watch the child and become curious about whether something has changed.

Did their shoulders soften after buzzing? Did they come closer to the group after moving? Did their voice change? Could they process your words more easily? Did they stay nearby instead of running away? Did a child who normally refuses a breathing activity happily blow a feather because nobody framed it as something they had to do in order to calm down?

Those observations help us understand the child rather than simply collecting another twenty regulation activities and reaching for the same strategy every time behaviour becomes difficult.

What settles one child may irritate another. What helps beautifully in the morning may not be useful late in the afternoon, and what works with one group may need to be changed for the next.

That is why I always want observation and relationship to sit above the strategy itself.

If you take one thing away from the training and activity cards, I hope it is not simply a longer list of things to do with children. I hope it is a greater curiosity about the smaller signals their bodies are giving us and a little more confidence to respond before behaviour becomes the only thing anybody can see.