For US child care owners, directors and early childhood teams
When your teachers understand the theory but still need help deciding what to try in the classroom.
Regulator Champions helps early childhood teams slow difficult situations down, notice what may be contributing to the behavior and decide together what might be worth changing before simply reaching for another strategy.
It was created in Australia, but the program is built around questions that are familiar to child care teams everywhere: how adults respond, what the child may be communicating, what the environment is asking of them, and how a team can develop a more consistent way of thinking together.
What directors are often trying to solve
The difficult part is not always finding more professional development.
The harder question is how professional learning becomes useful when a teacher is standing in a busy classroom and the child in front of them is not responding the way the textbook example suggested they would.
Your teachers already know a lot, but the same situations keep coming back
Your team may already have completed training on behavior, trauma, sensory processing, social-emotional development or co-regulation, yet educators can still feel unsure about what to do when a real situation unfolds differently from the examples used in training.
Different adults are interpreting the same behavior differently
One teacher may see defiance, another may notice overwhelm, another may immediately redirect and another may give the child more space. Different perspectives are not automatically a problem, but teams need a useful way to think together rather than relying only on individual instinct.
Professional development needs to fit around the reality of child care
Staffing, ratios, planning time and competing responsibilities can make it difficult for every educator to attend lengthy training at the same time. Practical resources need to remain useful after the professional development session has finished.
You want professional learning to become part of classroom practice
Completing a course or attending a webinar does not automatically tell a director what educators are noticing, discussing or trying afterwards. Regulator Champions is designed to keep the learning connected to situations the team is actually experiencing.
A shared way of thinking
The goal is not for every teacher to respond in exactly the same way.
Children, educators and classrooms are too different for a single scripted response to fit every situation. What can become more consistent is the way a team pauses, notices and talks about what may be happening before deciding what to try.
Instead of a difficult moment beginning and ending with “How do we stop this behavior?”, Regulator Champions helps educators widen the conversation so they can consider the child, the context, the environment and the adult response together.
“What are we actually noticing before we decide what this behavior means?”
“What was happening in the room before this became difficult?”
“What is the child’s movement, posture, voice or engagement telling us?”
“What demand is this moment placing on the child?”
“Could the environment, routine or adult response be increasing the pressure?”
“What is one thoughtful change we could try and then observe?”
This does not mean ignoring unsafe behavior, removing boundaries or assuming every challenge has a sensory or regulation explanation. It means giving teachers a process for looking more carefully before deciding what the response should be.
Regulation Ladders
Give teachers somewhere practical to start when the same situation keeps repeating.
Each Regulation Ladder focuses on an everyday early childhood challenge and brings together educator, leadership and family perspectives. It does not tell a teacher that one behavior always means one thing. Instead, the cards provide prompts that help the adults around the child widen the lens, notice patterns and decide what may be worth trying.
A team might use a card during planning time, bring one into a staff meeting, discuss it after a difficult morning or keep the relevant cards somewhere educators can reach them when the same situation begins appearing again.
One Regulation Ladder includes 30 practical cards.
Ten prompts are written for educators, ten for managers or leaders and ten for families, so the same situation can be considered from the different roles surrounding the child.
From professional development into practice
Your teachers do not need another course they have to hurry through.
Educators can begin with the practical resources connected to something that is already happening in their classroom, then return to recordings, questions and deeper learning when they actually have the time and capacity to do so.
Live attendance is not required for every educator. A director can use a Regulation Ladder in a staff conversation, an individual educator can return to a recording later, and a team can submit a de-identified question when the first idea does not quite fit what they are seeing.
The program is intended to become something the team can return to as different situations arise, rather than professional development that disappears once the training session is over.
A lower-risk way to begin
You do not need to commit your center for a full year just to see whether this approach fits your team.
The 6-Month Preview is a genuine whole-team starting point. It gives your educators time to begin with the Regulation Ladders currently available, use them in real classroom situations, return to recordings when there is capacity, ask questions and begin working out whether this way of approaching regulation and behavior is useful within your program.
You do not need to assume Regulator Champions will solve every challenging behavior before deciding whether it has value. Children will still have difficult transitions, become frustrated, need movement, struggle with demands and have days when their capacity is low.
The more useful question is whether having a shared process for noticing, discussing and responding to those recurring situations would be useful for your teachers and leaders.
6-Month Preview
$1,790 AUD
Whole-team access for six months, including the Regulation Ladders currently available, practical resources, recordings, private question submissions and implementation support.
Pricing is shown in Australian dollars. If your US organization requires purchasing or international payment information, you can contact Robyn before making any commitment.
Connections with US early childhood practice
Regulator Champions is not a US accreditation program, but the thinking connects with familiar areas of quality early childhood practice.
NAEYC's current Early Childhood Program Standards provide a framework around quality early childhood programs, while Developmentally Appropriate Practice supports intentional professional decision-making. Regulator Champions is an independent program, but there are useful connections in areas such as relationships, family partnerships, educator decision-making and ongoing improvement.
Relationships
Regulator Champions asks educators to look closely at what is happening between the adult and child during difficult moments, including tone, pace, proximity, expectations, connection and the cues the child is giving back.
Developmentally Appropriate Practice
The program encourages teams to consider development, the individual child and the social and cultural context before deciding what a behavior means or what response may be useful.
Family partnerships
Families can contribute what they know about the child, their routines, preferences, strengths and experiences so educators are not expected to understand a difficult situation in isolation.
Continuous quality improvement
Directors and educational leaders can use recurring classroom situations as meaningful starting points for reflection, staff discussion and professional learning rather than choosing improvement topics that are disconnected from everyday practice.
Developmentally Appropriate Practice
Good decision-making asks us to look at more than the behavior we can see.
NAEYC describes three core considerations that inform Developmentally Appropriate Practice: commonality in children's development and learning, individuality, and the context in which development and learning occur.
That is not the same thing as Regulator Champions, but the decision-making principle is compatible with the way Regulation Ladders are used. Rather than moving directly from a behavior to a consequence or predetermined strategy, educators are encouraged to consider development, the individual child, the environment and context before deciding what may be worth changing.
QRIS and state quality systems
Your state or local quality system may use different language and requirements.
Quality Rating and Improvement Systems are not identical across the United States, so Regulator Champions does not claim universal QRIS alignment or automatic professional development approval.
Directors can consider how areas such as professional development, teacher-child interactions, family engagement, inclusion, classroom practice and continuous quality improvement relate to the specific requirements or goals that apply within their own state and program.
What your team can work on
The professional learning sits inside situations teachers are already dealing with.
These areas are not intended to become another checklist of topics your team has to complete. They are areas that may become relevant as educators work through real classroom situations.
Co-regulation
Challenging behavior
Teacher-child interactions
Social-emotional development
Sensory and movement needs
Executive functioning
Transitions and group experiences
Participation and inclusion
Family communication
Staff reflection and professional development
Created in Australia
You do not need to use Australian curriculum or quality frameworks to use the core program.
I am based in Australia, so some optional pages on this website refer to Australian quality and funding systems. Those sit separately from the core Regulator Champions professional learning.
US child care centers can use the Regulation Ladders, recordings, questions and professional learning within their own local context. Your organization remains responsible for determining whether particular learning meets state licensing, training-hour, accreditation or quality-system requirements.
You do not have to decide yet
Tell me what keeps becoming difficult in your classrooms and I can help you work out where I would start.
If the Regulation Cards alone look like enough for your team, that may be the right place to begin. If your educators need a longer period of shared learning and support, we can look at the six or twelve-month Regulator Champions options instead.
Regulator Champions is an independent professional learning program and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NAEYC or any state or local Quality Rating and Improvement System. It does not confer NAEYC accreditation, state licensing approval or professional development hours unless separately confirmed by the relevant authority. Programs remain responsible for determining how professional learning connects with their own licensing, accreditation, funding and quality improvement requirements.