Self Control
Whoa – oh- oh- self control!
Dr. David Erikson is quoted as say, “Controlling your children is never the real goal. Teaching our children self control is the real goal.”
In my last post, I talked about using musical cues in the classroom. Over the years, I have written a lot of songs about skills that we use in life on a daily basis such as organization, self control, and responsibility. I taught my students one of these songs every one to two weeks at the beginning of music class. I found that adding movement to the song made it a lot more fun to learn and kept my students engaged.
Once we learned the song, we talked about how best to use that skill in the classroom, throughout their school day and outside of school. Use of the song and discussion made for great teachable moments in my classroom that hopefully helped my students throughout the rest of their day.
One of the life skills I wrote a song for is self control. Self control is the ability to control oneself. In particular, controlling our emotions, desires or the expression of them through our actions. Especially in difficult situations.
I was an elementary music teacher for many decades. The number one challenge in my classroom was helping children to find a balance of practicing self control during class. Since I taught music, my goal was for the children to have fun experiencing and learning music in a safe and fun environment.
Self control is something that we all struggle with. It’s a skill that we spend a lifetime trying to master. Some synonyms of self control are willpower, restraint, and self discipline. These are tough skills to achieve.
For children, self control is especially difficult. Many children come from troubled homes that don’t have a lot of structure. The lack of structure in a child’s life is going to spill over into the classroom and their interactions with others. So…what is the best way to help a child learn about self control? I found that using a musical cue – singing my song, was a catchy way to remember to use self control.
When my class would start to get loud or off task, I would start singing the song and my students would quickly join in. When we were done singing, we took time to talk about what happened in class. Next, we talked about what self control in that situation looks like, sounds like and acts like and how we could change the behavior. Then we went on with class. I didn’t spend a lot of time on this, but it was a good teachable moment.
Here are the first part of the words and movements to the song “Self Control”.
Whoa – oh – oh self control, Whoa oh – oh, self control
(roll your arms and then use the ALS sign for self control) repeat
If you’re talking during class, you need to STOP
(children use their hands to make a talking motion and then freeze during the word stop)
If you’re running down the hall, you need to STOP
(the children pretended to jog and then freeze during the word stop)
Whoa – oh – oh self control, Whoa oh – oh, self control
(roll your arms and then use the ALS sign for self control) repeat
If you would like to hear the rest of the song and own the sheet music, please follow the links below to purchase the song.
“Self Control” by Becky Muncy
The best way to gain self control is to practice it.