It’s not misbehaviour. It’s stress behaviour.
Shanker Self-Reg® is the framework for understanding what’s really going on, evolved through fifty years of Stuart Shanker’s work on stress, self-regulation, and behaviour. The Shanker Method® is how you put it into practice: five steps that begin with the ever-deepening skill of reframing and lead toward restored energy, focus, deeper learning, and connection.
Across countries and cultures, people are worried about children and youth. Challenging behaviour has become daily instead of occasional. Anxiety is rising. School refusal is no longer rare. And parents, educators, and early childhood professionals, the people carrying all of this, are running on empty. Telling a child to try harder, behave better, or just calm down hasn’t worked. It was never built to explain why.
Self-Reg starts with a different question: not what’s wrong with this child, but what’s happening in their brain-body system, and what’s happening between that system and the world around them.
This science gives us reason for hope. It shows us how deeply interconnected the brain and body are, and how development happens through relationships, not through a single system working in isolation. Shanker Self-Reg draws on this science across five interconnected domains, not just to explain what’s happening, but to show us what to do about it.
“Why? Why now?” is one of Stuart Shanker’s most important questions. It invites us to pause before deciding that we already know what a behaviour means, whether we’re looking at a child, a colleague, or ourselves. The “why now” is rarely one thing. Each of us carries our own stress backpack, and what’s inside it is different for every person. The “why now” is the moment that backpack’s cumulative weight, built across every domain of a life, finally shows up as behaviour.
Many of us inherited a compliance lens: the person understands what is expected and should do what they are told. Self-Reg opens a wider view, one grounded in science rather than judgment.
We call this looking with soft eyes. Soft eyes see the brilliance behind the behaviour: a brain-body system doing exactly what it has learned to do, shaped by everything a person has lived through and is living through now. Challenge still matters. Self-Reg helps us tell the difference between a challenge that builds someone up and a system that has been asked to carry more than it can, for longer than it should.
The Shanker Method® brings this way of seeing into daily life through five steps: Reframe, Recognize, Reduce, Reflect, and Restore. These are not steps to check off. Together, they form a practice that deepens over time, helping us understand what is happening within a person and between people, and what to do about it.
People who learn with us often say, “Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.” Many arrive because of something they are encountering in their work or their parenting. As they learn to see a child’s behaviour differently, they start to see their own the same way. Their stress, their state, their capacity in the moment, all of it becomes visible too.
When people learn Self-Reg together, they build something rare: a shared, interdisciplinary understanding of what is actually happening in a room, a classroom, a home. That understanding is what makes the hope real, not a promise that things will get easier, but a way of seeing that changes what’s possible.
Our deepest way to learn Self-Reg.
Bring Self-Reg to your organization, community, or event.
Mini-courses, microcredentials, masterclasses, team learning and more.
Read, reflect, and bring Self-Reg into practice through toolkits.
Explore, discover, and keep learning.
Live online and in person Self-Reg learning and our annual summer symposium.
Our deepest way to learn Self-Reg.
Bring Self-Reg to your organization, community, or event.
Mini-courses, microcredentials, masterclasses, team learning and more.
Read, reflect, and bring Self-Reg into practice through toolkits.
Explore, discover, and keep learning.
Live online and in person Self-Reg learning and our annual summer symposium.
Stuart Shanker, D.Phil, founded The MEHRIT Centre in 2011 to help create a better world for children, youth, and families. For more than a decade, Susan Hopkins, EdD, has led TMC alongside Stuart and a deeply committed team.
Through courses, partnerships, and resources, we help people around the world bring Shanker Self-Reg into the places where children live and grow.
Explore Self-Reg learning, resources and practical tools for early childhood professionals and the early years.
Find Self-Reg learning, resources and support for parents, caregivers, families and communities.
Explore Self-Reg learning, resources and practical tools for educators, school leaders and school communities.
Explore Self-Reg science, learning and resources relevant to allied health professionals and practice.
Find Self-Reg learning, resources and partnership opportunities for leaders, teams and workplaces.
Explore Self-Reg research, learning and resources for researchers, faculty and postsecondary communities.
People come to The MEHRIT Centre because they are looking for something that works, and for hope that things can be different.
See where to start.
