The Alert Program

"If your body is like a car engine, sometimes it runs on high, sometimes it runs on low, and sometimes it runs just right." These simple words can be used to describe an exciting self-regulation program for children.

How Does Your Engine Run? The Alert Program for Self-Regulation™ provides a way for parents, teachers, and therapists to promote awareness of how individuals regulate their arousal states and encourages the use of sensory-motor strategies. The program provides an easily understood way for young children and older students to monitor the signals that indicate an internal level of readiness to work, play, listen, attend and participate in the activities of life.

To be happy and successful at home and school, children need to organize their behavior for a wide range of tasks and situations. They have to learn to adjust their level of alertness throughout each day.

The Alert Program is specifically designed to:

• Teach children, parents, and teachers how to recognize arousal states as they relate to attention, learning, and behavior.
• Help children recognize and expand the number of self-regulation strategies they use in a variety of tasks and settings.
• Give therapists, parents, and teachers a framework (vocabulary, activities, and environments) to help children recognize and regulate their own alertness states.
• Help parents and teachers understand that behavior may reflect the student's best attempt to respond adaptively and efficiently to the demands of a situation or task.