In 2023, I wrote enthusiastically about the Zones of Regulation. At the time, I saw a structured programme that could give children a shared language for emotions, help them recognise what was happening internally, and introduce a range of strategies that might support them.
I can still see why the approach appealed to me-and why it continues to appeal to schools. It is visual, memorable and easy to explain. It offers staff a framework in an area that can otherwise feel complicated.
However, my thinking has changed.
That is partly because I have looked more closely at the evidence. It is also because my understanding of neuroaffirming practice has developed. I have become increasingly concerned that regulation programmes can become something done to neurodivergent children and young people, rather than something developed with them.
This does not mean that colours are inherently harmful, or that no child can find the Zones helpful. It means I now ask different questions:
- Who has defined the problem?
- Who decides what a successful outcome looks like?
- Whose behaviour is expected to change?
- What are adults prepared to do differently?
- What needs to change in the environment?
- Can the young person adapt, disagree with or decline the support?
Increasingly, I find myself drawn towards restorative practice, co-created five-point scales and PERMA(H). These are not automatically neuroaffirming-and none is a magic replacement programme. However, when used carefully, they can create more space for pupil voice, shared problem-solving, adult accountability and environmental change.
Why I am reconsidering the Zones of Regulation
The stated philosophy of the Zones is more nuanced than some school practice suggests. Its developers emphasise that all zones are valid, there is no “bad” zone, and the goal is not always to return to green. Context matters: a person can remain angry, frightened or highly energised while finding a way to act safely and pursue what matters to them.
Those are reasonable principles. They challenge the idea that a quiet, compliant pupil is necessarily a regulated pupil.
However, reasonable principles are not the same as evidence of effectiveness. A 2024 research review concluded that the Zones did not meet recognised thresholds for an evidence-based practice. The available comparative studies were few, small and did not demonstrate statistically significant improvements attributable to the programme.
A more recent Australian study explored teachers’ experiences of implementing the Zones with autistic pupils. Teachers often found the programme useful and reported improvements in emotional language. However, this was a small study of teacher perceptions, not a pupil-outcome trial. Some teachers also described substantial difficulties: lessons and worksheets required considerable adaptation; some pupils using AAC appeared to learn scripted answers without demonstrable understanding; and some pupils became anxious, disengaged or agitated by the programme. For some, being associated with the red zone felt like being told they had done something wrong.
This distinction matters. Teacher acceptability is not the same as pupil benefit, and learning the language of a programme is not necessarily the same as developing self-understanding or agency.
The colours themselves carry strong cultural meanings. Green commonly means safe, correct and ready to proceed; red means danger, stop or wrongdoing. Even when adults repeat that “all zones are OK,” a pupil may receive a different message from the display, the language surrounding it, or the way adults respond when they identify as red.
My deeper concern is not simply about colour categories. It is that a regulation framework can quietly become a system for adult-defined emotional compliance: Identify your state, choose an approved tool, regulate yourself and return to the adult’s activity.
That is where the Social Discipline Window has helped me think differently.
The Social Discipline Window: to, for, not or with?
The Social Discipline Window is associated with restorative practice. It describes four ways adults and organisations can respond when expectations are not met or difficulties occur.
| Approach | What it can look like in school |
| Doing to | Adults define the problem, impose the response and expect the pupil to comply. |
| Doing for | Adults rescue, soothe or plan everything, but the pupil has little influence or agency. |
| Not doing | Adults withdraw, ignore distress or expect the pupil to manage without adequate support. |
| Doing with | Adults and pupils develop shared understanding, agree support and consider what everyone-including adults-can change. |
The original model uses the language of high and low control alongside high and low support. In education, I prefer to think about clear boundaries, appropriate challenge and reciprocal accountability. “Doing with” does not mean having no expectations, overlooking harm or leaving a distressed pupil unsupported. It means combining support and accountability without removing voice, dignity or agency.
Nor does it mean pretending that adults and pupils possess equal power. Schools make decisions about access, movement, consequences and support. A restorative approach asks adults to recognise that power, use it transparently, share it wherever possible and remain accountable for its effects.
This gives us a useful test for any intervention. A tool is not neuroaffirming merely because it uses friendly language or attractive visuals. We need to examine what happens around it.
What does “doing with” look like?
For me, doing with means:
- beginning with curiosity rather than correction;
- recognising behaviour as communication without assuming we already know what it means;
- offering co-regulation rather than demanding self-regulation;
- accepting speech, writing, drawing, movement, AAC, metaphor and silence as valid communication;
- respecting “I don’t know” and “I don’t want to talk about that”;
- identifying sensory, relational, communication and task-related barriers;
- agreeing goals that matter to the young person;
- asking what adults and the environment must change;
- revisiting whether support is actually helping from the pupil’s perspective;
- separating emotional intensity from moral judgement;
- maintaining belonging before, during and after difficulty.
This is where restorative practice, personalised five-point scales and PERMA(H) can help-not as programmes to administer, but as scaffolds for shared enquiry.
Restorative practice: understanding and repairing together
Restorative practice is sometimes reduced to a scripted conversation after an incident. Used well, it is much broader: a relational way of working that builds connection, responds to conflict without shame and creates opportunities for genuine repair.
Instead of asking:
Which rule was broken, who is responsible, and what sanction should follow?
a restorative enquiry asks:
- What happened?
- What was happening for each person?
- Who has been affected, and how?
- What does each person need now?
- What might help to repair the difficulty?
- What should pupils, adults or the environment do differently next time?
The final question is important. Restorative practice should not mean extracting an apology from a pupil and returning everything else to normal. Adults may need to acknowledge their tone, an inaccessible demand, a missed communication attempt or a failure to provide an agreed adjustment. Sometimes the environment-not the child-is what most needs to change.
Using restorative practice neuroaffirmingly
- Establish safety and co-regulation before attempting reflection.
- Invite participation rather than compel it.
- Give processing time and allow the conversation to happen later or over several contacts.
- Adapt communication and accept non-speaking forms of contribution.
- Hear the pupil’s account before asking them to consider somebody else’s perspective.
- Avoid “Why did you do that?” when the pupil may not know or cannot yet explain.
- Include adult and systemic responsibility.
- Agree repair; do not prescribe a performance of remorse.
- Protect the pupil’s privacy and right to reintegration.
Restorative work is not appropriate in every situation. A person who has been harmed should never be required to meet, forgive or accept an apology. Particular care is needed where there is bullying, coercion, abuse or a significant power imbalance. Participation must be genuinely voluntary-not a condition of escaping a sanction or returning to the classroom.
Five-point scales: creating a shared language
Five-point scales can offer more flexibility than universal emotional categories because they can be constructed around an individual pupil’s experience. They can help make an abstract idea-such as sensory load, uncertainty, anxiety, energy or the urgency of support-more concrete.
However, a scale is not automatically collaborative. A ready-made ladder in which one means “calm” and five means “exploding” still places calm at the successful end and intense emotion at the failed end. Used as a public behaviour score, it becomes another system of surveillance.
A neuroaffirming scale should be created with the young person. It might explore:
| Area | Questions to develop together |
| Purpose | What would you like the scale to help you communicate? |
| Meaning | What does each number, image or stage mean to you? |
| Internal experience | What might you notice in your body, thoughts, communication or energy? |
| What others notice | What might adults observe-without assuming they know how you feel? |
| What helps | What would you like to be able to do at this point? |
| Adult response | What should adults do, avoid doing or change? |
| Environment | Which demands, sensory experiences, people or uncertainties need adjusting? |
| Communication | How can you request support without having to explain everything verbally? |
The scale need not use numbers. A pupil might prefer weather, music, animals, game characters, battery levels or their own words. It does not have to describe linear escalation, and it should include space for “I don’t know,” “several at once” or “none of these.”
Most importantly, accurately identifying a point on a scale should never be a prerequisite for receiving support.
PERMA(H): looking beyond behaviour towards wellbeing
PERMA was developed by Martin Seligman as a multidimensional way of considering wellbeing:
- P – Positive emotion: moments of comfort, safety, enjoyment, hope or feeling slightly more okay;
- E – Engagement: interests, absorption, curiosity and experiences that help someone feel like themselves;
- R – Relationships: feeling safe, valued, understood and connected;
- M – Meaning: what matters to the person and what feels purposeful or worth protecting;
- A – Accomplishment: effort, progress, competence and achievements that are meaningful to the individual;
- H – Health: sleep, energy, movement, physical comfort, sensory regulation and bodily needs.
PERMA(H) has been studied as a multidimensional model of wellbeing, including research with primary-aged pupils. However, it is not an autism-specific regulation intervention, and evidence that its domains correlate with wellbeing does not prove that completing a PERMA(H) activity will improve an individual pupil’s wellbeing.
I therefore use it as a conversation scaffold rather than a scorecard or programme.
Questions might include:
- When do you feel even five per cent more okay? What is different then?
- What absorbs you or helps you feel most like yourself?
- Who helps you feel safe or least judged?
- What does helpful support look like-and what feels too much?
- What matters to you at the moment?
- What have you managed that other people might not have noticed?
- What is your body communicating about sleep, energy, pain, movement or sensory load?
- What is one small thing adults or school could change?
This broadens the conversation. A pupil who appears dysregulated may be exhausted, isolated, under-stimulated, overwhelmed, frightened, physically uncomfortable or unable to see meaning in what they are being asked to do. A behaviour-focused response can miss all of that.
Here’s a downloadable PERMA(H) Check-In Proforma you can use to structure your conversation.
Avoiding a done-to PERMA(H) exercise
PERMA(H) can become another deficit checklist if adults score every domain, identify “weaknesses” and impose improvement targets. Positive emotion must not become compulsory positivity. Engagement must not mean compliance with schoolwork. Accomplishment must not be defined only through attendance, completed tasks or academic performance.
The young person should be able to choose which areas matter, skip questions, pause, communicate in different ways and decide that no next step is wanted today. Each section should ask not only what the pupil might do, but what adults and the environment can change.
These are not three replacement programmes
The common thread is not restorative practice, a five-point scale or the letters in PERMA(H). It is the relationship in which the tool is used.
| Instead of… | We can ask… |
| “Which zone are you in?” | “What is happening for you-and would you like help communicating it?” |
| “Choose a strategy.” | “What would help, and what should I change?” |
| “You need to regulate before returning.” | “What do you need to feel safe, included and able to re-engage?” |
| “What did you do wrong?” | “What happened from your perspective?” |
| “How can you make better choices?” | “What could all of us do differently next time?” |
| “Your score is low here.” | “Which part of this, if any, matters to you?” |
Zones can also be adapted and used collaboratively. Restorative questions can be coercive. A five-point scale can become a behaviour chart. PERMA(H) can become forced positivity. No framework protects us from poor practice.
The more important question is whether the approach increases the young person’s agency or simply makes them easier for adults and systems to manage.
Questions educators can use tomorrow
Before introducing or continuing any regulation support, try asking:
- Who has defined the difficulty?
- What does the young person want to be different-if anything?
- What is already helping, even slightly?
- What might the behaviour or distress be communicating?
- What are adults prepared to change?
- Which environmental barriers can be reduced?
- Can the pupil adapt, reject or opt out of this tool?
- Are we supporting authentic regulation or rewarding the appearance of calm?
- How will the pupil know that the support is working?
- Are safety, dignity and belonging protected even when things go wrong?
Final thoughts
Changing my mind about a familiar approach is uncomfortable. My earlier writing reflected what I understood and valued at the time: emotional literacy, useful structure and practical support. I still value those things.
What has changed is my understanding of how easily support can become something imposed on neurodivergent children and young people-even when adults have compassionate intentions.
I no longer think the central question is:
Which regulation programme should we use?
I think it is:
How can we work alongside this young person to understand their experience, remove barriers, support wellbeing and decide together what might help?
That is the movement from doing to – or even doing for – towards doing with.
And that, rather than any particular worksheet, colour or acronym, is where more neuroaffirming practice begins.
References and further reading
- Leadbitter, K., Buckle, K. L., Ellis, C. and Dekker, M. (2021). Autistic self-advocacy and the neurodiversity movement: implications for autism early intervention research and practice.
- Love, A. M. A., Gibbs, V., Roxburgh, D. G., Dorn, E. A. and Cai, R. Y. (2024). Implementing The Zones of Regulation for autistic students: teacher perceptions and practices.
- Mason, B. K., Leaf, J. B. and Gerhardt, P. F. (2024). A research review of the Zones of Regulation program.
- Lai, M. K. et al. (2018). A multidimensional PERMA-H positive education model, general satisfaction of school life, and character strengths use in Hong Kong senior primary school students.
- Wachtel, T. (2016). Defining restorative.
- Walz, E. (2022). Do we really need to “get back to the Green Zone”? We think not.