Strategy
The Zones of Regulation is a social-emotional learning curriculum developed by occupational therapist Leah Kuypers. It groups feelings and arousal states into four colour-coded zones: Blue (low alertness, lethargy), Green (calm, alert, focused), Yellow (heightened alertness, stress, anxiety), and Red (high emotional intensity, crisis, rage, elation). Students learn to identify their zone, recognise triggers, and access strategies to move toward Green.
The framework is widely adopted in schools. It is visually intuitive, easy to implement, and appeals to educators seeking common language around emotional states. It has also attracted significant criticism from the neurodiversity community.
When it applies
Zones is used predominantly in school settings, from early years through to secondary education, and occasionally in care facilities and homes. It is typically delivered by teachers or teaching assistants, sometimes with OT input. It is intended for whole-class use rather than individual therapy, though it is frequently applied specifically to autistic or neurodivergent children.
How it works
The curriculum teaches children to:
- Identify which zone they are in based on how they feel.
- Recognise what triggered the zone shift.
- Select a strategy or “tool” to regulate themselves — calming techniques for Red or Yellow, energising activities for Blue, maintenance strategies for Green.
- Practise using these strategies across settings.
The framework connects sensory arousal to emotional states, using the colour metaphor as a bridge. Teachers use visual displays, check-ins (“What zone are you in?”), and structured activities to embed the language into classroom routine.
What the evidence shows
The evidence base is weak.
The American Psychological Association, National Standards Project, and National Clearinghouse of Autism Evidence and Practice state that Zones does not meet evidence-based practice criteria. Of studies on the Zones website, only four explicitly include autistic individuals. No rigorous randomised controlled trials demonstrate efficacy for autistic populations.
A 2024 study in the British Journal of Special Education measured teacher self-efficacy after Zones training, not child outcomes. A 2024 systematic review acknowledged ongoing methodological limitations.
This creates a concerning mismatch: one of the most widely used regulation frameworks in schools is one of the least well-evidenced.
The masking problem
This is the core concern from a neurodiversity-affirming perspective, and it is not abstract. It describes a measurable harm.
As commonly implemented, the Green zone is treated as the goal. Children are praised for being in Green and implicitly discouraged from Yellow or Red. The message is that certain emotional states are unacceptable. For autistic children with intense emotions, sudden arousal shifts, or states that don’t fit four colours, this becomes a curriculum in emotional suppression.
A 2025 study in Scientific Reports found that most emotion dysregulation tools use neurotypical frameworks and frequently misread autistic emotional processing. Zones does this by defining Green as ideal and Red as the problem.
Neurodivergent-affirming OT practices note that Zones “often emphasises the appearance of calm rather than genuine self-awareness and emotional regulation.” When a child learns to perform Green, suppressing distress to tick the “regulated” box, that is masking. Masking has documented mental health consequences. See Masking and camouflaging.
Zones also neglects environmental contribution to dysregulation. If a child is in Red because the classroom is sensorily overwhelming, the solution is to reduce sensory demands, not teach the child to self-regulate back to Green. Zones locates the problem in the child’s emotional management rather than in person-environment fit.
The colour-mapping problem
The Zones colour scheme resembles prikkelbalans (green, orange, red, blue), but the meanings differ significantly. In prikkelbalans, zones describe arousal states without moral valence: blue (understimulated) is neither better nor worse than orange (rising stress), simply a different state needing a different response. In Zones, Green is explicitly the target. This is a fundamental philosophical difference.
Applicability to intellectual disability
No specific research exists on Zones of Regulation with people with intellectual disabilities. The framework relies on colour recognition, metaphorical thinking (what does “Yellow” mean as an emotional category?), and abstract identification of internal states — cognitive capacities that people with moderate to severe ID may not have access to. Adaptation for non-verbal or minimally verbal populations would require significant modification, and no such adaptations have been studied.
Evidence notes
Evidence level: emerging-pattern (widely adopted, poorly evidenced). The gap between adoption and evidence is among the largest in the sensory-regulation field.
Zones may help some individuals develop emotional vocabulary as a conversation-starting tool, but it carries a real risk of promoting masking without careful attention to the distinction between genuine regulation and performed calm. The Interoception curriculum and Prikkelbalans — stimulus balance align better with neurodiversity-affirming practice.