Self-awareness is an important skill that both children and adults require. It gives flexibility over the behavior and thoughts. Now the question is, why do kids need self-awareness?
Self-awareness fosters the capability to analyze and helps them to survive in the competitive world without any difficulties. It transforms them into the matured state and will have many benefits over their development. It makes the path for the psychological health of the individuals.
What is Self-awareness in kids?
Self-awareness is the ability of understanding of the child to accurately judge their skills, strength, weakness, and personality. It makes kids to realize how their actions are perceived by others. They have the clear idea of when to engage their and when to pull them back. Self-aware kids should know the areas that they need to be improved. It is the most essential attribute that the child needs for the development.
Self-awareness allows the kids to change their ability and mindset on their own. Kids who have Self-awareness can articulate their feelings and thoughts properly.
Children are likely to step into the state of self-awareness at the age of 15-24 months. you can recognize this by marking a red spot on their face with lipstick and then make the infant stand in front of the mirror. Before 15 months of age they start to look at the red spot on their face in the mirror after 15 months, they could be able to recognize that the mark is on their own face and they either try to point it or wipe it off from their face.
Types of Self-awareness:
There are two types of Self-awareness: Private Self-awareness and public Self-awareness
Private self-awareness is something that the children can understand something in them that the other people could not be. It is simply the awareness from the personal perspective.
Public Self-awareness develops when your kid understands the way that others are seeing them. This can be harder for the kids to identify as it involves checking the social hints. This type of self-awareness can be identified in your child when they start making others during their communication.
Read: 16 Best ways how to raise an introverted child!
Benefits of Self-awareness:
Here are a few benefits that children with self-awareness will have over the other children:
1) Helps to achieve time management:
Time management is one of the important life skill. Knowing themselves gives the kids ability to know when and how to do the thing. Being able to understand strengths and weakness help kids to know what they can do, what they can not, and for which they need assistance. Having clear map of the things that they do beforehand helps kids to estimate the time take to complete it or allotting specific time for the activity.
2) Helps then to understand the impact of emotions on others:
Self-awareness does not only benefit your child. It can benefit the people around them. Having complete view of moods and emotions can help the kids how others see. In the case of stress, they will have an idea of the ways that will help them to diversify it.
Read: 20 Activities for mindfulness in kids to live in the present moment
3) Helps them to invite the feedback
Receiving feed backs can be tricky and most of the people do not like feed backs. Kids who are self aware are more open to take the feed backs and they have the zeal to learn from the feed backs.
4) They have confident in their own ability:
Self aware kids have more confidence in their ability. Getting to know themselves helps them to analyze their strengths thereby helps them to have confident over what they do. They can determine what should be done to finish the task.
Read: 10 Tips how to build a confidence in child
5) Helps to have better relationships:
Child with no Self-awareness may find difficulty to participate in the social settings. Self-aware kids are likely to build good relations as they do not keep fake personality. They are likely to have the less-conflict as the do not hide themselves.
6) Helps to have grip over the each moment:
When the kids tend to hold back tightly to the wrong doings, they miss the liveliness of the present moment. Self-aware kids know the things that hurt them and they do not keep with them again. They are strong enough to move on even after the negative experiences having hope on their own ability.
7) Can build healthy boundaries:
Having clear view of the boundaries helps kids know what to do and to what extent. This can be cleared by asking the questions to themselves. Once it is done they can restructure their boundaries.
8) Helps them to rectify their errors:
Self-awareness helps kids to recognize and rectify their errors at the earliest. Sel-aware kids can acknowledge the errors in their school work and can make edits and adjustments.
9) They know why they do the things:
Self-aware kids know this and makes them to have pleasure in their task which in turn yields good results and helps to achieve perfection in the output.
10) Helps them to deal the social situations effectively:
self aware kids are good at the academics and the social situations. Emotional growth and self-awareness facilitates kids ability to judge their own performance and behavior and helps the to respond appropriately to the different social situations.
11) Strengthens communication skills:
Effective communication spills out when we have control and awareness of our words. Self aware kids achieve good communication as they keep and analyze the words before they speak.
12) Fosters the metacognitive skills:
Meta cognition plays a prominent role from all the dimensions of learning and life experiences. When the kids begin to gain awareness of their mental and physical states beyond the academic learning, they start to explore the questions that lead them to understand the other people’s perspective.
How to improve child’s Self-awareness?
Studies suggest that Self-awareness is the primary means of alleviating psychological distress. Teaching Self-awareness to the kids helps them to be more reflective and achieve control and command over their thoughts. Here are a few self -awareness techniques that can work well with your kindergarten and school age children
1. Teach kids how their brains work:
The belief adopted by the children towards learning and their brains affect the performance. Children are likely to develop reflexive thinking when they have the matured growth with the fixed mindset. Teach your child about the different mindsets. Model the matured mindset.
2. Allow kids to read themselves:
Give your child some space to know their interests, strengths, and weakness. Encourage them to work for their weakness while enhancing their strengths. If you have an introverted child, you don’t need to put much efforts or stand their back to make them recognize their abilities. They have plenty of time to analyze themselves as they spend most of the time alone being engaged with their own activities.
3. Encourage the kids towards the higher order thinking:
It is possible to foster the higher order thinking when the kids come to know to what extent their cognitive growth is developed. Help them to reflect their coursework in the real life. For example, make them relate the causes of the environmental pollution from the books in the real life. This increases their awareness from all the dimensions.
4. Allow them to have the free communication:
Good communication allows your child to listen when you talk. The most important thing that you should teach your child to follow during the communication is not to interrupt when the other person is talking. It may criticize their feelings. Understanding the feelings and emotions of the others is the best quality that the self-aware kid should have.
5. Make them good at predicting:
Teach your kid to identify the challenges and obstacles that they might come across before they participate in any event or the competition. Keep note of your child’s predictions and use them to discuss the possible inaccuracies after the completion of the task.
6. Be their role model:
Before you wish to make your child self-aware, you have to aware of yourself. Show your kid that you are self-aware through your every day activities. Manage to make the every day situations in a calm and positive way. Teach your child how to react towards the unpleasant and frustrating situations. If you seem to angry about the particular thing show your child that you are giving away sometime to deal it more effectively.
7. Help your child to know the feelings of others:
Utilize every day opportunities in helping your child to understand the feelings of others. Help them how their face looks like when they encounter the certain situation. Knowing the emotions of the others is the good way to help your child start identifying them inside their minds.
Show the faces of different emotions. Children who are able to identify and make the face expressions can be able to connect the emotions with the body language.
8. Teach them self evaluation:
Design a checklist determining how your child has done a specific activity. Gardening can be a best activity to provide them space for self-evaluation. Ask them to rate themselves and rate them for the same task then compare the contrasting tasks. By comparing both these evaluation results you can help them foster their self-evaluation skills.
9. Help them to become an effective problem solver:
One of the effective ways that the kids can do to enhance their Self-awareness is to become a good problem solver. When your kids face any problem instead of jumping to rescue them give them some space to handle them on their own. It does not mean to leave them in the confused state rather giving them an opportunity to exercise their skills.
Teach your kids the process for the problem solving that works effectively to crack the issue. If you kid is unable to find out the solution intervene and help them to find out the solution.
10. Arrange Play dates:
Help your child to make the playdates with their friends. This will help to overcome the child lack of Self-awareness. Before the arrival of their friends, predict their likes and dislikes. Once they arrive make your child to plan the games which they like. This activity helps the kids to make moves concerning and respecting the feelings of others.
11. Help your child learn new words for feelings:
Use the books or videos to introduce your kid words like frustrated, bored or angry. Show them pictures showing each of the expression. This can help the kids know some words about the feelings and connect their expressions with the body language.
Make your child able to speak about their feelings more than sad, mad, or happy by the time they start the school.
12. Take the benefits from the failure:
The parent’s response towards their child failure shapes their mindsets about their own intelligence. For example, if the parents respond with anxiety towards their low grades it may teach them intelligence is fixed. never mind the results praise them for their efforts. Parents who starts to focus on the learning from the poor grades can teach their kids that intelligence can be fostered.
13. Leaving them in the confusion is fine:
The act of being confused and the ability to recognize one’s lack of understanding is an important part of developing Self-awareness. Take time for the end of the day to ask their challenges. It helps to create the family culture that acknowledges confusion as an integral part of learning. This makes the kid to jump to the metacognitive processing.
14. Help your kids to test their opinions:
Ask your kids to start testing their opinions and thoughts. This can be done by replacing the full stops and exclamations with the question marks. Tell your child that it does not mean to question every time and it should be limited to certain things at which they are doubtful.
15. Help your kid to work out of comfort zone:
No parent wants to push their child into uncomfortable situations. But, understand that this is temporary and it is fine to make kids make kids come out of the comfort zone. Keeping everything ready for your child is not always the good idea.
Coming out of the comfort zone gives kids a chance to explore, solve the challenges and break down the frontier. This can also give kids a chance to think what they are and analyze their surroundings.
16. Teach them when to take the decisions:
Depression and the feeling of being unlucky make kids feel that they can not do anything right and it furthers adds mask to their thoughts. Tell your child never to take the decisions in the bad mood as it takes control over the brain and makes them to lose sight over the good part of their life.
Good moods also make us unconscious of things we do sometimes and it doesn’t mean that good moods are bad. Help them to find out the equilibrium state.
17. Let your kids know that their feelings are important:
Treating your child in such away that their feelings are not important may make them feel bad of their feelings and emotions. Validate their mood depressing feelings and assure that you are there to fix them. This can help your child understand that their feelings matter and you are there to support them.
Take out some time after their school to talk about their feelings throughout the day. Explain your child that thoughts and emotions will help them to know how other people feel.
18. Ask them never hesitate to take help and feedback:
Knowing the challenges and asking for the help are the best components of the self-awareness. Most of the kids struggle with when to seek for the help. Tell your child that seeking for help is fine and try not to stand their back till they ask for help.
Self-awareness activities for children:
Play time provides a great opportunity for the children to enhance their self-awareness skills and they are the best way to help them develop command over themselves and sense over the feelings of others. Finding the self-awareness activities depend on the interests of each child.
Here are a few activities that help kids to foster their self-awareness:
1) Play games that require collaboration and some communication:
Collaboration cannot come on its own. It can be acquired through communication and frequent practice. Collaborative thinking is the pillar for self-awareness and can be achieved by playing some games.
Games like New Super Mario Bros U or Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate can help to make the reserved kids fit into the group settings by enhancing their social skills and the relationships. Edmodo is another educational kid-safe platform where the kids can share and discuss their content.
2) Solo exercises and sports:
Allow your kids to do exercises and practice sports on their own. This helps them to bridge the communication with themselves and they get to know their body language. This increases their observation time with themselves and helps them to analyze how they interact with the world.
3) Conscious breathing:
Self-awareness comes from the mind and body connection that can be achieved by mindful meditation and conscious breathing. Staccato of shallow and short breaths is the best way that helps kids to interact with themselves. Ask your kids to breathe through the nose into the stomach and make their exhaling slightly longer than their inhaling period. this keeps their body and mind relaxed and calm.
4) Brainwriting:
Brainstorming is the basic element of the self-awareness. Brainwriting encourages kids to come up with more ideas. Allow the kids to brainstorm on their own and write it down on the sticky note before taking the decision. This increases the sense of responsiveness in kids.
5) Ask your child to teach you about a game or app:
Making the kids to teach is the best way to foster their self-awareness. Ask you child to teach you a game or app that they enjoy most. This boosts their observational ability and teaches them how to move to fulfill the needs and demands of the other people.
6) Get your child into the family games:
Family games are the great way to introduce taking turns, cooperation, and a great way to have quality and screen free time with your kids. Include some board games in your family play time to keep your kids entertained.
It is very easy to enhance the self-awareness in kids when the balance between digital and real-life connections is achieved.
7) Mirror Play:
Install a full length unbreakable mirror inside the home to enhance their Self-awareness. Make your baby to have the interaction with their reflection for several times a day. Place your toddler in front of the mirror and make them to watch their reactions.
8) Pictures and videos:
Self-awareness of your infant can be fostered by showing their photos and videos. Keep an album filled with the photos of your family members including your child and point out the people in the album. You can also capture the video while your child is doing some daily activities and make your child to watch the video.
9) Painting:
Painting is the best activity that helps kids to work with their inner feelings. Encourage your child to put their views on the paper in the form of art when they observe something. Different colors can make them to express their feelings without the use of words. It can also help kids to enhance their hand-eye coordination.
In conclusion, help the kid from the childhood to get into the right attitude. Make your kid in charge of their emotions and feelings and good at the perception. Kids tend to pick up most of their skills from the parents and help them to model good attitudes by incorporating them in your daily life.
