Self-awareness of children is a very important characteristic. I strongly believe in intuitive parenting, which means that every parent knows his child best. But there are moments in life, when some extra information is needed. You can’t know everything. And sometimes you struggle. And it’s totally normal. Every child is different. Every situation is unique. That’s why I’ve decided to gather some useful information about easy and effective ways on developing self-awareness in children.
What You will find here?
Here you will find some knowledge as: when does it start to develop; what is the importance of it and a few tips how to improve your child‘s self-confidence and self-awareness. You may some of it have been heard or maybe something will be new for you here. Still, I hope you find it useful and interesting.
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When does kids self-awareness start to develop?
It‘s said that children self-awareness occurs around 1-3 years. Of course, it has a few stages of developing. But the main change starts when kids begin to know their own name, when they look in the mirror and realizes themselves. They also start getting their own likes, dislikes, they clarify their needs and wishes. May you have already noticed when they start screaming “It’s mine”. Well, if all of it happens, the stage of self-awareness development has already started.
It’s also worth to mention, that self-awareness is a long journey. It’s not only a time-framed path of kids’ development, it’s something that lasts long years even if you are already an adult. But the thing is that the foundation of children’s development is a self-awareness. It starts developing from early stages of their lives. And it’s a crucial moment. This is the reason why parents should pay big attention to this characteristic progress.
The importance of self-awareness in Children
According to Amanda Morin (the author of The Everything Parent’s Guide to Special Education), strong self-awareness skills help children:
- recognize their strengths and challenges;
- figure out what they need to do to complete a task;
- notice mistakes in schoolwork and make edits or changes;
- understand and talk about feelings;
- recognize other people’s needs and feelings;
- see how their behavior affects others;
- have a growth mindset.
That’s why it is so important to pay attention to children development and help them to create the foundation of their own self-awareness.
Psychologists say that “self-esteem has a significant prospective impact on real-world life experiences and that high and low self-esteem are not mere epiphenomena of success and failure in important life domains“ (more about it you can read here).
Tips On How To Improve Your Child's Self-Awareness?
Here are 5 tips how to improve child’s self-awareness development with parents help:
- Have you already read about the seven “C’s” of resilience? It‘s about competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping and control. Find out more about it here.
- Routines with your baby. Routine helps kids feel more confident and safer. It helps them feel in control of the world.
- Playing with your kids. The play has the main role in early stages of your kid’s life. It promotes healthy child development and nevertheless, it maintains strong parent-child bonds.
- Help them overcome obstacles and challenges. Some super cool tips how to empower your child you will find here.
- Express yourself: Model self-verbalization skills by expressing your thoughts and problem-solving strategies aloud. You may already know that children are the best observers and they learn from examples. That‘s why parents play a big role here.
Self-Awareness in Children And Positive Thinking
Self-awareness and positive thinking are extremely closely related. Every person, both adult and child, has negative thoughts. And the truth is, that people need to be self-aware in order to leave the circle of negativity. The same thing happens to children. Especially, if they are negatively affected for some reason from their environment. That’s why the need of teaching children about self-awareness is so important. It’s the only way to help them to stay calm and see things from different perspective, to solve problems instead of avoiding them, to train them to hear themselves, to understand as well as accept emotions they face.
We need to help them to create positive state of mind. This is the key element that helps to achieve goals, believe in themselves during the journey of the life.
