What is self-awareness?
Self-awareness can be characterized as having a sense of one’s character and personality. It also helps to understand and cope with emotions.
As one of the core competencies of social emotional learning, the Collaboration for Academic and Social Emotional Learning defines self-awareness as, “The ability to accurately recognize one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior. The ability to accurately assess one’s strengths and limitations, with a well-grounded sense of confidence, optimism, and a ‘growth mindset.”
When children are self-aware they will be able to:
Recognize emotions: The ability to recognize emotions helps children to regulate emotions like anxiety and anger.
Identify triggers: They will be aware of the kind of things that trigger negative emotions. This will help to behave in a more responsible manner the next time.
Empathy: They will be able to empathize with others and understand different perspectives. This makes a big difference in conflict resolution and building positive relationships.
Strengths and Weakness; Children will be able to identify what their strengths and weaknesses are. This awareness will help those make necessary changes for their own personal growth.
Decision-making: Children who are self-aware will be able to make better decisions that are important for their own growth and development.
When children lack self-awareness, they will have a difficult time with conflict resolution, social awareness, behavior management and people skills. They will also lack confidence and self-esteem if they are not aware or do not understand what their strengths are.
How can children build self-awareness?
Acknowledgement: Parents can help young children understand themselves better through conversations. Talking about what’s difficult and what’s easy for a child will help them plan their days better. This way parents can work together to help children develop learning strategies that’s good for them. Older children may begin to understand their strengths and weaknesses and parents can help them to acknowledge it. This can be done orally or encouraging the child to make a list of their strengths and weaknesses.
Build Perspective: Although it’s important for children to understand their weakness, it is also important for parents to help them see things from a larger perspective. Helping children understand that their weakness, like a learning difficulty, is just a small part of who they are will help them cope with daily challenges better. It also important for parents to celebrate and help their children nurture their personal strengths
Have open conversations: It would help children when parents encourage open, inclusive conversations at home. Letting children know that having a weakness is normal and it is not taboo to talk about, will help them deal with these difficulties better.
Nurture passions: Parents can take the initiative to help children recognize what they are good at and help them nurture a passion. If children are complimented at school about their work, acknowledge it in front of them. Plan activities for them based on their strengths. When other people recognize their passion and value them, they begin to be more aware of themselves. They also begin to value themselves more.
Have adventures: Encourage children to explore and experiment. Guiding them and accompanying them on adventures, will make them more enthusiastic about learning new things. They will learn to overcome the fear of failure and the fear of the unknown. This will lead them on an enriching learning journey that will help them grow into more confident individuals.
The KYC Module at Learner Circle
To help parents understand their children better and help children build self-awareness, Learner Circle has curated a KYC (Know-your-child) module which is based on Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory. The Module is essentially a tool that will aid in understanding dominant traits and intelligence in a personality.
The Multiple Intelligence Theory is popular among education experts as it helps teachers develop learning pathways for children in classrooms. Being able to understand and identify a child’s intelligence type will not only help to nurture a passion but also develop ideal learning environments for a child to experience growth on the learning curve.
The KYC Module by Learner Circle has been developed with the assistance and guidance from child experts. The module is basically a personality assessment that will highlight the top 3 intelligence types for a particular child. The assessment has been curated in a simple vibrant visual that is easy for children to comprehend and attempt.
We urge all parents to encourage their children to take this assessment which will throw light on dominant traits and personality types. It is an ideal guideline to understand a child’s strengths’ and to help them nurture it into a passion.
Learner Circle has also developed a wide range of courses to help children explore and discover themselves. We often reiterate that children do not have to excel in every passion they pursue. It is more important for children to have fun while they learn. For didn’t Sigmund Freud once say ‘Play is a catharsis that allows children to express their feelings and dispel negative emotions to replace them with positive ones’
Please do go to this link to try out the test: https://www.learnercircle.in/kyc
Let’s encourage our children to discover themselves. Let us lead them onto learning through adventure and play. Let them play, learn and discover.
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