Awareness in children

Self-Awareness Skills to Help Kids Be Their Best - HeyKiddo™

Self-awareness is the foundation for growth in early childhood and all throughout life. As children learn more about themselves, they are better able to understand how their thoughts and feelings affect their actions. Self-aware people have a strong understanding of who they are, what drives them, and where they want to go in life. This blog post will discuss skills that help kids develop self-awareness so that they can grow into competent, confident adults.

A self-aware person understands their own identity and values, how they are different from others around them. They understand themselves on a personal level as well as an interpersonal one. Children learn about these skills in school where it is important to work with classmates on group projects or play games cooperatively. Collaboration and communication allow kids to experience what it’s like working together while checking each other for understanding; this can help children become more aware of when someone else does not express something clearly or is struggling to complete the project successfully which helps build empathy and encourages collaboration among peers.

Help Kids Understand Their Strengths

When we talk about developing self-awareness, we mean that people have knowledge of who they are including both strengths and limitations—and also know how to use those strengths to help them reach their goals. This includes skills to recognize how their personality adds up to a well-grounded sense of confidence and purpose. 

Developing self-awareness helps kids understand their own needs, identify the skills they need to be successful in life, manage emotions responsibly, achieve goals by setting specific objectives for themselves that are realistic but stretch them, maintain a strong social network through responsible participation in activities both inside and outside school (i.e., sports teams), and develop empathy towards others–especially peers who may have different abilities or backgrounds than theirs.

Emotional Awareness and Self-Awareness Go Hand in Hand

Self-awareness skills are key to emotional awareness and can help children develop empathy for those who may have different abilities or backgrounds than theirs. For example, recognizing that they might be feeling things such as anger, frustration, anxiety, nervousness, boredom etc., helps them take steps to manage their emotions in a responsible capacity–such as taking deep breaths when angry (or other more aggressive tactics) or trying not to let themselves get lost in negative thoughts about the future. And talking openly with teachers and parents about what they feel is helpful too because it gives adults insight into how their child feels on any given day. 

There are lots of good habits you can develop to increase emotional wellness as a social skill for kids. The first step is to start noticing and naming emotions. You can ask your child, “When you’re [emotion], what does it feel like in your body?” If they’re unsure, model it by telling them about your experience with particular emotions. For instance, you might say, “When I’m mad it feels like my face gets red and it feels like I have a lump in my throat.”

Mindfulness Matters in Self-Awareness

Staying focused on the present moment can help kids become aware of their senses in any given situation. Thoughts have an impact on emotions too. Often times kids get stuck in negative thoughts about the future or feel guilty over things they have done in the past.  They may also have negative thoughts about the way they look or feel. A mindful approach to these difficult emotions can help kids learn how to accept their feelings and think more clearly.

If you’re looking for a few mindfulness activities with your child, here are some ideas:

-Mindful breathing (Diaphragmatic breaths) 

–Body scans: Place one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly and take three deep breaths in and out as you focus solely on that sensation 

-Breathing Buddies – Sit back to back with each other while taking turns guiding the breath of each other by counting length of inhale/exhales or placing hands around upper rib cage; this is great fun for groups!

Growing Kids Need a Growth Mindset

How your child approaches a new challenge (or even facing an old one!) can have a big impact on their future success. This is called mindset, and a growth mindset–sometimes called a flexible mindset–helps build resilience as a social skill for kids. Changing your mindset can be as simple as reminding your child that they can learn new things when they face a setback at school. 

The key is to develop a growth mindset for your child. A typical, fixed mindset will only look at positives and negatives in situations. For example, “I got an A on my test today…I’m so smart.” The positive attributes (smart) are unquestioned under this type of thinking–they’re the norm. But with a growth mindset, you don’t just accept that because you got an A it means you’re smarter than other kids who didn’t get As. You can also consider how hard you worked or what methods led to the success: did they study more? Did they have better notes from class? Are there things about themselves that may make them smarter than others without realizing it.

A growth mindset is a belief that people can improve their intelligence and skills through effort. This means instead of seeing challenges as personal battles between your child and the task, they see it as an opportunity to learn! As difficult as learning new things may seem when you are first starting out in school, it gets easier and more enjoyable with time. Your child will feel proud of themselves for working hard at something even if they don’t do well at first because they know they can get better without comparing themselves to others.

How HeyKiddo™ Can Help

Kids need parents, teachers and other caring adults to help them learn how they can build healthy relationship skills now and for a lifetime. HeyKiddo™ Talk and HeyKiddo™ Huddle are designed to give parents and teachers everything they need, when they need it, to build lifelong social, emotional and leadership skills at home or in the classroom. Download our Stress Management Toolkit today to get started and learn how you can help build these important skills at home or at school!

Tags: decision-making, educating, making decisions, making plans, parenting, resilience, self-awareness

What is self-awareness and why is it important — Better Kids

What does it mean to be self-aware? While self-awareness can be characterized as having a sense of one’s personality and character it is also important for understanding one’s 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 we are self-aware, we are able to:

• recognize our emotions, which is the first step for regulating our emotions. Indeed, how can we regulate our anxiety, anger or sadness if we are not able to recognize those emotions in ourselves in the first place?

• identify our triggers, which helps us better plan how to react next time and make more responsible decisions regarding our behavior and our emotions

• empathize with others and take on another person’s perspective, which helps us resolve conflicts and build positive relationships.

When we lack self-awareness, we have a harder time understanding and improving our reactions, thereby undermining our self-management, social awareness, relationships skills, and responsible decision making. 

I truly recognized self-awareness myself a year ago as I was finishing my first year of graduate school. I had spent some time identifying my strengths and weaknesses but it wasn’t until I spent some time navigating through my emotions and the situations that were behind them that I realized what it meant to be self-aware. Recognizing when and why I was anxious or frustrated helped me feel more confident that I could use healthy coping strategies when reconciling these big emotions. 

Building this skill will look differently for children as they are still developing and learning how to put words to the difficult emotions they may feel at times. Many children, such as the preschoolers I taught, often express big emotions on an impulse and don’t have time to realize why they are upset or angry. The first step as an educator or parent is to establish the importance of acknowledging our emotions, even if it is after they have already occurred. The danger in not acknowledging them is we forget about the reasons why we felt that way making it more difficult to find coping strategies that work best for us and anyone else involved.

Here is Jenn being self-aware:

One of Jenn’s classmates didn’t want to help her with a puzzle and she began to frown and feel warm. She realized she was angry because of how her body was feeling. Rather than getting angry at the classmate she decided to use her coping strategies and take a few deep breaths. She thought about the situation from her classmate’s perspective and realized he was already playing with someone else. Jenn empathized with her classmate and decided to find someone who was playing by themselves.

Without self-awareness, here is what Jenn’s example might have looked like:

When one of Jenn’s classmates didn’t want to help her with a puzzle, she began to frown and feel warm. She pushed her puzzle aside, crossed her arms, and yelled at her classmate for being mean. Jenn continued to pout and blame her classmate for her bad mood.

Here is Joey being self-aware:

Joey was having a hard time with a homework assignment. His mom was getting dinner ready and he didn’t want to interrupt her to ask for help. He realized being frustrated wasn’t going to help him think through the assignment clearly. Joey remembered he had another assignment for a class he was doing well in and was confident he could finish before dinner. After dinner, Joey’s mom could help him with the assignment he had been struggling with.

Without self-awareness, here is what Joey’s example might have looked like:

Joey was having a hard time with a homework assignment. His mom was getting dinner ready but he interrupted her by telling her he needed help with assignment and it couldn’t wait. When Joey’s mom suggested he work on a different assignment until after dinner, he became more frustrated and crumpled up his homework, storming off to his room.

There are many positive outcomes to being more self-aware. We feel more grounded, confident, and efficient. These are important for children as they begin strengthening other skills such as establishing positive relationships and making responsible decisions. As with any social emotional skill, the progress we make with self-awareness may not be linear. However, there are some milestones we can track for ourselves and our children to recognize the positive results of being more self-aware.

• Growth mindset:

When we are self-aware we are able to recognize our strengths and weaknesses. This knowledge helps us to set goals for ourselves. We know where we have to room to grow and that’s a good thing! Our strengths help us feel confident in our ability to improve on our weaknesses. If we weren’t self-aware we may fall into the trap of having a fixed mindset in which we are less likely to take opportunities to grow. As parents, we can model this for our children. Parents can do this by learning a new skill themself or talking to their child about something they know about themselves they’d like to improve. Learning a new skill or overcoming a weakness may seem difficult but growth and comfort cannot coexist. Our self-awareness reminds us that we are capable of more than we can imagine which means we may have to step out of our comfort zone. 

• Self-confidence:

I always thought there was a secret trick to becoming more confident. I began noticing when I am more aware of my emotions I am also more confident that I can regulate them in a positive way. With my students, I noticed that when they were self-aware of the knowledge and skills they were learning they were more confident they could do similar or more challenging lessons. For example, after my students had spent some time practicing counting and recognizing numbers they were excited to play a math game using the skills they learned because they were confident in their ability to apply the skill to a new situation.

• Optimism:

Although big emotions can be overwhelming, the ability to recognize them is a positive step toward regulating them. We can help children feel optimistic about taking on these challenges whether it is a conflict that made them feel angry or a homework assignment that was frustrating. When we are self-aware we can also recognize our own thoughts: positive and, yes, the negative ones. Parents can help their children better understand how to turn negative thoughts into positive ones by sharing out loud. For example, a parent might say to their child, “I was feeling upset because it is raining and I thought we might go to the park, but I am excited to build your new puzzle with you.”

There are many activities parents can do with their child or their child can do independently to practice self-awareness. Most may take only a few minutes at the beginning of the day, during the day or end of the day. No matter when you and your child are practicing these activities it is important to remember that each one requires you to be completely present in the moment and focused on the activity.

Many guided yoga or meditation exercises help the participants to reflect on their inner selves and feel grounded in the present moment. Developing mindful habits may help guide you to be more aware of your emotions and strengths.

Journaling, whether it is in writing or drawing, is a great way for your child to express how they feel, their goals, and to reflect on their day. An example of this type of reflection is the Rose and Thorn Reflection in which your child thinks about something positive that happened in your day (your rose) and something that didn’t go well (your thorn). You can then talk to your child about if anything can be done to make their thorny situation better.

• Identify values:

Parents can help their child identify what is important to them by sharing their own values. These discussions can help children understand why they feel more strongly about certain things because it is something that is important to them.

When we are self-aware it is important to be honest with ourselves. This means acknowledging our big emotions even when they are difficult. Parents can help their children acknowledge their feelings by talking about it with them even if it is after it happened. For example, a parent might say, “I noticed you were upset earlier because you didn’t want to talk to anyone and pushed your sister’s blocks down. Would you like to talk about why you felt that way?” These conversations will help your child recognize their emotions and the behavior they showed while feeling a particular emotion. They will also help your child enrich their vocabulary so they can accurately describe the intensity of their emotion: are they feeling irritable, upset or infuriated?

Listening to our bodies and what they tell us about how they feel is a tangible practice for helping children develop self-awareness. Our bodies are a compass for how we feel, for example, when I child says “my tummy hurts” it could mean “I’m feeling anxious” or “I’m scared.” As parents, we can help our children recognize how our body is reacting based on our emotions. A parent might ask a child who is angry if they are feeling hot or if their heart is beating fast. These are called physiological reactions which are different from our behavioral reactions to emotions.

• Know your triggers:

When we are feeling angry or anxious it’s not always easy to know what caused it. Even as adults we might find ourselves responding to the question “What’s wrong?” with “I don’t know.” Some of our triggers might be more obvious than others. For example, you can help your child recognize that they feel frustrated whenever their sibling takes a toy from them. For the triggers that aren’t as obvious, you can help your child by asking questions such as, “When did you start feeling like this?” and “How long did it last for?” As our children develop their self-awareness and independence they can start asking themselves these questions to help them identify the trigger behind their emotions. They’ll discover it could be a reaction to something someone said to them or an anticipation for a stressful moment such as the first day of school.

As human beings, we all share universal needs as described by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: basic needs (food, sleep), security, belongingness and love, esteem, and self-fulfillment. When kids have big emotions, it’s helpful to teach them how to identify which of their needs are met or unmet: for example, a child might feel anxious because their need for sleep and safety is unmet, or sad because their need for love and belongingness is unmet. Identifying their unmet needs will help them brainstorm solutions.

When we are self-aware we have a good sense of who we are. This includes recognizing and acknowledging our emotions even when it is difficult. This is important for noticing how our behavior is corresponding to our emotions. Helping children to recognize and practice self-awareness will improve their confidence, growth mindset, and optimism. Awareness of who we are and how we feel is an essential first step for social emotional learning and will give children the tools they need to understand self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making.

7 Ways to Teach Mindfulness to Children

We know mindfulness is good for us. It helps us in raising our children to act sensibly and not succumb to instinctive reactions.

Mindfulness is also good for our children. Research shows that mindfulness can help children improve their ability to focus, calm down when they are upset, and make better decisions.

In short, it helps regulate emotions and focus on developing cognitive skills.

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I don't think it's necessary to ask if you want this for your children?

So where do you start? How can we teach these important skills to our children?

First...

Practice on your own. It would be difficult for you to teach ballet to children if you yourself have never danced. To truly teach mindfulness to your children, you need to practice it yourself.

You can slowly start with the practice of meditation, just 5-10 minutes a day.

Find ways to incorporate mindfulness into your daily activities. Don't let this step intimidate you - you probably already have a lot of conscious habits!

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Keep it simple

Mindfulness is a big enough word for little kids to understand so easily. Simply put, awareness is awareness. This is the ability to notice our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and everything that is happening around us and is happening right now.

Check your expectations

Do you expect mindfulness to eliminate tantrums? Calm down your restless child? Will it bring peace to the house? If so, you will most likely be disappointed. While the feeling of stillness or calmness are pleasant side effects of mindfulness, they are not the end goal.

The purpose of teaching mindfulness to our children is to give them the skills to develop awareness of their own internal and external experiences, to determine if their thoughts are "fair thoughts", to understand how emotions appear, to notice when they lose attention and to teach them to control impulses. .

It is not a panacea and it will not help to completely get rid of what is, frankly, normal childhood behavior, such as tantrums and noise, whining and arguments ...

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not interested in your lessons or classes, do not force them to take part in them. Get used to the fact that you can't always get what you want.

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Now that we are done with the introduction, here are some tips on how you can start instilling mindfulness in your children:

1. Listen to sounds

An easy way for children to practice mindfulness is to focus and listen for sounds. You can use a singing bowl, a bell, or a phone app that has sounds. Tell your children that a sound is about to be made and they should listen carefully until the sound stops (make the sound for 30 seconds to a minute).

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2. Breathing practice with a friend

It can be difficult for young children to “follow their breath”. In this video, Daniel Goleman describes a second class that does the "breathing with a friend" exercise: the student picks up a soft toy and then lies on their back and places the toy on their stomach. He watches the toy slowly rise and fall as he breathes.

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3. Make your walks mindful

One of my kids' favorite things to do in the summer is "mindful walking." We walk around our neighborhood and notice things we haven't seen before. We record one minute of walking, during which we are silent and just pay attention to the sounds around us - frogs, woodpeckers, lawn mowers. We don't even call it "mindfulness," but that's exactly what it is.

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4. Make gratitude a habit

I believe that gratitude is a fundamental part of mindfulness, it teaches our children to appreciate the abundance in their lives, instead of focusing on all the toys and sweets they crave. My family does this at dinner when we all share something we are grateful for. This is one of my favorite parts of the day.

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Help your child develop basic cognitive skills quickly and permanently with Fast ForWord software.

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5.

In I'm As Calm And Attentive As A Frog, Elin Snel encourages children to "make the weather report that best describes how they feel at the moment." Sunny, rainy, stormy, calm, windy, tsunami? This activity allows children to observe their current state without being too identified with their emotions. They cannot change the weather outside and we cannot change our emotions or feelings either. All we can change is how we treat them. “I am not a downpour, but I have noticed that it is raining. I'm not a coward, but I know sometimes I get this big feeling of fear somewhere near my throat."

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6. Make the Jar of Serenity

The Jar of Serenity is like a souvenir snow globe - shake it and watch the storm! Soon, if we sit down, breathe, and just watch the particles in the jar churn, we'll see them settle down. Our consciousness works the same way.

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7. Develop Mindful Eating

The exercise in which you consciously eat raisins or chocolate is one of the main elements of mindfulness training and is a great activity for children. You can find the 7 Minute Mindful Eating script here.

First of all, remember that the main thing is to have fun and not complicate anything. You can give your children a lot of opportunities, offer useful techniques - some of them will work for them, and some will not.

But it's interesting to experiment anyway!

Source

Mindfulness development in children

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