We often talk about our children being unconfident, timid, doing things without a goal, and not being able to work well with others.
We have focused all our attention on asking children to be bold, encouraging children to be confident, and helping them set goals, while ignoring the most important step is to help children know themselves.
Self-awareness is something we have to learn all our lives, and most people will have a clear self-perception when they reach adulthood, but before adulthood, self-knowledge is important to "what kind of person will we become in the future?" "Choosing what kind of people to associate with" will have an impact.
-Self-Awareness-
Self-knowledge is literally a person's perception of themselves.
Simply put, self-knowledge refers to an individual's understanding and cognition of himself, the understanding and regulation of his emotions and feelings, and the ability to self-evaluate and self-plan.
This includes recognizing one's own strengths and weaknesses, consciously and adjusting one's emotions, intentions, motivations, tempers and desires, and self-discipline and reflection on one's own behavior.
Self-awareness can be said to be the most important basic ability in a person's life.
-The formation and development of self-knowledge-
Self-perception takes on different faces at different ages.
Self-cognitive ability is a kind of advanced thinking ability, so there is no self-knowledge at birth, but with the development of the brain, the improvement of cognitive level, with the increase of social interaction and gradually established.
The formation and development of self-knowledge can be roughly divided into four stages:
0-2 years old No self-awareness
According to Piaget's cognitive theory, children before the age of 2 are still in the sensorimotor stage, they mainly perceive the world through innate conditioned reflexes and actions, and only have some very simple thinking skills, so children before the age of 2 are unable to form self-knowledge.
Scientists have designed a simple quiz to test whether a child has self-awareness:
They put a red dot on the child's nose and put them in front of the mirror. If the child has self-awareness and can distinguish himself, he will recognize himself in the mirror, and will notice the red dots on his nose and try to wipe them off.
After testing, smaller babies are unable to identify themselves, and most babies will be obviously aware of the red dots on their faces when they are 18-24 months old and touch it.
2-6 years old Self-awareness budding
Formal thinking stage. At this time, when we observe the child, we will find that the child begins to form a preliminary self-understanding, they begin to say "I" to distinguish others, become disobedient, and begin to do their own thing.
Although children around the age of 2 begin to develop self-awareness, they do not develop self-awareness.
Because their sense of self is just beginning to emerge, they can't distinguish themselves from the outside world very well. They often see the outside world as an extension of themselves, thinking that the outside world revolves around him.
For a simple example, at this time, the child will take what he likes, and it is more common to grab other children's toys, no matter who it is, because he cannot distinguish between others and himself very well, and he does not understand this "ownership" problem.
6-12 years old Self-awareness is initially established
According to Piaget's theory of cognitive development, children aged 6-12 have further developed their intelligence and entered the stage of specific operations, where they can process and analyze existing appearances and symbols to draw logical conclusions.
This establishes a physiological basis for the child's further self-cognitive development.
At the same time, at this time, the focus of children's lives began to change, from the previous family-centered to now schools and classmates-centered, and the increase in social activities put forward new requirements for children's self-awareness.
Children need to further orient themselves so that they can better distinguish between each other and what kind of person they really are.
At this stage, children are more specific in their self-perception, and they no longer rely solely on external characteristics to distinguish, they begin to pay attention to inner psychological qualities.
For example, when a 5-year-old child describes it, he may say "run fast and is good at drawing", but when he describes himself at the age of 10, he will no longer only have these external traits, but also add psychological traits of "friendly, helpful, and good at thinking", obviously the description of a 10-year-old child is more comprehensive and more abstract than that of a 5-year-old.
After the age of 12, the basic establishment of self-awareness
After the age of 12, the child's intelligence is further developed, entering the stage of formal operation, and can skillfully use various logical deduction reasoning skills, and the thinking ability is close to that of adults.
At this stage, the child's self-perception has two characteristics:
The first is to objectively evaluate yourself based on reality.
The development of the intellect allows children to see the world with a critical eye. In the past, parents and teachers believed what they said, but now it is different, they will think about whether others are right, and then absorb it after analysis and sorting.
That is to say, in the past, the child's self-perception was greatly affected by external evaluations such as parents and teachers, but now they have begun to think independently, reducing their dependence on external evaluation and evaluating more based on the objective facts he is exposed to.
The second is to be more abstract and precise in understanding oneself.
With the improvement of thinking ability, children's abstract thinking ability is highlighted, they are not just concerned about the specific characteristics of the outside, but more concerned about the internal quality of abstraction, so their understanding of themselves is more accurate and more concrete.
For example, children in this age group are likely to describe themselves based on their ideology (say, I'm an environmentalist) rather than specific physiological traits (I run fast).
At this stage, children's understanding of themselves becomes more and more precise, and self-knowledge begins to be basically established.
In summary, the development of self-awareness has gone through the following 5 processes:
From simple to complex
Young children have only a general sense of self, and as they age, their self-perception becomes more detailed and complex.
From inconsistency to consistency
Younger children can change their self-evaluation at any time, but older children remain relatively stable.
From concrete to abstract
Younger children focus on external, visible features, while older children focus more on invisible, psychological aspects.
From optimism to reality
When young children conduct self-evaluations, the description is often beautiful, while the older children describe it more comprehensively, with both disadvantages and advantages.
From absolute to relative
Younger children do not pay attention to themselves and do not consider others, while older children describe themselves in the comparison of others.
-How to improve self-awareness-
We provide parents with a few suggestions, these seemingly small details in family education, if you can stick to it as a habit in the communication between parents and children, you can effectively help children analyze themselves and know themselves.
Tell your child about their home country, hometown and family.
Tell your child about the family story and the story of his upbringing.
By telling stories of family members and grandparents, children can learn about the history of the family and strengthen their identity.
Children also enjoy listening to stories from their younger days and learning about their own history.
A photo album can become a wonderful moment for parents and children to recall, share and communicate, which is conducive to enhancing children's sense of belonging. A toy, a piece of clothing are good things to relive the old days.
Adjust your child's awareness of their own behavior and abilities.
In setting goals, we can easily see whether the child's cognition of his own ability is too high or too low, at this time we do not have to interfere, but in the process of the child's implementation of the plan, by analyzing and thinking about the results of his behavior with him, so that the child has an accurate understanding of himself.
Through the adjustment of the child, will be better able to make their own goals and plans to achieve, so that the goal to achieve the rate of improvement will naturally stimulate the child's self-confidence, and create opportunities for improvement in all aspects of ability.
Encourage self-reflection and self-evaluation.
Parents don't always evaluate their children, when the child completes something, try to let the child talk about how he sees it, what matters is how the child sees himself and what he does.
For example, at night, before going to bed, briefly review the day's activities with your child, and reflect on what you are satisfied with and what you are not satisfied with.
In the process, parents also reflect on certain things about themselves, such as "Maybe I should do this in a different way", which can help children introspect in this way.
Help your child recognize their own psychological feelings.
In the process of chatting with your child, communicate with your child about his favorite, most annoying, most unhappy and most fulfilling things.
Communicate your child's feelings as he watches TV and movies and gets some information.
Let the child express his feelings, and we need to help the child summarize and summarize his feelings, so that he can better understand himself, and gradually he can make his own favorite choices, the choices he needs.
Human existence is a system, human growth is a process, and understanding oneself in the process of understanding the world is a beautiful journey.
Children are eager to try at the beginning of this journey, and we are also in this journey, let us help children know themselves in this kind of support, but also the process of us to know ourselves better and understand life.