This is the fifth and final introduction in my recurring theme: social emotional learning competencies. The five areas are: self-awareness, social awareness, responsible decision making, self-management, and relationship skills.
The area of self-awareness is the focus for March.
Social awareness is "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." -CASEL 2017
Being self-aware is an important competency and one very closely tied to our behavior and interaction with others. When we are aware of our thoughts and emotions we are better able to respond in effective, responsible, and kind ways. Here's how you can support your children in developing this competency at home.
In order to support our TK-2 students with developing and growing their self-awareness, you can help your child with recognition and accurately naming emotions and feelings. Going a step further is identifying the situations or triggers which cause different emotions for your child. This leads to a perfect opportunity to plan a response in advance knowing a particular emotion is likely to be felt. For example, if frustration regularly accompanies large tasks like cleaning her room, naming the emotion and acknowledging the frustration with a large task, followed by a plan to break cleaning the room into smaller, more manageable steps will lead to a better outcome, less frustration, and a chance for celebration. Building self-awareness in our children is an excellent investment in their self-efficacy. Another component to focus on is encouraging your children to advocate for themselves by asking for help; the more language and detail in the ask, the better. Knowing personal strengths and weaknesses is a STRENGTH overall.
In supporting our older students in grades 3-5, the same areas of focus are appropriate. Older students are more developmentally ready to recognize the intensity levels of different emotions in different situations require varying responses. To use frustration again, sometimes a single deep breath is sufficient while other situations call for a complete disengagement and time to develop a response for moving forward. Your children are also beginning to realize that emotional responses change; sometimes this is because they have worked on identifying and accepting differences, developed more effective strategies for managing emotions, or even actively framing thoughts in a positive way to bring about more favorable emotions. Empathy plays a key role in that aspect. As an adult, think of being cut off in traffic . . . one's thinking can lead to anger that you were treated this way by someone inconsiderate and rude or toward empathy if you are able to think perhaps the driver had a stressful day and is overwhelmed. Your emotions will likely lead to different behaviors no different than our children.
Like all the social emotional skills we have been exploring for our students, there is a lot more to this competency. Investing in our children through deliberate practice and interaction with self-awareness will pay huge dividends in their overall development.
I hope this series of newsletters was insightful and that you have gained a takeaway or two along the journey. Our overall health, well-being, and satisfaction in life (and by default, those around us at any given moment) is directly linked to social emotional competency. Thank you for partnering with us in developing our children to be positively contributing members of our communities.
