Self-Awareness

A concept related to self-esteem is self-awareness. It emerges between fifteen and eighteen months and is the realization that one's existence and behavior are separate from other people and things. The roots of self-esteem begin in infancy with the form of attachment. Attachment is the strong, warm ties we have with the special people in our lives. When children have a healthy attachment to a parent, the attachment serves as the beginning of self-esteem as children learn they're safe with the parent who they have a healthy attachment to.

The idea of self-concept is defined as an individual's awareness of a person's identity from others. It's during infancy children develop a sense of their separate outlook different to their environment and others but also a sense of ability to influence others and their environment.

When my child was this age she had a healthy attachment to me which helped contribute to her healthy self-esteem. Where she knew she could be herself, that she would be taken care of and loved and supported this helped her have the self-esteem to try new things even when she was scared. She was scared to start preschool but as we talked about it, what to expect, about the friends she would find this helped relieve the anxiety she had about starting preschool.

My child's self-esteem grew as the learned that it was all right to have a different point of view from me. My child liked to sleep with books at night. Each night she picked out 2-3 books to sleep with and she would do it at nap time too. My point of view was that the books be on the book shelf while she slept but I respected her identity that is different than mine and allowed her to pick 2-3 books to sleep with. This helped develop her self-esteem as she learned her point of view would be respected and she would be allowed to make choices according to her point of view and those choices would within reason be respected. This helped her realize she could influence me and the environment she slept in.

It's not always easy to develop this part of self-esteem. We as parents think we don't want our children to do something like sleep with their books however, my point of view was always do I have a legitimate reason to tell my child no. If I didn't I wouldn't tell her no but I would possibly put a limit on it such as picking no more than 3 books to sleep with. When children know they can control their environment in this way and influence parents and siblings in such a way it gives them the control over their lives that they need but also realizing their parents are in charge.

Self-Esteem vs Self-Image

Self-esteem is the awareness that children make about their overall self-worth. This is based on children's growing insights of who they are and being able to define themselves. For example, children become aware of the things they are good at whether that be organizing, gardening or playing a sport. These insights about what they are good at help them develop who they become and how they define themselves. The development of these talents help build a child's self-esteem. For example, my child has always been good at art so I helped her develop this talent by having her take art classes and having art supplies in the home. As her skills developed so did her self-esteem. Her realizing that being able to do art was an insight into who she is also helped her develop who she is. She realized one of things I am is an artist.

Self-image is the view each one of us has about ourselves  and it's continually developing. It affects the changing interactions between people and people's social and physical environment. Self-image is neither positive or negative. Francis Wardle established an interactive model that self-image is based on. The model is: the individual, the individual's interaction with the environment, the response of the environment to the individual and their interpretation of the response.

This means a child's temperament affects who they are, the environment they are raised in effects it, and the way they respond to the environment affects who a child is. For example, some children are better off with a nanny than in a child care setting because they as the individual child may have a temperament that works better with a one-on-one situation than in a child care setting. The environment of the child care setting may be too fast and cause a child to feel like they are lost. This will cause the response of the environment to the child to be one where the child doesn't get the one-on-one attention they need and therefore their interpretation of the response is, "I won't be taken care of here and don't feel safe here." Therefore, a nanny situation is the better choice for the child. The child's self-image of themselves saw a child care situation as an environment they wouldn't be safe or taken care of and contributed to this being a setting that was not good for the child.

As the child grows and learns more about themselves and develops a healthy self-esteem their self-image will grow and change along with it.

How Emotions Influence Moral Development

There are two ways that emotions influence moral development. They are: First we feel guilt when we do something wrong or defy authority. For example, the first time a child cheats in school they feel guilty for cheating. They feel guilty because they know cheating is wrong and they've defied authority because they know the teacher and probably the parent will be mad and give out a consequence for cheating.

The second way that emotions influence moral development is we feel good when we've followed the rules and behaved in a socially approprate way. So, if a child's parent tells them not to go be part of the group after school that is going to cause a riot over a racial issue and the child goes home after school they feel good for following the rules and doing what the parent asked.

The emotion of guilt and being proud of oneself influence moral development as the child either feels good about themselves for following the rules or feels guilt over their poor choice. Other emotions such as happy, sad or frustrated also help develop moral development as children make choices and then deal with whatever emotion the choice leaves them feeling.

Four Components to Emotions

The primary emotions are joy, anger, sadness and fear and other emotions develop from these.Children's emotional self-awareness, their understanding of other people's feelings and their ability to manage what they feel is what emotional intelligence is. Feelings can be felt, expressed, acted on and thought about. Feelings are how we react to experiences and help us organize and make sense of our world.

There are four components to emotions. The first one is trigger events. An example of a trigger event is when a child bites. For example, I had a child in the first child care center I worked in who would bite every time she got enclosed or felt enclosed.The enclosure of other children or even if she felt enclosed triggered her to bite. As a result I kept an eye on her throughout the day and noticed how many children were around her at any given time. When a certain amount of children were around her I would either remover her from the situation and take her to a different area or I would remove a certain number of the other children from around her and give them a different activity to do. This helped her control her emotions and kept the emotion of feeling enclosed and the need to bite under control and in most cases stopped the biting.

The second component to emotions is physical response. An example of a physical response is to cringe at something unpleasant or frightening or to flinch in surprise or pain. We've all done this just probably not thought of it as expressing emotion. Where something can make us cringe, flinch or frighten us though, those are all emotions and the response to the emotion is the cringe or flinch.

The third component to emotion is the expressive way we respond. An expressive way to respond to an emotion is when someone smiles when a person brings them flowers or someone rolls their eyes when someone is dramatic. Again, we've all expressed our emotions this way but we tend to think of it as a reaction instead of an expression. However, just the action of bringing flowers is a way to show someone they love them or feel sad for the death of someone we then express the emotion we feel at this gesture by smiling, hugging or thanking the person.

The last way component of emotion is a cognitive response. A person has a cognitive response to an emotion when they engage in self-talk. For example, if a child has to give a presentation in class and they are telling themselves everything will be fine and there is no need to worry or be afraid, they're using cognitive abilities to determine what emotion to feel and to regulate their emotions.

As parents help children work through their emotions this is a good place to start. It helps a parent know what why the child is choosing to express their emotions and can then help them not only regulate their emotions but help them express that emotion in a healthy, non-violent way.

2 Types of Strategies For Coping With Stressful Situations

Self- regulation skills are critical in effectively dealing with stressors after they've occurred. There are two types of strategies for coping with stressful situations. They are emotion focused coping and problem focused coping. Emotion focused coping is a strategy that involves regulation or management of negative emotions such as fear or anger. For example, when my child was eight we moved from one state to another which meant she'd be going to a different school and wouldn't know anyone. So I helped her work on emotion focused coping by listening to the reasons she was fearful and then gave her suggestions of how to deal with the fear. I told her it was normal she felt the way she did so I didn't minimize or belittle the way she felt and then I told her to ask questions of people who sat beside her such as whether they liked the teacher or a particular subject. These questions were ice breaker questions she felt comfortable asking because they didn't ask any personal questions they were just general questions and it helped her find friends in her class.

Problem solving coping is strategies that involve setting goals that include behavioral and attention regulation strategies that resolve a stressful situation. An example of problem solving coping is when a child may feel stressed because of the amount of homework they have. When my child was feeling this I helped her deal with it by helping her prioritize. I asked her what assignments were due first, which ones required research before being able to do them and I helped her make a list and put the things due first at the top and on down so that she prioritized the assignments and had a list of everything she needed to due so she wouldn't forget anything and could cross them off as she did them which helped her feel less overwhelmed because she was trying to keep it all straight in her head. Once it was out of her head and on paper it helped her feel less stress. The example of the homework is a strategy that involves a goal, the effort to achieve the goal and resolved a stressful situation. The next time the child is in this situation they can do the same thing on their own without help or they may just need to talk it out out loud with the parent to make sure it all makes sense.

Both situations help build a child's self-regulation as they learn to deal with their emotions in a healthy way and learn to problem solve and be able to do both on their own.