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Social & Emotional Development
Developing Self-Awareness
WiseTip: SE-AWA-M0818-G01A

While bathing, changing or feeding your child, play naming games and name parts of their body.

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  1. New Jersey Council for Young Children. (2013). New Jersey Birth to Three Early Learning Standards. Retrieved from: https://www.nj.gov/education/ece/guide/standards/birth/standard s.pdf

8-18 months
Caregiving
WHY IT MATTERS

Self-awareness develops in stages and in tandem with language use.

Self-awareness begins in infancy and develops in stages. The development of self-awareness in the early years is revealed in layered processes. These processes expand from body perception in action to the evaluative sense of self as perceived by others.

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  1. Rochat, P. (2003). "Five levels of self-awareness as they unfold early in life" (PDF). Consciousness and Cognition. 12 (4): 717–731. doi:10.1016/s1053-8100(03)00081-3. (Level III)
Describing the body parts helps children develop the vocabulary and creates awareness of their body parts as they are moving in space (
proprioceptive sense

Proprioceptive Sense - Reaching is largely controlled by proprioception – the sense of movement and location in space, arising from stimuli within the body.1 Proprioceptive sense helps us to understand how body parts are in relation to each other, how to coordinate movements and to use the right amount of force to complete tasks.

1. Berk, L. E. (2013). Child development (9th ed.). New Jersey, USA: Pearson Education.

).

Young children develop a sense of self during interactions with others through moment-by-moment experiences of emotional communication. Babies learn about themselves as they learn about the feelings of others. Hence, increased opportunity to engage in cooperative social interaction and exposure to talk about mental states facilitates the development of social understanding.

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  1. Wittmer, D.S. & Petersen, S.H. (2005) Infant and Toddler Development and Responsive Programme Planning: a relationship-based approach. Columbus: Pearson.