1. Help children to recognise and label their feelings

2. Encourage children to verbalise their feelings
3. Develop a large vocabulary of feeling words -not just the typical happy, sad, mad but a large vocabulary of emotion words.

4. Make expressing feelings part of your daily experience

5. Let children know all feelings are ok. For example, many parent’s say ‘Don’t be sad’ if their child has lost something –this teaches the child it is not ok to feel sad. Instead acknowledge the feeling by saying something like ‘Oh you lost your teddy, how do you feel?’ Or ‘Do you feel sad?’

6. Encourage your child or students to be aware of their bodies and their personal space. Teach them to be aware that standing to close to others may make them feel uncomfortable.

7. Encourage kids to notice the start of emotions. For example: What happens when we get nervous..our heart starts to beat a bit faster, When we are angry, we feel our faces getting hot and red… Each person responds differently the important thing is for children to recognise the beginning of an emotion as it is easier to change it or manage it, if needed, at that point.

Following these tips will help to develop your child's ability to know his or herself.

Self Awareness Excercises

Other exercises at home or in the classroom include:

1. Feeling board: Create a board with different shaped flowers. In the center write common feelings like happy, sad, angry. Leave one blank so children can write their own emotion or feeling if needed. On wooden pegs write children’s name. At home you can have this hanging at the door so before or after school children can peg their name on the feeling. At school, this is a great activity to start the day (it also takes attendance!). This feeling board helps promote discussion about why children are feeling a certain way and tunes us into the feelings of children. It also helps them know themselves so they notice how they are feeling.

Check out more 2. Developing this skill can also be done with a feeling thermometer which is similar to the concept above. Create a picture of thermometer numbered 1-10 and different faces with different emotions on them. Children then place the faces on the thermometer at different numbers to indicate how happy, sad, angry (or any other emotion) they are feeling. This is a great video to show young girls about body image and how our culture has distorted beauty. Quite the eye opener!