Social awareness is a social intelligence competency that encompasses skills like empathy, sympathy and acceptance. We learn to take others’ perspectives into consideration while interacting with them. It is something we continue to hone through our adult life, adding onto it with new experiences.
In Social Emotional Learning (SEL), Social Awareness is the 3rd Competency.
Breaking down CASEL’s definition, Social Awareness is the set of abilities that are key to understanding others from:
Diverse Backgrounds
Different Cultures
Varied Contexts
This is to feel compassion for them across different settings like within family, in school, and in the community.
How Will Social Awareness Help Your Child?
A socially aware child will:
1. Take in Different Perspectives: During the early years of a child’s life their social interaction increases from parents, to family, to teachers and peers. They begin to understand their emotions and slowly open up to do the same for others. They realise that their behaviour and thoughts affect others as much as it does them. Verbal cues, body language, expressions and gestures also begin to develop meaning and help recognize others’ feelings. They begin to learn to ‘read the room.’
2. Learn to Empathise: As children begin to recognise that they are different from others and are accepting of it, they begin to build empathy. They are open to understanding not only their own feelings but also of others around them and are able to ‘walk in their shoes’. This also includes regulating their own feelings according to different contexts. This understanding, acceptance and respect of differences are the basis of social justice. Equipped with such means at a young age helps put an end to bias and discrimination and they become better communicators and collaborators.
3. Understand Cultural, Ethical & Socio-Economic Differences: When taught to be socially aware to people around, children learn empathy, kindness and mutual respect. Teaching them about different cultural norms helps them appreciate and understand that some differences are good. It helps them understand and accept others from different backgrounds. A child who understands these norms knows that skin colour does not matter, pink isn’t just for girls and that most norms should not be rigid and that it is essential to adapt.It expands their world view and diversity of experiences.
4.Creates a Sense of Belonging & Fairness: Social awareness allows children to co-exist with variety. Sharing of cultural norms and traditions is a part of most schools’ curriculum. They understand privilege and the need to stand up for others, leading the way to an equal, peaceful and positive world.
5. Better Problem Solvers: Exposure to different perspectives opens up the child’s mind which makes it easier to resolve conflicts and build healthy relationships.
How To Help Your Child Be Socially Aware?
Appreciate your Child’s Perspective: As parents, we tend to see the world and its biases through an adult point of view, putting ourselves in our children's shoes helps us diversify our perspectives. By appreciating their perspective, maybe we’ll learn something new and beautiful too.
Lead by Example: Parents tend to be role models to children. Practicing empathy and being mindful of our language while interacting with people around us could set an example for our child. Acts of kindness even to strangers will be helpful. Respect is a two-way street, being mindful of how we talk to our child, friends, relatives, partners, etc. and teaching them to do the same too, even with strangers would be a good foundation.
Diversify: Indulge in a diversity of books and movies that encourage and expose children to different perspectives and mindsets. Curated experiences and conversations with diverse people would help open up your child’s mind. Involve yourself in more cultural activities and diversify your friend’s group. A diverse friend group will normalize interactions with different groups. The socially aware child understands that everyone is unique.
Teamwork: Teamwork is always the best way to improve cooperation and help take in different perspectives. Children from different walks of life come together to play and share ideas. Different perspectives are put together and new ideas are shared.
At SpringUP, we help children build foundational skills in Social Emotional Learning(SEL) skills through our experiential learning programs. We use various mediums like conversations, narrations, art, music & movement in our curriculum.
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