Self-Knowledge and Awareness of Individual Rights
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Goal: To help develop self-knowledge, make discicions, take responsibility, take risks. and foster independence.
What is self-knowledge and why is it important for your child?
What is self-knowledge and why is it important for your child?
Self-knowledge is also commonly referred to as self-concept and is defined as the individual's belief about themselves, their attributes, and their self-worth. A child's self-knowledge is what shapes their answers to questions like "who am I?", " what am I good at?", "what things are hard for me?", and "what is important to me?".
Self-concept plays an important role in your child's wellness throughout their lives. It affects the way they express themselves, how they interact with their peers, and even influences how they make decisions. Support and encouragement from families and teams is critical to help your child develop a positive self-concept as a person with a visual impairment. Societies' values towards people with visual impairments will play a role in your child's development of self-concept and could negatively affect it, depending on the experiences they have in their community.
Every child has the potential for positive self-concept, regardless of their level of vision loss. Self-concept is not set in stone at a certain age, it is never too late or too early for parents and teams to take steps to help their child develop positive self-concept.
Below you will find goals, activities, and resources to help you shape your child's self-knowledge, positively affect their self-concept as a person with a visual impairment, and help them experience genuine success.
Goals: To help develop self-concept.
Goals: To help develop self-concept.
Make decisions
Take Responsibility
Take risks
Foster independence
Beginning, intermediate, and advanced goals to help your child develop self-knowledge and awareness of their individual rights.
Beginning, intermediate, and advanced goals to help your child develop self-knowledge and awareness of their individual rights.
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced
Recognize, respond to, and state their name
State basic information about themselves
Make choices about objects or activities
Discuss personal likes and dislikes
Knowledge of the name of their visual impairment
Indicate awareness of abilities and limitations unrelated to their vision
Provide basic information as to own ethnic origin, religious preference, and family background. Helping a student be aware of and feel confident about who they are and their family heritage and beliefs can help them find others who may share similar backgrounds.
Indicate awareness of abilities and limitations related to their vision
Accept help and request assistance from others as appropriate.
Plan and carry out a routine activity that involves multiple steps.
Evaluate own personality traits, and attempt to modify those that are not functional.
Demonstrate confidence in own decisions, values, and beliefs
Negotiate with others to resolve problems.
Identify and evaluate alternative ways of solving problems.
Identify community resources and access those services.
Goals to help develop self-concept:
Goals to help develop self-concept:
Three activities you can do with your child that address a beginner, intermediate, or advanced goal to develop self-knowledge:
Three activities you can do with your child that address a beginner, intermediate, or advanced goal to develop self-knowledge:
Recognizing, responding to, and stating their own name is an important step to help a child develop self-knowledge. This activity shows you how you can start exposing your child to their own name written out, regardless of their level of vision.
Being able to complete activities independently helps a child build confidence in their abilities and contributes to a positive self-concept. Task analysis is a tool that helps you break down a skill into smaller steps that your child can master more easily. You can use these sheets to create a simple task analysis and track your child's progress!
The goal of this game is to help children practice identifying emotions, without relying on visual cues. This helps individuals with visual impairments evaluate how they are doing and improve on this important skill. It also helps individuals with sight understand this phenomenon and learn to adapt how they are conveying their emotions, to be more easily accessible to individuals who are B/VI. This version of charades is adapted to be friendly for children with any level of vision loss.
Resources for More Information:
Resources for More Information:
Here is a research article that discusses self-esteem and self-concept among children and young adults with visual impairments
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311908.2017.1319652
This website goes deeper into defining self-concept and links further activities, stories, and resources to help children with visual impairments
https://www.teachingvisuallyimpaired.com/self-concept.html
This webpage from Perkins talks about self-determination, how important self-knowledge is to be self-determined, and how it impacts transition as you look ahead at your child's educational career
https://www.perkinselearning.org/transition/ecc/self-determination
References:
Field, S., Martin, J., Miller, R., Ward, M., & Wehmeyer, M. (1998). A practical guide for teaching self-determination. Reston, VA: Council for Exceptional Children.
“Self Concept for Students Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired.” Teaching Students with Visual Impairments, www.teachingvisuallyimpaired.com/self-concept.html.
“Self Determination for Students Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired.” Teaching Students with Visual Impairments, 9 June 2019, www.teachingvisuallyimpaired.com/self-determination.html.
Senra H, Oliveira RA, Leal I. From self-awareness to self-identification with visual impairment: a qualitative study with working- age adults at a rehabilitation setting. Clinical Rehabilitation. 2011;25(12):1140-1151. doi:10.1177/0269215511410729
Wilton, A. P. & MacCuspie, P. A. (2017). Self-Determination. In M. C. Holbrook, C. Kamei-Hannan, & T. McCarthy (eds.). Foundations of Education, Volume II: Instructional Strategies for Teaching Children and Youths with Visual Impairments (pp. 875-913). New York, NY: AFB Press.
Wolffe, K. E. & Rosenblum, L. P. (2014). Self-determination. In C. B. Allman & S. Lewis (eds.) ECC Essentials: Teaching the expanded core curriculum to students with visual impairments (pp. 470-509). New York, NY: AFB Press.
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