Knowledge Sharing - Self Esteem Base on 3 Key Self Competencies

In addition to the evolution of self esteem base on our growing understanding and increased perceptions of ourselves and the world around us as one ages forward, it also influenced by our percepton in 3 specific area:-

1) Cognitive/Achievement Performance

For children in special education, learning and achievement can be 2 areas that cause significant frustration and challenges. They may work hard to master tasks, but their efforts may not result in success for many reasons, such as poor memory, processing problems, deficit in critical thinking and problem solving and generalization of instruction/skill. Praising for their effort or breaking down complex task into smaller segments can assist the child to master more difficult tasks in stages that build on earlier success.

Very often child with ASD may be misunderstood by teachers, peers or other adults as not achieving adequately because fo their lack of effort, hence understanding the child and build on a good relationship with child is crucial for their willingness to learn, 5As of attention,acceptance,appreciation,affirmation & affection will come in handy. Success breed success, to manage success, we will have to prepare him to work harder and rely on practice makes perfect to achieve the confident he needs to feel good about himself. Celebrate success by drawing attention to at least 1 positive thing about the child every day, post his work on prominent place on the wall, white board or refrigerator.

2) Physical Competencies

For children receiving special education, developing a healthy self esteem may require some to stretch outside their academic areas which they can excel in and increase their self-confidence and the feeling of success. Exploring opportunities in the community for our child to become involve in activities that might contribute to the development of potential comptencies and skill in areas such as sport, music or art. Recognizing that this extra curricular activities are an important component in building self esteem for the children in special education and doing just enough(not restrict but also not too over schedule) can go a long way to the child's future outcome in development process.

3) Social Competence & Social Skill

Although very young children often prefer to engage in solitary or parallel play with peers, but as they mature and grow, there is an increased emphasis on the need to develop skill on interactive and co-operative play with peers. Social competencies hence become an important influential factor in development of self esteem. This involves 4 pre-requisite skills:-

a. The ability to recognize and respond to both non-verbal and verbal information

b. Sensitivity to the needs and feelings of others

c. The ability to engage in interpersonal problem solving

d. Awareness of peer group norms

Children with special needs are likely to experience social difficulties from their limited ability to attend to informaton that is presented verbally, visually or physically during the process of recognizing, interpreting & responding to social cue.

Following key areas are difficulties why child with special needs may find themselves considerable harder to interpret social information and manage success in social relationship namely:-

organizing information, attention span, memory & expresssion, sequencing information, isolating key elements of information & transferring information from one situation to another

Responding to social situation may cause trouble if response does not match the situation in term of timing and /or intensity. Children who are hyperactive or impulsive often over react to social stimulation, some may just by pass the interpretation component and go directly to response. Those who are passive or hypoactive(slow to respond) may take too long to response and miss appropriate opportunity for reaction. Children with limited expressive langauage may take long time to process information & participate in the response. Children who are overly passive may give off few social cues or provide little feedback to which others can respond.

Ultimately, the nature of our social self esteem whether positive or negative comes from feedback based on the interpretation of how others evaluate our social response.

Winners' Statement:-