Intrapersonal Skills - how we think of ourselves

How do you know if a child is struggling with intra-personal skills? (knowing themselves and having self-confidence)

 

Children who have trouble making up their mind about what they may want, choosing, making choices, and not really expressing their feelings much about things--they may say, "Oh, I don't know, I don't care, whatever you want, Mom." Or, "That's okay; it was okay that Jack wanted to do it that way so we went to that movie instead of the one I wanted to see." Children who really know themselves well will be assertive to a fair degree with their folks and with their peers.

 

I think helping children to learn intrapersonal skills, needs to start early when we offer choices to our children, and that doesn't mean the choice between doing a chore or not doing a chore, but it might be a choice about when the chore will be done. A choice about what movie that we're going to watch that night. Choices even right down to helping plan the dinner menus, or the menus for the week. The more we encourage our child to express themselves, and to know themselves, the more we will serve their intrapersonal knowledge.

 

Interpersonal Skills- how we relate to others

Most experiences in a middle school help children with interpersonal skills. Of course, there must also be good teachers and mentors on the side encouraging children to collaborate and to work cooperatively towards solving common problems, whether that be in math class or in a group project in social studies. All of these activities help children to learn good interpersonal skills.

I  think that there are two ways to tell if your middle school-age child has trouble with interpersonal skills. They can be very mute and quiet and never talk about their relationships, and not have many friends. They could also be complaining about their relationships. Children struggling with interpersonal skills can have adversarial or acrimonious relationships with their friends they can bring to us.   

 

You can help your child learn inter-personal skills by encouraging our children to talk problems out with their peers, and then very importantly, we can model that type behavior with them. We can model that behavior with their peers, family, and with our spouses, and with our children themselves. We can encourage them to seek alternative solutions to problems, to seek out others when they can't solve a problem with their friends, and we can show them the good skills it takes to get along with others in the world.