We have been given a subscription to Mindscreen – all opinions are ours. These blogs will chart our progress. We have not yet finished the course, I will be posting as we go along.
As a child I wasn’t particularly confident, my self esteem wasn’t great and I fear I may have passed that on to my own children
Although Big L (9) is fairly outgoing I am pretty sure behind his cheeky personality he is more like me than I would care to admit. He is a bright, fairly academic child but what is more important to me is that he is well rounded mentally. I think we all know that our childhood shapes us and, although we cannot control a lot of what happens to us and our children (Covid I am looking at you), we can control how we deal with those events. If we deal with events in a suitable manner then we can hope that it will give our children the tools to deal with them and future events.
With this in mind I was invited to review Mindscreen, an online course with the aim of building your child’s self esteem and confidence
The first stage is to complete the Mindscreen Free Child Self Esteem Check. Here YOU answer questions about YOUR child based on your knowledge of them. Your child does not need to be present or know what you think about their confidence or self esteem.
You are asked 36 questions based on your child’s reactions to situations, obviously you need to be honest otherwise it isn’t worthwhile. You’ll be given the results instantly and I found ours to be accurate based on my experience.
Once you have completed the Free Child Self Esteem Check you can decide whether you want to continue with the Full Mindscreen Experience. Mindscreen offers different packages, for individual children or family packages. We were given the family package so both Big L and I have completed the first stage.
Completing the first stage of the Mindscreen programme
This stage takes some time. You shouldn’t rush it as your future lesson plans are based on these results. Big L did his first. He took the laptop upstairs so he could answer the questions truthfully. I would suggest you make sure you are available to answer any questions that may arise, such as “what is a CV?”. You should know that Mindscreen is aimed at children with a reading age of 11 plus, however it is perfectly adaptable for slightly younger (and much older!) children and adults. That was his only query.
The profile took Big L around half an hour and me about 20 minutes. You are given a series of statements that you have to put in order of importance to you and your profile is built based on your answers. I found them both to be very accurate. It is about 15 pages long and details all sorts of things about you and your natural style, your likes and dislikes and how you see yourself.
The thing I was really interested in is the “Natural & Adapted Me” which is the difference between your true self and how you adapt to “fit in”. The closer your natural and adapted behaviour the closer to your true self you are. Mine were next to each other. Which I suppose is accurate, what you see is what you get! Big L’s were very close too.
Their PLS – Personal Learning Style
Based on their answers you are given their Personal Learning Style. This is how best to approach their learning, how they learn best and what motivates them to learn. Whether you need to make it fun, factual and so on.
Their LIG – Learning Improvement Graph
This graph will help you quickly see the skills your child feels they are strong in and those they have yet to fully develop. You’ll learn about their level of self-awareness, confidence, belief, and esteem at a glance.
This is quite illuminating as you find out how your child feels about themselves. I think it is important to point out to them that their answers must be truthful and they can talk to you about them. My son was worried that his answers would upset me, but I explained that in order to hep him he needs to be honest and I won’t be upset.
I have to admit it is hard to hear that your child isn’t happy in some aspects of their life but I think it is better to hear about it so you can help them, to build their self esteem and confidence sooner rather than later.
You can send this chart to your child three times, each time the answers are added to the graph so you can see their development.
Our next post will be about the first lesson plans – watch this space
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