What is Insight in Childhood?

Insight in childhood is the profound ability to grasp who you are—personally, emotionally, and in your relationships. 

When children struggle with insight, they often find it difficult to articulate their emotions and discuss personal experiences. You might observe them overreacting to upsetting events without being able to explain why, or appearing emotionally “hard to read.” These children often excel with fact-based questions but find it challenging to talk about personal feelings or relationships.

Signs Your Child May Be Struggling with Insight

1. Emotional unawareness: Frequently responding with “I don’t know” when asked about their feelings.
2. Limited perspective: Preferring their own imaginative world and struggling to understand others’ viewpoints.
3. Social connection challenges: Wanting to connect with peers but lacking the skills to initiate and build friendships.
4. Difficulty with long-term goals: Unable to envision their future or set realistic long-term goals.
5. Confused by abstract questions: Struggling with open-ended or relationship-focused conversations.
6. Absence of deep friendships: Lacking awareness of how to form lasting bonds.
7. Uncertainty about preferences: Saying “I don’t know” when asked about favorite things like animals, colors, or vacation spots.
8. Limited emotional vocabulary: Using phrases like “I don’t know” or “Bored” when asked about how they feel, often accompanied by a “flat” facial expression.
9. Trouble reading cues: Difficulty interpreting others’ emotions and interests, sometimes expressing aversion to discussing feelings.
10. Immaturity and irresponsibility: Not recognizing the behaviors required to achieve goals, leading to comments like “my child is not responsible.”

Understanding Causes of Insight Challenges

Personal and emotional insight, along with personal responsibility, can be subtle hurdles.

• Autism (neurotype): Bright children with an autism neurotype, who are compliant and successful in school, may not be identified as having these challenges until adolescence. This can significantly impact identity development. Erik Erikson’s “Stages of Identity Development” highlights how children, teenagers, and adults discover their strengths and weaknesses through a social-emotional lens, crucial for building self-esteem and forming meaningful relationships. Individuals with an autism neurotype often need support in this process, particularly in discovering interests, strengths, and how to relate to others. Social communication differences in autism often include difficulty with reciprocal conversations and knowing how to contribute meaningfully to interactions.
• Neurological connections in autism: An autism neurotype is characterized by differences in brain connectivity. This means that various parts of the brain may not always form fluid connections, and social and emotional memories might not be categorized or stored in typical ways. While a child with an autism neurotype might recall a detailed event from years ago, they might struggle to describe what happened yesterday at school. Emotional memories, which help us learn from experiences and guide our identities, may not be as readily sorted and grouped. Children with poor emotional insight often remember isolated events without a framework of emotional labels.
• Dissociation or developmental trauma: Children who have experienced developmental trauma may detach from their emotions as a coping mechanism, leading to a “deer in the headlights” look when discussing distressing experiences. This can occur in children from any background who have faced upsetting events.
• Preference for ‘the facts’: Some individuals have a “systemizing” processing style, favoring facts, numbers, and logical systems over feelings and relationships. Children with poor insight often lean towards systemizing, finding ambiguity in social-emotional connections challenging.
• ADHD: Research indicates that children with ADHD often have lower insight than neurotypically developing children. Their rapid responses to stimuli can make it difficult to connect their behavior to their actions, leading to immaturity and a lack of awareness of how their choices impact peers. They may also be less interested in emotions, quickly moving on from frustrating incidents without learning from the emotional experience. This “Shadow Effect” of missed social experiences can compound over time, making early intervention crucial.
• Other cognitive or developmental delays: Some children and teens develop more slowly in cognition, adaptive behavior, and emotional understanding, often reporting “I don’t know” when asked about their feelings.
• Depression vs. autism neurotype: Clinicians differentiate between the limited emotions seen in depressed children and the poor insight in an autism neurotype. Depressed teens are typically aware of their emotional distress, while teenagers with an autism neurotype who have these challenges are generally not depressed, or if they are, they may lack insight into their depression. Discrepancies between parent and child reports of emotional profiles can be a key indicator for children with an autism neurotype.

11 Ways You Can Nurture Emotional Insight in Your Child

1. Practice emotional language: Label your own emotions and coping strategies. Gently suggest emotions your child might be feeling, creating an open dialogue.
2. Respect their feelings: Allow your child to feel differently than you do, especially during difficult times like loss. Listen and offer support.
3. Guide calmly: During negative experiences, use few words and help your child calm down with their preferred strategies. Later, discuss their physical and emotional sensations.
4. Provide specific feedback: Offer positive yet realistic praise and constructive feedback to help your child understand their strengths and areas for growth.
5. Avoid excessive praise: Ensure feedback is truthful, specific, and constructive. Highlight verifiable attributes.
6. Affirm their identity: Encourage and voice your child’s emotional strengths, such as kindness or positivity, with clear and specific examples.
7. Consider therapy: If your child consistently struggles with personal and emotional insight, seek psychotherapy with a clinician specializing in these areas.
8. Encourage goal setting: Connect your child’s strengths to potential goals, like suggesting a job involving children for a child who works well with younger kids.
9. Foster authentic experiences: Help your child understand the purpose behind activities, such as a shadow internship in a career of interest, to see the relevance of certain classes.
10. Collaborate with teachers: Discuss self-exploration assignments or opportunities with teachers who understand your child’s strengths.
11. Model and role-play emotions: Engage in activities like “emotions scrapbooks” or posters to help your child identify and express feelings creatively.

When to Seek Professional Help

If concerns about your child’s insight persist despite your efforts, consider seeking an evaluation from a testing psychologist to rule out an autism neurotype, ADHD, or depression.

Professional Resources for Nurturing Insight

• Applied Behavior Analyst (ABA) Therapist: Provides Applied Behavior Analysis to empower children with communication skills and adaptive strategies while reducing challenging behaviors, also addressing personal responsibility and social skills for older children.
• Group Therapist: Offers direct strategies and practice to improve social skills, often led by psychologists, licensed professional counselors, school psychologists, or social workers.
• Psychotherapist: Provides Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) interventions to help children recognize and understand emotions, gain personal insight, improve perspective-taking and social skills, and manage depression and anxiety.
• Speech and Language Pathologist (SLP): Offers speech and/or language support, crucial if your child has language delays.
• Testing Psychologist or Neuropsychologist: Conducts evaluations for diagnostic clarification, assessing social, emotional, cognitive, learning, and attention to provide a comprehensive profile and relevant diagnoses.

Resources for Further Reading

• Baker, Jed. (2006) Social skills picture book for high school and beyond.
• Baker, Jed. (Retrieved 2017). Social skills books and resources for ASD.
• Berns, Roberta M. (2010). Child, family, school, community: Socialization and support.
• Erikson, Erik. Stages of Psychosocial Development.
• Fein, Deborah (2011). “The Neuropsychology of Autism”
• Giler, Janet Z. (2000). Socially ADDept: A manual for parents of children with ADHD and/or learning disabilities.
• Giler, Janet Z. (2011). Socially ADDept: Teaching social skills to children with ADHD, LD, and Asperger’s.
• Gray, Carol & Attwood, Tony (2010). The New Social Story Book, Revised and Expanded 10th Anniversary Edition: Over 150 Social Stories that Teach Everyday Social Skills to Children with Autism or Asperger’s Syndrome, and their Peers.
• Kroncke, Willard, & Huckabee (2016). Assessment of autism spectrum neurotype: Critical issues in clinical, forensic, and school settings. Springer, San Francisco.
• Lawrence Heller. Healing developmental trauma: How early trauma affects self-regulation, self-image, and the capacity for relationships
• McConnell, Nancy & LoGuidice (1998). That’s Life! Social language.
• Mendler, Allen (2013). Teaching your students how to have a conversation.
• Ozonoff, Sally & Dawson, Geraldine & McPartland, James C. (2014). A parent’s guide to high-functioning autism spectrum neurotype: How to meet the challenges and help your child thrive.
• UCLA PEERS Clinic https://www.semel.ucla.edu/peers