On one of the "Child of Our Times" series, there was an episode on self awareness. Apparently children develop self awareness around the age of 18 months. That's when there's a sudden "explosion" in their head and they realise who they are and start making demands for themselves and test your patience day and night (just joking, I'm really praying that God will give us the wisdom to teach Caleb well if that really happens. Anyway, this is also commonly known as the start of the "Terrible Two".
There was this experiment that they did in the series where they drew a red dot on the child's forehead and placed the child in front of a mirror. Those children who have developed self awareness, stared at the mirror and touched their forehead where the red dot was. Those children who have not developed self awareness, tried to walk behind the mirror to look for the "other" child with the red dot on the forehead.
Last week, Mummy was "entertaining" Caleb while waiting for Daddy in the car. Caleb was playing with a sticker and was sticking the sticker on himself. Mummy decided to experiment and stuck the sticker on Caleb's forehead and gave him a mirror to look.
He doesn't seem to have fully developed self awareness yet. We think that he recognises himself coz he has looked at the mirror and told us that was him when we asked him. But he seemed to think that the sticker is stuck behind the mirror or somewhere below coz he kept flipping the mirror over and he checked his legs to see if the sticker was there.
Well, we're in no hurry for him to develop his self awareness but it was quite fun for us to watch his reaction :)
