Socialization skills for children

8 Important Social Skills For Kids And How To Teach Them

Teaching social skills for kids is one of the most complex, confusing, but rewarding aspects of raising young children.

It’s no secret that preschoolers and kindergarteners are naturally egocentric. Even when playing or interacting with others, many children have difficulty sharing, empathizing, collaborating, and cooperating.

HOMER is here to help you learn eight of the most important social skills for kids, as well as how to incorporate them into your family life.

8 Important Social Skills For Kids

1) Sharing

Sharing is a part of daily life. That doesn’t mean it’s easy!

Sharing is a difficult concept for young children to get behind. Toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergarteners have a particularly difficult time, as they are more focused on their needs and desires than the needs and desires of others.

This is normal. The feeling that something “belongs” to them is typically much stronger than their desire to please others.

Even though it’s hard to share, doing so is critical to a child’s social skill development, as it helps them keep and advance friendships. It’s also a great way to bond and show appreciation.

2) Listening

Active listening is an important skill that even some adults struggle with. Properly deciphering and absorbing information requires significant focus.

We all know this can be challenging for young kids, but active listening can strengthen their receptive language skills (the ability to comprehend spoken language).

Receptive language skills help your child:

Handle social interactions
Answer questions
Understand stories
Comprehend what they’re reading
Understand gestures

While developing their social skills, your child will come to see how important it is to actively listen when others are speaking.

Paying attention to what someone is saying and responding directly to their statements or questions is a big part of healthy communication.

3) Following Directions

The cousin of good listening skills would be executing the instructions your child heard — a.k.a., following directions!

Following directions becomes particularly important once your child enters into their school years.

It’s one thing to follow directions at home with their parents where they’re innately comfortable; it’s another task entirely to follow directions from adult authority figures they may not know well.

Your child will learn how listening and following directions overlap with one another. If they listen well, it becomes easier for them to follow directions accurately. And when they follow directions accurately, they’ll often be rewarded for their hard work!

Keep in mind, however, that multi-step directions are challenging for young children. To help them develop the ability to follow directions, give them one direction at a time.

4) Collaborating And Cooperating

Similar to sharing, your child will learn how to move beyond sharing objects to sharing ideas, stories, and work.

With good collaboration and cooperation skills, children will learn that working in a group gives them a chance to express their ideas and listen to the ideas of others. It allows them to see that it can be fun to work on a shared project!

This may sound simple, but for young children, cooperation can often require real effort. It will take time for them to learn to respect others’ opinions even when they’re different.

By working together toward a common goal, kids can advance their sharing skills to include both intellectual and physical (think: cleaning the dinner table with a sibling) feats.

5) Patience

How many times have you heard the cliche, “Patience is a virtue”? Well, we are here to say it one more time!

It’s normal for young children to be impatient. However, patience really is one of the most rewarding social skills for kids.

Patience is critical for many things, including maintaining friendships and relationships and achieving big goals that can only be completed over an extended period of time.

This is where the concept of delayed gratification comes into play. When you help your child understand that good things often take time (not everything in life is microwaveable!), you nurture them into a patient person.

Learning patience takes practice and, you guessed it, patience! Trust that it will come with time (as everything does).

6) Empathy

When we say “empathy,” we’re referring to the traditional definition — the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Your child will learn how to appreciate the similarities and differences between their lives and those of people they meet. They will also learn how to empathize with these people, no matter how different they are.

For young children, this can mean small gestures.

For example, if their friend or sibling cries because your child is playing with a specific toy, your child may pause and say, “I know you want to play, too. Don’t be sad. We can take turns!”

But this sense of empathy will likely not appear overnight! Empathy develops over time and across a variety of scenarios.

The easiest way to promote your child’s development of empathy is by showing it in action. When you extend grace to your child often, they will learn how to extend it back.

7) Respecting Boundaries

Some people require different emotional and physical boundaries than your child.

This can be a particularly difficult concept to learn, especially for very young children who receive most of their socialization from within the household.

Likely, if your child is extroverted, they may assume everyone is OK with hugs, questions, or lots of chit-chat. In some cases, they may be right! In others, they may accidentally cross boundaries in their efforts to be friendly.

Teaching your child how to ask permission and identify boundaries helps them establish a sense of respect between themselves and others. The same goes for helping them establish boundaries for themselves.

Let your child know that it’s OK to say no to hugs, kisses, or other displays of affection from someone — no matter who it may be — if they feel uncomfortable. Model this idea by asking questions yourself (“Would you like a hug?”).

When they make their boundaries clear and ask for others to do the same, it will make both parties feel much more at-home.

8) Positivity

Working on positivity can make it exponentially easier for your child to tackle many of the other social skills for kids we’ve mentioned, especially patience, boundaries, listening, and sharing.

With a positive attitude, your child will find it easier to make and keep friends, succeed in school, and achieve their goals.

The easiest way to demonstrate positivity is by modeling it. The more positive you are about your child’s social skill development (including their inevitable slip-ups), the more reassured and positive they will become themselves.

This doesn’t mean you have to be positive all the time. In fact, a healthy amount of honest criticism can be beneficial in helping your child learn to express their feelings.

To do this, start with your own emotions. Let them know how you’re feeling and how you’re managing it in real time if you can. Kids need to know it’s OK to be sad, angry, or mad sometimes and how to handle it.

How To Teach Social Skills To Kids

Now that you know what social skills for kids to include, how do you go about teaching them at home? Let’s take a look!

Normalize Mistakes

Your child should know that you do not expect perfection. There is no way to execute all of these social skills every time, everywhere, without mistakes.

That is OK! In fact, it’s encouraged. Mistakes are normal; they’re how we learn what went right or wrong.

Make sure you normalize this for your child. If they know all humans learn lessons this way, it’ll be easier for them to push through the sting of a mistake and try again.

Encourage Sharing (Without Violating Boundaries!)

Although sharing is great and should be encouraged, there may be some things that are special to your child that they don’t want to share. This can be especially true of stuffed animals, blankets, or special toys.

This is OK, too! It’s great for your child to set boundaries that you and other children respect. To encourage sharing, try not to force it.

Encouraging without forcing also demonstrates to kids how boundaries can be created, acknowledged, and respected between people.

This will motivate them to share with those around them by taking comfort in the fact that what is special to them has been kept sacred and separate. It will also encourage them to be direct about their and others’ boundaries when it comes to play, school, or emotional issues.

Check Their Listening

During social interactions within your own family or outside of it, pay attention to your child’s listening skills. You can observe them to see if they are listening carefully.

Do they seem engaged? Are the asking questions?

And remember it is just as important to listen to your child. This shows them that what they are saying is important and encourages them to listen to you in return.

Think About How You Give Directions

In teaching social skills for kids, the parent or authority figure is responsible for ensuring the directions they give are something a young child can execute successfully.

When giving instructions, be clear, firm, and gentle. As we mentioned earlier, children have a very difficult time executing tasks with many directions at once. Start with one direction at a time that your child can focus on.

When giving instructions, have your child repeat what you want them to do. Only give an additional instruction when the first has been completed. Repeat until the task is complete.

Your child can give you directions, too! That way they have a sense of what it takes to delegate, manage, and execute a task from start to finish.

Give Empathy To Get Empathy

Show your child that you think about other people’s emotions, too! This is less of a teaching moment and more of an authentic display of empathy.

If you see that your child is expressing an emotion, validate it for them. “Oh, I see that you’re excited. I love that you’re so eager and happy to do this!”

You can acknowledge negative emotions, too. For example, you might say, “I know that must make you angry. Do you know how I can tell? What can we do together to make you feel less unhappy?”

This not only helps them feel seen and heard in the moment, but it also gives them a direct example of how to tackle empathy with others in similar situations.

Social Skills For Kids Are Essential

The more your child experiences the benefits of social skills, the more intuitive these skills will become for them. However, all children learn at different rates. With practice (and patience!), we know they’ll get there.

The Learn with Sesame Street app is an effective tool that helps kids learn and develop their social and emotional skills. With the help of their Sesame Street friends, kids learn how to express their emotions, empathize with others, and create healthy relationships. Explore the Learn with Sesame Street app today!

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Social Skills - Kid Sense Child Development

What are social skills?

Social skills are the skills we use everyday to interact and communicate with others. They include verbal and non-verbal communication, such as speech, gesture, facial expression and body language. A person has strong social skills if they have the knowledge of how to behave in social situations and understand both written and implied rules when communicating with others. Children with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Pervasive Developmental Disorder (Not Otherwise Specified) and Asperger’s have difficulties with social skills.

Why are social skills important?

Social skills are vital in enabling an individual to have and maintain positive interactions with others. Many of these skills are crucial in making and sustaining friendships. Social interactions do not always run smoothly and an individual needs to be able to implement appropriate strategies, such as conflict resolution when difficulties in interactions arise. It is also important for individuals to have ’empathy’ (i.e. being able to put yourself into someone else’s shoes and recognise their feelings) as it allows them to respond in an understanding and caring way to how others are feeling.

What are the building blocks necessary to develop social skills?

Attention and concentration: Sustained effort, doing activities without distraction and being able to hold that effort long enough to get the task done.
Receptive (understanding) language: Comprehension of language.
Expressive (using) language: The use of language through speech, sign or alternative forms of communication to communicate wants, needs, thoughts and ideas.
Play skills: Voluntary engagement in self motivated activities that are normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment where the activities may be, but are not necessarily, goal oriented.
Pre-language skills: The ways in which we communicate without using words and include things such as gestures, facial expressions, imitation, joint attention and eye-contact.
Self regulation: The ability to obtain, maintain and change one’s emotion, behaviour, attention and activity level appropriate for a task or situation in a socially acceptable manner.
Executive functioning: Higher order reasoning and thinking skills.
Planning and sequencing: The sequential multi-step task or activity performance to achieve a well-defined result.

How can you tell if my child has problems with social skills?

If a child has difficulties with social skills they might:

Use fleeting eye contact, does not consistently use eye contact or stares at you fixedly.
Not be able to take turns when talking to their communication partner.
Struggle with using appropriate body language (e.g. stands too close/far to another person).
Fail to use polite forms of communication (e.g. saying: please, thank-you, hello and good-bye).
Be unable to start and end conversations appropriately.
Interrupt others frequently.
Be unable to maintain a topic of conversation and provides irrelevant comments during a conversation.
Talk ‘at you’ in a conversation as opposed to engaging in a two way conversation ‘with’ you.
Not ask appropriate questions.
Repeat information in conversation and tend to talk about topics of their own interest (e.g. trains, a favourite TV show/person).
Show little or no interest in what the other person has to say.
Fail to understand jokes and language, such as sarcasm, idioms and non-literal information (e.g. ‘This place is a pig sty!’).
Interpret what you say in a very literal way (e.g. when you say “Can you open the door?” the child “yes” without moving to actually open the door).
Talk with unusual speed, stress, rhythm, intonation, pitch and/or tone of voice.
Be unable to understand different tones of voice or read facial cues.
Fail to ask for clarification if they are confused or if the situation is unclear to them.
Struggle to respond appropriately when asked to change their actions.
Tend to disclose (excessively) personal information to unfamiliar people or strangers.
Appear unaware of others and fail to read other people’s feelings based on their verbal and non-verbal cues.
Be unable to respond to teasing, anger, failure and disappointment appropriately.
Be unable to adjust or modify their language appropriately according to the communication situation.
Lack empathy (i.e. is not able to imagine what it is like to be somebody else or in their situation).
Lack imagination.
Appear self-centred.
Fail to understand the consequences of their actions.

What other problems can occur when a child has social skill difficulties?

When a child has social skill difficulties, they might also have difficulties with:

Behaviour: The child’s actions, usually in relation to their environment (e.g. a child may engage in behaviour, such as refusing to go to social events including birthday parties or engage in inappropriate behaviour, such as tugging on a peer’s hair or yelling at someone to get their attention).
Sensory processing: The child may have trouble attending or focusing and have difficulty interpreting information they receive from the environment.
Completing academic work (e.g. the child may misinterpret verbal or written instructions for tasks and/or struggle with imaginative writing).
Receptive (understanding) language: Comprehension of language.
Expressive (using) language: The use of language through speech, sign or alternative forms of communication to communicate wants, needs, thoughts and ideas.
Articulation: Clarity of speech sounds and spoken language.
Fluency: The smoothness or flow with which sounds, syllables, words and phrases are produced when talking.
Voice: The sound that we hear when someone talks which is unique to each person.
Self regulation: The ability to obtain, maintain and change one’s emotion, behaviour, attention and activity level appropriate for a task or situation in a socially acceptable manner.
Executive functioning: Higher order reasoning and thinking skills.

What can be done to improve social skills?

Play with your child to help develop joint attention, turn-taking, shared interests, cooperation and appropriate play with toys.
Emotions: Help the child to understand and display their own emotions and to recognise these emotions in other people.
Empathy: Help the child to understand and recognise how other people are feeling in particular situations.
Social stories: These are stories which are used to teach children specific social skills that they may find difficult to understand or are confusing. The goal of the story is to increase the child’s understanding by describing in detail a specific situation and suggesting an appropriate social response.
Social skill groups: These are groups run with the express purpose of mastering social interaction with others.

What activities can help improve social skills?

Visuals: Make up a poster of rules to remember when starting a conversation (e. g. using a friendly voice, making eye contact, using appropriate greetings, such as ‘hello’).
Role play: Practise playground/party scenarios where the child does not know anybody. Model and create a list of different things you can say:
- To join others who are playing (e.g. “Can I play too?”).
- To introduce yourself (e.g. “Hi my name is ….”).
- To politely negotiate with peers (e.g. “I don’t want that one. Can I have the blue car please?”).
Sing songs, such as ‘If you’re happy and you know it’ to help teach a child about different emotions.
Masks: Make masks together to help improve eye contact.
Turn taking: Play turn taking games (e.g. board games) to encourage a child to say whose turn it is in the game (e.g. “My turn”, “Your turn”).
Games: Play board games with the child. Make sure the child is not always the ‘winner’ so that they learn about ‘losing’ in a game and are able to cope better when this happens with their peers.
Bean bag conversation: Throw a bean bag around a circle and each child takes a turn to contribute to the conversation. Think of different ways to contribute to the conversation (e.g. ask a question, comment on what has been said, add something related to the topic).
Watch and comment: Role play different situations and comment about appropriate and inappropriate attempts of communication (e.g. standing too close or too far from another person, not using appropriate eye contact, interrupting a conversation).

Why should I seek therapy if I notice difficulties with social skills in my child?

Therapeutic intervention to help a child with social skills difficulties is important to:

Help a child to engage appropriately with others during play, conversation and in interactions.
Help a child to develop friendships at school and when accessing out of school activities (e.g. playing sport, attending a group such as Scouts).
Help a child maintain friendships with peers.
Help a child to behave appropriately during interactions with familiar people (e.g. parents, siblings, teachers, family friends) and unfamiliar individuals (e.g. adults and children they may need to engage with during excursions and when visiting places, such as the park or swimming pool).
Assist a child in developing their awareness of social norms and to master specific social skills (e.g. taking turns in a conversation, using appropriate eye contact, verbal reasoning, understanding figurative language).
Develop appropriate social stories to help teach the child about how to respond in specific social situations.
Some children require explicit teaching about how to interact and communicate with others as these skills do not come naturally to them.

If left untreated what can difficulties with social skills lead to?

When children have difficulties with social skills, they might also have difficulties with:

Making new friends.
Maintaining friendships with peers.
Communicating effectively with unfamiliar individuals during situations including asking for assistance in a shop, asking for directions if they are lost and negotiating with someone with whom they have had a disagreement.
Reading/understanding social situations.
Understanding jokes and figurative language during interactions with others, and when watching television shows and movies and reading books.
Coping with failure.

What type of therapy is recommended for social skill difficulties?

If your child has difficulties with social skills, it is recommended they consult a Speech Therapist.

If there are multiple areas of concern (i.e. beyond just social skills) both Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy may well be recommended to address the functional areas of concern. This is the benefit of choosing Kid Sense provides both Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy.

6 skills of successful socialization that a child will not receive in school and kindergarten

Socialization, socialization. Parents in recent years rush about with her like mad. Socialization is needed so that the child learns to behave correctly in society and maintain social contacts. Some parents shift it to institutions such as kindergarten and school. It is understood that it is from their peers that the child acquires such valuable skills. This is not true. I will tell you why it is in the family that a child learns to build relationships and masters the only effective way to communicate “I am OK. You are OK."

1.

Understanding the boundaries of oneself and another person

"The freedom of one person ends where the freedom of another begins." A capacious phrase with which many agree, but its application in practice causes difficulties. If a child does not clean his room, and we strongly insist on this, is this a violation of his boundaries or upholding ours? We need order in the house. If a child experiments with clothes and wears absolutely incompatible things in your opinion, should he make comments? How then to instill in him a sense of beauty? If we don't like a teenager's friends and try to protect him from bad influences, is this a violation of boundaries or concern for others?

To answer these questions correctly, we put ourselves in the place of a child. Are we going to change something in our room, buy different clothes and look for new friends, because someone close to us doesn't like it? If your answer is "no", then you do not need to demand this from the child. It is to demand. It will be a violation of his boundaries. If your answer is yes, then you yourself first need to decide on an understanding of boundaries. Check if co-dependent relationships have leaked into your family.

Kindergarten and school will not help a child acquire this skill. Moreover, the system, on the contrary, merges the boundaries of one personality with others. Like it or not, the child wakes up early in the morning instead of sleeping. Teaches subjects that he does not want to learn. Communicates with peers with whom he has nothing in common. How can you understand the place of your desires in the system? Therefore, it remains either to abandon the kindergarten, transfer to SO, or raise awareness in the child, for which he does this. Internal restrictions do not break boundaries, unlike external ones.

2.

Understanding one's needs

Ability to find them behind desires. A child wants a new toy every day - this is desire. Most likely, behind this is the need for attention from adults. The child does not want to go to school. Perhaps he has accumulated fatigue, and behind this desire is the need for rest. Or maybe he doesn’t have relationships in the class. Then it is the need to be accepted among your peers.

Can you imagine a situation in which the teacher asks: “Petya Ivanov, why didn’t you do your homework? Maybe you don’t understand the topic, or something happened in the family?” Perhaps there are such teachers, but not in classes of 30 people and with a load of eight lessons a day.

If we are attentive to our children and help them understand their true needs, they learn from us. Building their social relationships in the future, it will be easier for them to understand another person. What is important to both of us is what unites us.

3.

The ability to say "no"

Our children do not say "no" to us because they have learned to say no. We just got them. We have lost their attachment to us, and they no longer want to listen to us. But they became attached to their peers. They begin to copy their behavior patterns.

Kindergarten is inevitable. The lack of critical thinking does not divide the actions of peers into good or bad. It is simply important for a child to be with someone. In adolescence, personal desires are added.

If there was no “no” practice in the family, peers will not hear this “no” either. It's not about the fact that "everyone tries and I want to." It's about the fact that if I don't want, I don't like it, I can refuse

"No, I don't want to run around abandoned garages with everyone else." "No, I'm not going to steal for fun." "No, I don't want to participate in bullying." The ability not to merge with others, but to remain true to yourself and your interests. The fourth point follows smoothly from this.

4.

First me, then the others

And this is not about egocentrism. It's about resources and their use. "I won't give up my last shirt because I'll be left with nothing." “I don’t want to hear about your problems right now, because I won’t be able to support. I need help right now."

The ability to stop in time and not give yourself away saves you from burnout, overload and other stressful situations. Living on the edge is not the norm. The norm, when I took care of myself, and from a state of well-being I want and can take care of others. In relation to school, I can’t imagine how you can get this skill.

5.

Do not compare yourself with others

You will either remain a loser forever, or vice versa, you risk becoming arrogant. At school, five people wrote an essay with "excellent", eight with "good", one person got a deuce. The rest have three. At home: “Last time you got a three for your essay, and this time a four. It is clear that you have worked. " Or “Always fives, and today three. Something happened? Do you need help?"

Comparing yourself today with yourself yesterday, you can evaluate your coefficient of effort or level of ability. Gives an understanding of one's own value and makes one independent of the assessments of others. Works in reverse as well. "I'm fine - You're fine."

6.

Empathy as a counterbalance to total devaluation

"What's the problem with doing homework? It's simple though." “Yes, you spit, you will have new friends!”.

School does not have the task of raising successful people. Only the educated. We make our children successful ourselves

Empathy is necessary for communication so that the interlocutor feels that he is understood. He is important. His problems and joys are not nonsense. Support your child properly and he will learn to do it himself.

Socialization skills in preschool children

2020 has shown us that communication is very important. Not only outside, but also on the scale of one apartment.

First of all, you need to understand that communication is a skill of effective communication. This is the ease in establishing contact, maintaining a conversation, the ability to negotiate and defend one's interests.

Every parent asks the question "when and how to socialize a child?" and “is it possible to compensate for communication skills at home without going to kindergarten?”

Let's figure it out. A child's communication begins at birth. The newborn "reads" the behavior and reactions of the parents. It adapts to them and shows its desires with its behavior. At this age, the only tool a child has is crying. With tears, the child conveys to the parent all his desires, worries, attracts attention. With age, more and more tools for communication appear and the range of interests of the child expands. Of course, a child should receive a number of skills at home. Namely: what is the "correct" way of life should be in the family. How relationships are built between its members, what kind of hierarchy is in the house, the appropriateness of behavior and reactions to situations. This is all the child will embody, including in adulthood. And here it is important to understand the possible consequences of the actions of parents in relation to children or in general in the family. For example, consider several situations.

- If you overly admire the actions of a child and indulge all whims, then this can lead to the fact that he will grow up pampered and capricious, will painfully perceive the lack of adoration from other people;

- If a child is taught that it is important to observe only outward decorum, then in the future he may grow up to be a hypocrite;

- If a child is constantly punished for every wrongdoing or disobedience, then this can lead to a self-perception "I am a difficult child";

- If the child's desire to help ignore or praise someone else, then this can become the basis for the development of envy and self-doubt;

But let's assume that the parents do not make possible mistakes. Will parents, especially in the context of a pandemic and confined spaces, be able to replace their child's communication with a peer and harmoniously develop communication skills?

What a child learns in communication:

Introduce yourself and get to know each other. But how will he learn this with the parents he has known all his life?
Negotiate and play together. How do parents model possible situations and reactions of other children? And even if we imagine that at some point the mother will begin to play the situation, for example, a greedy boy or a bully boy, will the child be able to correctly understand why his beloved mother offends him?
Explain exactly what the child needs and why. Everything is a little simpler here, but just like in the previous case, not all situations can be modeled by parents and show the whole range of possible reactions of their peers.

Let's look at the most popular qualities that parents want to see in their children:

Leadership. The child must learn to take responsibility for the decisions he makes and the people around him. For example, if no one wants to play, it should not be difficult for the child to suggest or organize the game himself. If all the time parents organize games or solve all problems, then the child will be passive. Of course, a child can try to involve his parents in the game, try to show himself, but adults always have a lot of worries, household chores or remote work, and they are not up to games. Then the child becomes invisible to himself.
Work in a group or team. Having learned to work in a group, the child will not be afraid to follow the rules of the game, accept his role and enjoy it. The family is certainly also a group, but a group with already formed rules. A family cannot be different every day - this would lead to a violation of the family model itself.
Emotional intelligence. This skill helps to manage your emotions, avoid neurosis, depression and apathy in time. The spectrum of emotions is wide, and all of them are important: both positive and negative. It is also important to feel them in the right dosage and in the right situational conditions. Will parents be able to correctly model situations and predict how the child will react to them. And keep the line so as not to turn the life of a child into a theater.

There have always been and will always be parents who are against socialization through preschool institutions. They believe that 30-60 minutes of “dosed” society per day in the form of developmental or sports sections is enough for a child to form communication skills. But they do not take into account that children are subject at that moment to the rules of the lesson or the purpose of the lesson and do not have the opportunity for free communication and the exchange of personal experience.