Socialization skills for toddlers

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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15 Critical Social Skills for Kids and How to Develop Them

Child development is fascinating. Human beings start as vulnerable infants who rely on caregivers for their every need, then, over time, turn into independent children and hopefully high-functioning adults. What happens during each of these milestones is essential to the next stage of your child’s development.

Social skills are learned a little differently from one another as your child grows up. A toddler, for example, won’t learn new skills the same way a school-age child might. The skills kids learn will vary depending upon need and environment. These skills build upon each other as they get older. Social skills training for kids is exceptionally important; starting early and building upon skills as a child grows will help them acquire what is necessary to become a well-developed individual.

Keep reading to learn about critical social skills for kids, and what age they learn those skills. Plus, we take a look at various activities you can try with your child to teach them these important skills!

Why Should a Child Learn Social Skills?

There is strong, valid research available that proves teaching social skills to children has lasting benefits. Children should begin learning basic social skills even as early as infancy.

The Benefits of Learning Social Skills as a Child

Whether social skills are taught in a social-emotional program at school, at home by parents, or even by a specialist such as a speech therapist or Board Certified Behavior Analyst, there are tons of benefits to doing so.

Teaching social skills to kids will help them be able to:

Communicate effectively
Problem-solve
Make and keep friends
Cooperate with others
Practice active listening
Use manners
Adapt to different situations
Utilize non-verbal cues
Set and keep boundaries
Share with others
Say “no” appropriately
Ask for help when needed

Overall, the effects of learning social skills lasts a lifetime for your kids.

A study published in the July 2015 issue of the American Journal of Public Health yielded the following results after monitoring the child participants over 20 years:

For every one-point increase on the 5-point rating scale in a child’s social competence score in kindergarten, he/she was:

Twice as likely to attain a college degree in early adulthood;
54% more likely to earn a high school diploma; and
46% more likely to have a full-time job at the age of 25.

The results “indicated statistically significant and unique associations between teacher-assessed prosocial skills and outcomes in all domains examined.”

Types of Social Skills That Children Can Learn

So, what are the skills that your children can learn? Generally, the types of skills that children learn can be split into five categories:

Physical social skills
Socially-related social skills
Cognitive social skills
Behavioral social skills
Adaptive/functional social skills

The way that your child will learn skills in each category will depend on a few factors. Naturally, the type of skill will change how your child learns it. For example, your child will learn how to listen differently than they learn how to share with their friends.

Ready to see all the amazing things your child will learn to do? Follow along in your child’s development as we break down the skills they learn by age.

Social, Cognitive, and Motor Skills Activities for Kids by Age

When you think of your baby, the first thought likely isn’t about their social skills. After all, they’re a baby! However, infancy is when the brain is the most malleable. The synapses created and connections made in the first three years of life are so numerous and frequent—this is when important external input is happening.

Experts at the Urban Child Institute say it simply enough: “Genes provide a blueprint for the brain, but a child’s environment and experiences carry out the construction.”

Below are examples of critical social skills for different child development stages, as well as social skills activities you can try with your kids.

Infants 2 months to 1 year

Skill #1: Two-Way Communication

Two-way communication is the act of two individuals exchanging forms of communication back and forth (verbal or non-verbal). You’ve likely noticed that your baby can be pretty social with you! That’s because babies will communicate with their caregivers in one form or another. At this stage, behaviors are copied from what they see and hear. Caregivers can help their infant learn to communicate back and forth by:

Using appropriate eye contact
Using non-verbals appropriate for the situation
Responding to each other’s styles of communication
Talking often to the infant/having a conversation even though the infant may not be able to say actual words at this stage.

Activity ideas for two-way communication include:

Peek-a-Boo
Baby Sign-Language
Magic Mirror
Use rhyming words and songs to communicate

Skill #2: Exploration

As your baby grows, they’ll start to move around more, and their natural curiosity will have them exploring their surroundings. Being able to do this is important to their physical, emotional, and social development. By exploring, infants can begin to develop more independence, and more trust in their environment and the people around them.

Activity ideas for infant exploration include:

Provide baby with items and toys that will stimulate different senses
Allow baby to have new and enriching experiences daily
Give the freedom to roam in a safe environment
Let baby get messy—too much structure doesn’t allow for exploration
Take baby to the zoo, on a nature walk, or to a festival; they really do take it all in!

Skill #3: Communicating Needs/Self-Advocacy

Communicating effectively and appropriately is a huge part of helping your baby become socially aware. Even though infants don’t typically speak their first actual words until around a year or later, they can still understand a lot more than people think.
Teaching an infant how to communicate their needs at this stage will not only cut down on your frustration when they begin to cry, and you don’t know why, but it will help them to be less frustrated and get their needs met.

Activity ideas to help infants communicate their needs:

Learn Baby Sign Language and teach it to baby
Use pictures or a communication board
Research and learn more about infant communication
Learn baby’s non-verbal cues and types of sounds
Practice sounds and simple words with baby

Skill #4: Emotion Regulation

Psychology Today defines emotion regulation as “the ability to exert control over one’s own emotional state.” The importance of this is to grow into an emotionally healthy child and adult who can identify their emotional state and alter it if needed (such as if s/he is too angry or frustrated) and utilize coping skills to regulate those unwanted emotional states.

While this seems much too complicated for your infant (they can’t choose a specific coping skill to use, for example), emotion regulation does begin in infancy if it’s taught in the right environment. Much of an infant’s ability to regulate their emotions has a lot to do with the attachment style s/he has with the caregiver. An infant whose caregiver provides too much attention or not any attention, such as neglect, are both likely to have deficits in this skill.

Activity ideas to help an infant work on their emotion regulation:

*Most of these ideas are what the caregiver will do.

Give reliable and consistent protection and support to baby (secure attachment style)
Keep a routine
Modeling emotion regulation (taking a break, deep breathing, talking about emotions)
Help baby self-soothe with the use of a stuffed animal or pacifier

Skill #5: Expressing Emotions

Your kid learns how to express emotions from their parents by copying what they see and through their own trial and error. If an infant frowns or looks as if s/he is going to cry, the caregiver will more than likely respond with comfort or solve the problem. The infant then learns s/he will get certain reactions for certain expressions/emotions shown.

Activities to help infants learn how to express emotions:

Singing and dancing
Imaginative play
Reading picture books about feelings
Looking at pictures of other infants expressing different emotions
Modeling different emotions for babies and naming them.

Toddlers (1-4 years old)

The following are skills for kids that are in the toddler years.

Skill #1: Cooperating and Sharing

Cooperation is an important social skill activity category for kids. As they say, sharing is caring!

As toddlers start being social with others their age at school or a playdate, for them to make and keep friends, they must learn how to cooperate in a group and the act of sharing. Learning how to play fair and make things fair while being kind and respectful is a must at this stage in development.

Activities to help toddlers learn about cooperation and sharing:

Obstacle course or relay race
Make a tower or build something together
Work on a puzzle together
Play a game in which participants take turns
Follow the leader
Donate a toy
Create a sharing box or bin
Role-play and model sharing
Positively praise appropriate behavior

Skill #2: Following Directions

Now that your child is a toddler, they can walk, talk, and explore. They can also be somewhat independent throughout the day as they learn new skills. Following directions (following step-by-step instructions and learning to follow them without arguing) are skills for kids that those in the toddler years absolutely need to learn.

Activities to teach about following directions:

Simon Says
Stop, Wait, Go
Using books and songs with instructions
Hokey Pokey
Practice giving one to two-step directions
Model how to follow multi-step directions
Positively praise for following directions on the first prompt

Skill #3: Using Manners

Wouldn’t it be nice if all children naturally used good manners? Of course! But, the road to good manners is paved with plenty of practice and learning. That’s why caregivers and teachers need to teach, teach, and teach these skills by modeling and practicing with their toddlers.

Activities to teach manners:

Read books and sing songs about manners
Have a “tea party” or family meal where everyone practices good manners
Mind your Manners game
Practice sharing toys/craft items/sports equipment
Yes Please, No Thank You game
Keep pictures and visuals up for reminding toddlers about manners

Skill #4: Communicating Needs Appropriately

Now that toddlers can speak, it is important for them to learn how to communicate their needs appropriately. Crying, like an infant needs to, no longer works. Communication skills for kids are imperative to their success in the real world.

According to the experts at Positive Psychology, eight fundamentals of communication include empathy, pausing, introspection, turn-taking, established procedures, conversation skills, respectful vocabulary, and practice in natural settings.

Activities to promote effective communication:

Show and Tell
Turn-taking
Picture-telling
Model and practice active listening
Telephone
Charades
Practice asking and answering questions

Skill #5: Respecting Personal Space

Toddlers don’t yet understand what personal boundaries are and why someone might want their personal space. This needs to be taught to them explicitly. Learning the social skill of respecting personal space, toddlers will have a better chance of making and keeping friends.

Activities to promote boundaries:

Practice with boundary lines (tape or string on the floor)
Stage conversations or activities with boundary lines
Use visuals and stories to teach about personal space
Teach about parts of the body and nonverbals

Primary School (around 5-6 years old)

Once they enter preschool and kindergarten, the skills for kids get more complex and involve more internalization and self-reflection. Problem-solving skills and making choices that will affect them and others are typically learned at this stage.

Skill #1: Self-Control

The emotion regulation skills that children learn before this stage are a must when learning self-control. Emotion regulation is more about calming and self-soothing at previous stages. In contrast, self-control (a part of emotion regulation) is more about understanding that actions affect others. When kids are in this stage and in school, they need self-control to sit still, follow directions, control impulses, and act appropriately.

Activities that can help teach self-control are:

Simon Says
Freeze
Wait Five
Duck Duck Goose
Staring Contest
Follow the Leader

Skill #2: Conflict Resolution

Like self-control, conflict resolution is a more advanced skill that typically won’t be learned in the previous stage. Kids in school need to be able to solve their own interpersonal conflicts in a healthy way.

Activities that will help kids learn about conflict resolution include:

Role-playing scenarios
Point out conflicts from TV shows/movies and talk about them
Teach about compromising and making a “middle path”
Conflict Resolution Visual Task Cards
Model empathy
Practice apologizing

Skill #3: Patience

Having patience is difficult even for adults; therefore, it is important to start learning this critical social skill early on and promote patience in all sorts of situations.

Activities to practice patience include:

Help kids to avoid instant gratification (start slowly)
Give kids strategies to help them be patient (deep breathing, count to 10, etc.)
Use a timer or a visual when the child is waiting
Practice taking turns
Model patient behaviors

Skill #4: Good Hygiene

At this stage, potty training should be over with, and kids should be more independent when it comes to following good hygiene. Hygiene is a social skill because people are more likely to want to be around a clean, well-groomed person who smells nice. Kids can get dirty and stinky—it is beneficial to teach them what to do if this happens throughout the day.

Activities to promote good hygiene are:

Place hygiene-reminder visuals in the home and at school
Discuss the places germs hideout
Read books or watch videos about good hygiene
Have kids make their own hand-washing poster
Post a hygiene checklist at home (hands, face, body, hair, teeth, etc.)
Make hygiene fun with good-smelling and fun-colored products

Skill #5: Being a Good Sport

These skills for kids are critical. Kids will have a chance to show good sportsmanship in the classroom, at home, at recess, at birthday parties, and during sports. Those who are bad sports aren’t all that fun to play with. A social skills activity for kids that centers around sportsmanship should promote kindness, acceptance, respect, and encouragement.

Activities to teach sportsman-like behaviors include:

Practice playing games at home and don’t let the child win
Make sure the caregiver, teacher, or coach models being a good sport when they lose
Set the rules of the game and stick to them
Help the child learn from mistakes and move on with grace
End the game with a handshake or congratulations
Watch videos and read books about being a good sport.

There are some obvious and drastic physical, emotional, and physiological changes between each child development stage. This is obviously why an infant, toddler, and primary-aged child will work on different social skills activities, but many build upon each other.

For example:

An infant works on emotion regulation and coping using a blanket, stuffed animal, or pacifier; infants also have a secure attachment with their caregiver and can self-regulate by snuggling or being held.
A toddler continues to work on emotion regulation by expressing feelings, finding other items that are comforting aside from a pacifier, and they begin to actively learn more about emotions and feelings.
A primary school-aged child works on emotion regulation by asking for help, identifying emotions and specific coping skills to go along with more difficult ones, and talking to others about their feelings.

The result will be similar: the child, over time, will learn how to cope and regulate his/her own emotions, yet the strategies used will become more advanced, and thought will be put into actions and consequences.

Each of these social skills listed are critical to teach children—at home and in a school setting. Without them, healthy children may grow up to be maladaptive and not function on the same level as similar peers. We all want our children to be successful and have the most effective tools or social skills to be so.

Where do Kids Develop Skills Best? Pros and Cons

At Home via Homeschooling or Virtual Learning

Pros:

Children who are taught at home during their early primary school years can absolutely be trained on various social skills. In a way, being at home while learning social skills may give the caregiver more control over the environment and what will be taught and how. Being at home can give the child more one-on-one attention, and caregivers may have more time and flexibility to introduce the child to novel experiences, such as going to a museum and practicing certain skills. At this time during the pandemic, technology has made it easier for students who learn at home to get access to other students and activities via Zoom or another online platform.

Cons:

Some children who are taught at home have less access to peers and groups of peers necessary to teach certain social skills. Many skills, such as showing good sportsmanship, cooperation, and self-control, would best be learned and practiced with other children around. Caregivers may need to be a little more creative when thinking of social skills activities to use when there aren’t many other children involved.

In a School Environment

Pros:

Interactive social skills activities for kids are sometimes much easier to create in a classroom setting due to having access to multiple students in one area. Not only can teachers do whole-group instruction on skills, but they can also differentiate by grouping students based on need and skill level. It is always beneficial for kids to be around other kids in a social environment. In the classroom, teachers can also embed social skills training into each subject area and within each environment at the school by using a classroom matrix.

An example of how social skills are promoted within an educational setting is Cadence Education’s Kind Child. Each month, teachers working in a Cadence school focus on developing valuable character traits like friendship, thankfulness, and a positive self-image. They advocate for a “kind child, kind school, and kind community.”

Cons:

Students getting social skills training in a classroom setting may not get as much one-on-one attention due to classroom demands and the number of other students in the class. Also, certain students may be poor examples in relation to social skills, and vulnerable children may pick up on bad habits if not addressed.

Regardless of the caregiver’s learning environment, social skills should be explicitly taught, and appropriate behaviors should be positively praised and rewarded.

Prepare Your Children to Thrive

Schools that know a thing or two about positively teaching and promoting social skills among children are Cadence Education schools. They also provide students with engaging and creative content-based lessons while using various types of curriculum.

The Ascend Curriculum combines skills-based learning across nine different learning domains, including literacy, math, science, physical fitness, creative expression, social-emotional development, cultural understanding, technology, and language.

Another curriculum offered in some Cadence schools is the Pinnacle Curriculum, a faith-based curriculum designed to encourage children to develop their emerging skills in developmental areas while discovering and experiencing God’s love.

Some Cadence Education schools also offer Montessori and Private Kindergarten programs as well.

Cadence staff provide parents with peace of mind by giving children an exceptional education every fun-filled day in a place as nurturing as home.

Cadence may be the right fit for your child—a place where they can thrive socially, emotionally, and academically.

Are you interested in finding out how a Cadence Education school can benefit your child? Click here to search for a school in your area and contact someone from Cadence to learn more.

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." nine0003

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? nine0003

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. nine0003

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. nine0003

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. nine0003

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. nine0003

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. nine0003

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." nine0003

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. nine0003

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?” nine0003

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. nine0003

- 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? nine0003
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. nine0003

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. nine0003
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. nine0003

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. Of course, the pandemic has made its own adjustments, fear for the family: no one wants to get sick with an insidious virus.