What you should know about Social Skills and Children?
How can lacking Social Skills negatively affect your child?
School can be such an exciting, amazing and fun experience for some children. Unfortunately, this is not the case for others.
Often we think of school as a place to learn to read, write, maths, science, languages and even instruments, but we don’t think it is also a place to learn social skills and how to appropriately interact and get along with others.
A study followed kindergarten children for 19 years looking at how social skills in kindergarten can be used to predict how well they perform later in life at school, work and socially (Jones, Greenberg, & Crowley, 2015). The study found children with higher social skills in kindergarten were able to complete University degrees, had a higher likelihood of being employed and were less likely to get in trouble with the police. This study showed how learning effective social skills at a young age is crucial for children to become successful both academically and emotionally. Children with higher social skills are connected to their peers, have a higher emotional wellbeing, feel positive about their school experience, tend to perform better academically and engage in positive social behaviours.
In contrast, children who lack social skills are likely to be laughed at, picked on, talked about, excluded from activities and be bullied.
The following are some important things to be considered when learning social skills:
1. Greetings: This is more than just saying ‘hello’. It is important for children to learn non- verbal cues such as body language, facial expressions and appropriate tone of voice for example.
2. Initiating conversation: learning how take turns when conversing teaches children how to initiate conversations, maintain them and end them appropriately.
3. Understanding who they are speaking to: It is important for children to know speaking to adults is different to speaking to their peers. By understanding this children learn different populations require different types of interaction/ engagement.
4. Reading social cues: These are important in understanding how they can be utilised as tips to guide what children say or do next.
5. Conflict resolution: Learning how to resolve differences and disagreements teaches children how to sympathise, compromise and negotiate.
6. Recognising mistakes: It teaches children the importance of acknowledging when they make mistakes and how to apologise when they do so.
You may like to ask yourself “what future will my child have without the right social skills?”
At Vida Psychology we know how important social skills are for the development of children and their well being both emotionally and academically. Our specialised Child and Adolescent Psychologists teach children and their parents how to develop and nurture social skills. You can make an appointment at appointment@vidapsychology.com.au or on 9328 8200.
Carmen Beaumont
Principal Psychologist & Director
References:
Jones, D.E., Greenberg, M., & Crowley, M. (2015). Early social-emotional functioning and public health: The relationship between kindergarten social competence and future wellness. American Journal of Public Health, 105, 2283-2290.
