How to improve your child's social skills
Are you worried about your child's social skills? Learn how to improve social skills of children.
It is very important to teach a child good social skills. Social skills help in overall development of your child and can help him while making friends, establishing rapport with teachers and getting along with everyone. This article helps to understand more about social skills and how you can improve them in your child.How to improve your child's social skills
Every parent dreams of an overall development of their child. Be it about making good friends, enjoying school, building rapport with teachers, getting along everyone and behaving well with parents and relatives. Is it more to ask for? But most of the time, a child may not just be the way his parents want him to be. Sometime a child might just not be able to build a good rapport with teachers, or he or she might just not be able to make good friends. Other than that your child may just not be social enough to behave well and get along with everyone.
It's all about how good your child's social skills are. It's all about developing or improving social skills in children which may work in an overall development of your child. The way it actually works is that when a child has good social skills he or she tends to do better in school. A child with good social skill also makes friends easily and is more successful when it comes to exhibiting manners and confidence. But a child with poor social skills may be unable to exhibit the same qualities as compared to the child with good social skills. Very often, children need to be taught social skills, but in some cases children are gifted with social skills. Such kids seem to have an instinctive sense of good social skills. But that is not the case with each and every child. So if parent try to improve their child's social skills for such children, then things may work out in a positive manner both for these child and his parents.Meaning of the term Social Skills
When we use the term Social Skills what we mean is the kind of:
- Skills which improves the ability of communicating with others
- Skills which improves ability of interaction with others.
- Skills which improves the ability of socializing with others.Some of the social skills children should be taught
Here's a list of social skills a child must be taught:
1. To co-operate with others.
2. To share things.
3. To participate actively.
4. To be patient
5. To help others
6. To listen
7. To take turns
8. To greet with smile
9. To show confidence
10. To show interest in other's things
11. To respect other's work
12. To praise others for their good doings
13. To communicate positively.
14. To have good manners
15. To respect elders
16. To respect himself
17. To accept failures
18. To finish given tasks
19. To interact with others
20. To never put down others
21. To behave well in front of others.How a parent can recognize which social skill of their child needs improvement
Parents are mostly confused about which social skill of their child they should improve. But it completely depends on your own observation. Observe your child carefully and check where he lacks. If you find that your child lacks in behavior then focus on that. If you find your child does not accept his mistake then help him improve in that area. It may vary with children so parents need to recognize with close observation. See for following signs:
- The child is always shy with people around him.
- The child fails to respect his elders
- The child fails to respect his friends
- The child is unable to make lots of friends.
- The child finds difficult in continuing a conversation
- The child is always at lack of words.
- The child looks loner.
- The child is impatient
- The child has poor communication skills
- The child does not share his things with others
If any of these or anything similar is observed in a child than parents should focus on their child and improve those areas. Once you identify where your child lacks and has poor skills, then it may be very easy to improve those areas by working on it. Let's know how parents can actually help their child to improve their social skills.Help your child to improve his basic interaction skills
If your child fails in interaction and has poor interaction skills, then help him to improve it. Teach your child the basic interaction skills which may come handy for him. Teach about making eye contact. Teach your child to smile and greet people. Help your child to learn about how to speak politely to guests. It is very important for a child to show interest in other's work, feelings and activities. Most of the time children fidget with whatever they have in their hand while others talk to them. This happens when you have guest in your house and they ask your child about their school or studies. Children at this stage keep fidgeting while answering the questions. This can actually be considered as bad manners and children should be told about that. Help your child to learn how to converse with others
Parents should teach their children how to converse with people. Most of the time, children really don't understand what to speak and how to speak in front of others. These others could be guests, relatives, friends or anyone else. So parents have to teach the child about conversing correctly. Follow these steps:
- Teach your child to speak or answer slowly.
- Teach your child to smile and nod while conversing with others.
- Teach your child to listen to others too and allow them to speak as well.
- Teach your child about when and where to disclose personal information.Help your child to improve in his social skills right from a very young age
Start teaching your child about social skills right from his young age. This makes him or her learning easy. Moreover as children grow up it may get difficult to explain each and every things to them. Since children have their own opinions about everything, once you start young then things get much more simpler for both parents as well the child.Help your child to build and maintain friendships
A friendship plays an important role in everyone's life and also is an important means of developing social skills. If a child can manage making good friends and also manage to maintain his or her friendship then there is nothing like it. But if your child finds it difficult to make new friends or to maintain his friendships then you really should be concern about it. In such cases help your child to learn socializing skills where your child should be able to go and introduce himself to new people. Help your child with decision making power which will help him to decide whom should be make friendship with. Be supportive when your child tries really hard making friends. Appreciate your child's hard work. Help your child by teaching him how he can maintain friendships by not expecting too much and also by respecting other's work and skills.Help your child to improve his social skills by teaching good manners
It is very important that your child learns good manners. Teach your child good manners and see that he follows them every day. It is very important to understand how a child behaves. Behavior plays an important role in development of social skills. Manners like courteousness, table manners, greeting others, etc help to improve your child's social skill.Watch out for TV watching and Video Games play timings
Research has shown that if children spend considerable time playing video games or watching television then they tend to grow shyer. Since most of the time the child spends indoor playing his video games, he feels more and more awkward when it comes to socializing with others. So limit the timings of your child for playing video games and watching television. Instead make him go out and play with others and to involve in activities where he will have to interact with others.Be a good role model
This is one of the most important thing a parent should remember. Finally children always tend to imitate their parents. So if parents have good social skills then even children tend to develop them. But if parents try to act shy and fail to interact with others. The why blame children?