Socializing is an important skill and what’s most significant is that this skill can be learned at home. Everyone can effectively learn, write, and learn social skills from their home. Kids look out to their parents to build a ground for their social skills. The child first inherits the traits of their parents. Although academics are generally not ideal for the parents to teach, the social skills come naturally to the kids based on the parenting steps that are implemented to bring up the child.
Why are social skills for kids important?
Social skills enable the child to create and maintain healthy relationships with their peers and family members and instill a sense of manners and responsibility for their actions toward others. It helps them to analyze and understand what to say and what to do in any particular situation and how they have to respond in different social situations. Efficient social interactions are most likely to build satisfying relationships and also affect mood significantly.
It would allow your child to navigate through tough situations and manage problematic situations effortlessly. While we all experience socially awkward moments, it is important that the child understands how to cover up and navigate such situations in the best way possible. It is important that the child learn to get along with others, accept their own flaws and acknowledge the strengths of others, and also be empathetic and have sympathy towards people around them.
The ‘red flags’ that you need to look out for to identify the social issue in kids
It is important to identify when the child lacks social skills. There are some traits that you need to look out for that can be alarming issues and signs that your kid might be lacking social skills and calls for your immediate attention.
- Not being in the present situation and being in their ‘ imaginary world ‘
- Stays silent when around others
- Takes a step while doing any task or engaging with others
- Does not make any eye contact with others while struggling to interact.
- There is very little emotional and physical touch with the loved ones.
- They don’t have any favorite parent or known person
- They usually struggle and end up being exhausted while they try to interact with other siblings or peers.
- They don’t have any close friends and are usually alone.
- They don’t have any gesture towards anyone or maybe lack of it.
- They don’t remember the names of their peers and classmates and are usually not interested in going out or attending parties and gatherings.
How can you help them?
- Identifying perspectives
It is an activity that involves your kid identifying the tone and intention of a comment or any dialogue that is made in a movie or while watching TV. Push them hard to think over the emotions and thoughts that the person is likely to go through. Make them aware of the emotions that the person goes through. You can also help your kid identify emotions and thoughts through role-plays and acting activities
- Pretend to be a character
You can collect some toys with characters that your child is familiar with and then pretend to have a conversation with them. You can either have a conversation with them or pretend to do some activity. Understand the reaction from your child and respond if their reaction is right or not. If not, say them in a friendly tone with the character’s voice. Use this strategy as a technique to understand and help your kid to understand more about emotions and responses.
- Play games that help the child to learn social skills
Games are a fun way to teach your child some social skills. You can really take advantage of some board games that will eventually help your child that requires patience and perseverance, as it teaches them to wait, earn merits and progress and stick by the rules that are placed in the game. You need to make sure that there is a balance in the rules otherwise your child might not like playing the game and you might lose the chance to use this technique to teach your child some social skills
- You can play hunt the treasure with your child
Rather than asking your child to find items that are scattered out in the house, you can play treasure hunt. There is an opportunity to learn to solve problems. You might need to take some effort from your end but this will help build problem-solving skills. This will also help them to solve a problem while collaborating with others and understand the importance of teamwork. It will help your child to understand different perspectives and analyze their emotions and work with them. This will also help them to answer as a team. You can include some riddles and make them and think and identify the clue.
- Problem-solving with some props
You can use some props that can help you instill social skills in your kids. It might take some effort on your part but you can take up some strategies like getting some props like paper clips, notes, and straws and you can instruct your child to create something from the items based on their creativity. They can choose to make a house or a tower. This helps your child to cultivate creativity in them.
- Keeping up the balloon
You can blow up a balloon and ask your child to make sure that the balloon is in the air without having it touch the ground. This will help your child stay patient. Also, ask them to count the dodges they make. This will also help them stay focused.
- Encourage them to tell short stories
Storytelling is a very powerful way to connect with people and it is always useful to teach your child if you teach them how to connect with others. You can create surrounding the things they like to grab their interest in your stories. You can also ask them to create similar stories in their own versions with the situations they want for the characters. After your child narrates the story, you can appreciate it and summarize their story as an indication that you are listening to them.
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