Social Skills for Young Kids: Parents’ Roles

When it comes to teaching social skills, parents have a significant role to play in the lives of their young kids. Social skills are not just some kind of conformity thing; they are necessary for your child’s academic and social life, and for his or her career after graduation. Parents play an important role in helping young kids learn social skills.

Why It’s Important

Young kids need to learn how to be socially adept for their immediate as well as long-term future. Social skills involve the whole person – emotions, body posture, morals, intelligence, etc. – and how to manage them. Young kids who learn social skills tend to be more emotionally resilient, have better self-esteem, and even refrain from using drugs or alcohol when they get older.

Tips for Parents – How to Teach Social Skills

As parents, you can start early in teaching your child social skills. Here are some tips and suggestions.

1. Respect your child’s temperament

Not every child has high needs socially, and not every child has a high need for alone time. This doesn’t mean that your child can’t learn healthy social skills. Forcing your child to socialize more than he or she is comfortable with could have the opposite effect of what you’re trying to achieve, so respecting your child’s individual temperament is important. That said, all children can learn the skills of social competence regardless of temperament. It just might take a different approach with different temperaments.

2. Arrange play dates

This one can be difficult, especially if you the parent are not particularly social yourself. But try to make it a point to schedule some play time with other kids, even if your child is not in preschool or day care yet, or even if he or she is not going to daycare or preschool.

In fact, if preschool or daycare is around the corner, spending time with other kids before enrolling can help make the experience much more positive. And if your child is not going to be enrolled in school until kindergarten, socializing beforehand will help him or her be more socially adept when they do get there.

3. Play with your kids

Very young kids can only do so much with each other – sometimes it seems like they just play by themselves, just in the same room! To help offset this and train your kids for the social skills they’ll need in group settings with peers, make sure you play with your child frequently.

Your children learn about play through your interactions with them, too. This is because parents who play with their kids have kids who are better able to adjust socially and are more socially competent. It’s a healthy springboard from which your kids can go forward and make friends. Just make sure you play like a child would (to an extent), interacting and getting into the play rather than just directing it. Play with your kids as equals, experts say.