Parents’ Role in Developing Child’s Social Skills

Developing social skills like making friends and bonding with new people is often a difficult task for most children. Children tend to be with people with whom they feel home and avoid socializing with unknown people. As parents you can encourage your kids to develop social bonding by following certain effective ways. The following blog would discuss some effective tips for parents to help their kid overcome socialization challenges. 

Tips on how to help Children Develop Social Skills

Parents play an important role in a child's developmental processes of which development of social skills is the most challenging. Here are some valuable tips that you can follow to practice socialization.

Encourage them to ask Questions

Questioning is an effective way to strike a conversation. Since children are curious by nature, encouraging them to ask questions to friends, teachers and relatives would enhance their social skills of conversation as well as to learn a lot through interesting discussion. 

For instance, if your child has interest in scientific subjects, ask them to question science teachers and friends about their queries. This would enable them to get into an engaging conversation gaining knowledge and social skills. You must also consult books on kid’s teaching techniques for parents to gain key insight on teaching techniques appropriate for a kid's holistic development. 

Encourage them to Practice Eye Contact 

Making eye-contact during a conversation is an essential social skill. Eye-contacting is indicative of an involved communication with full concentration. Many children are extremely shy and might avoid eye-contacting while talking to unknown people. Moreover they might not be interested in answering questions that are not of any interest to them and thus, avoid eye-contact. 

Parents must encourage their children to maintain eye-contact while talking to others. This enhances their concentration power, listening skills and mindfulness. 

Practice Role Playing

Role playing is an effective way to develop empathy among children. By role playing children get to step into someone else’s shoes. For instance, playing the role of a teacher enhances their communication and explanation skills and also allows them to realize the hard work teachers have to do for teaching them. This role switching practice develops social skills and metal agility. 

Emotional Regulation and Empathy

Children tend to express their emotions more overtly and prioritize their needs before others. Suppose you read to your child during bedtime. Most kids would throw a tantrum if their parents can’t read to them one day due to tiredness or some other important tasks. 

Learning emotional regulation would allow them to realize that they too need to understand the problems of others.  Moreover, they will learn to compromise their needs and desires if the situation demands. On the other hand, parents should also express their emotions to their children and encourage their kids to do the same. 

Higher Level Social Skills 

Higher level of social skills involves verbal and non-verbal communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, assertiveness and public speaking. As children start schooling they need to practice these social skills at some level or the other. Encouraging them to practice it from a young age would enable them to develop a strong and bold personality as an adult. 

Allow your child to understand body language, encourage them to argue and negotiate their position while demanding things, and ask them to perform on stage in school or in front of relatives. These practice sessions are extremely beneficial for them and would prepare them for jobs. 

Endnote

Parents are significant role models for children and being a social role model to your children would make it easier for your child to learn it by observation. You must practice eye contact while talking to your children, explain your emotions, apologize for making mistakes or being rude to them, and show empathy to your child. These practices make you a positive role model for your kid.