How You Can Help Your Child with Their Social Skills

Good social skills are essential to a child's happiness and success. Children with good social skills will not only find it easier to make friends, but these skills can also contribute towards a brighter future.

Some children are naturally very sociable, while others need a helping hand in order to develop these invaluable skills. To help your child improve their social skills, here is some great advice from an independent school in Lincoln ...

Set a good example

It is important that parents set a good example for children. Try to demonstrate good social skills and manners for your child to replicate. If you want your children to be polite, then it is important that you remember to say please and thank you too! Teach your children to be kind to others and point out unkind behaviour in movies or in books. If you make a mistake or have a disagreement with your child, be sure to apologise later on and discuss how you can avoid a similar situation in the future.

Make eye contact

Emphasise the importance of good eye contact to your child. You can do this by demonstrating how it feels to hold a conversation without eye contact. Ask your child to tell you about their day while you look around the room. Then, try again with good eye contact. Which did they prefer and how did it make them feel?

Cultivate empathy

Helping your child to develop their social skills isn't simply to teach them to follow rules and remember their manners, but to inspire them to think for themselves and understand feelings.
This should include their own feelings and the feelings of others. By discussing feelings and emotions with your child you can teach them to have empathy for others. This will help them to respect the feelings and perspectives of other people.