Teaching Basic Social Skills to Kids By Rachel Funnell, LMFT

Social Skills are an important part of life and they are critical for your children to learn. They can help your child not only be successful socially but also academically, emotionally, and personally. Children don’t readily know how to socialize, so it’s important to teach them how to socialize appropriately. If children don’t know how to socialize appropriately, it can lead to problems with job retention, relationship problems, legal problems, and lots of added stress. 

The basic social skills that kids need to be taught are following directions, using manners, working with others, taking turns, greetings, being a good sport, listening to others, understanding personal space, waiting and having patience.  Below are some ways to teach social skills to your children through different activities and in daily life. 

Following Directions:

Children that struggle with following directions tend to experience a variety of consequences including problems with school work and getting into trouble for misbehaving. To help your child learn how to follow directions it’s important for a parent to follow the following guidelines. 

• Give a young child one direction at a time. 
  • Young children can’t remember multiple directions at once. 
• Phrase your directions as statements not a question.
  • Questions imply that your child has an option to say no.
• Remember that mistakes are normal. 
  • Young children do get distracted, forget or behave impulsively so view mistakes as an opportunity to help them learn. 

   
    Strategies to teach following directions:

• Play games like Simon Says, Freeze, or Red Light, Green Light
• Practice both verbal and visual directions
• Teach and practice how to read directions before starting an assignment
• Have your child highlight or underline directions on assignments before starting it

 Using Manners:

Manners help children show kindness and respect to others. It also allows others to respect the child. 

    Strategies to teach Using Manners: 

• Post visuals of good manners, i.e.: “please”, “thank you”, “you’re welcome”
• Model for your child by using your manners with them and in front of them
• Actually teach your child about manners and discuss what manners to use in different situations
• Play Go Fish but before asking for a card, have your child say “please” and when they receive the card, they need to say “thank you.” When they give a card and someone says “thank you” they say “you’re welcome”.
   

Working with others:

This skill is very important for children as they are in school and with their siblings. This includes listening, collaborating, helping and doing their fair share of the work. 

    Strategies to teach working with others:

• Actually talk to your child about what working well with others looks like
• Create opportunities for your child to work with you or other family members
• Build things together like legos or marble runs

 
Taking Turns:

Sharing is big when it comes to making and keeping friends. Sharing also helps children feel good about themselves. 

    Strategies to teach taking turns:

• Practice turn-taking with board games
• Practice turn-taking with conversations
• Explain what it means to take turns

 
Greetings:

Learning how to greet others helps children create a positive environment. It helps them to be inclusive and will help them when they are in the workplace. 

    Strategies to teach Greetings:

• Model greeting your child and others
• Teach different types of greetings
• Model greetings in play when playing with dolls or action figures or other similar toys

 
Being a Good Sport:
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Learning to be a good sport will help your children be respectful when they engage in games and activities. It can also help them learn how to cope with losing by focusing on having fun. 

    Strategies to teach being a good sport:

• Teach and discuss expectations for being a good sport
• Focus on having fun, playing and learning rather than winning
• Give reminders about being a good sport before activities start
• Model being a good sport 
• Practice and discuss having a growth mindset when they do lose

   
Listening to Others:

Being a good listener is critical when building positive relationships with others. It’s important for children to learn how to focus on what others are saying and not be distracted by other things. 

    Strategies to teach listening to others:

• Provide time to share thoughts and feelings
• Teach basic listening skills like making eye contact, putting distractions away, thinking about what someone is saying, reflecting and validating
• Model listening skills
• Play the game telephone

​Understanding Personal Space:

Teaching your child about personal space helps your child learn how to make everyone feel comfortable in social situations. It also helps with teaching your child about consent when entering another's personal space. 

    Strategies to teach person space:

• Teach your child that everyone has an invisible bubble around them and explain why having personal space is important
• Act out what personal space looks like in different scenarios
• Teach your child how to ask for permission if they want to get closer to someone or touch someone
• Read books about person space

  
Waiting and Having Patience:

Developing patience is a critical skill to learn. Your children will have to wait for many things at home, school or in the community. By having patience, they are showing that they are respectful to all. 

    Strategies to teach waiting and having patience:

• Teach strategies for what to do when waiting (doing something else, using positive self-talk, playing a game)
• Discuss times when your child may have to wait and how to handle it
• Read books about patience
• Model being patient

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