What Social Experiences Best Support Your Child?
Social experiences are, in short, interactions with other people. Humans thrive in communication, comradery, and competition with others, and social experiences are required to develop these communication and social skills.
Social interaction can also improve mental health, promote a sense of safety, belonging, and security, and build confidence. Both positive and negative experiences can be beneficial in growth and development.
Here is some information about social experiences, including the most important skills for a child to learn and examples of social experiences you can integrate into their day-to-day.
What are Social Experiences?
Social experiences can be almost anything that offers an opportunity for social connection with others. They can:
·Help a child perceive, interpret, process, and understand activities.
Teach them how to be aware of, improve upon, and understand the side effects of their activities as it relates to societal norms.
Help a child recognize people’s personal identities and social relationships, allowing them to customize experiences based on the other person’s preferences, behaviors, and friends.
Most Important Social Skills for a Child to Learn
Sharing: The feeling that something “belongs” to child is typically stronger than the desire to please others, so teaching the importance of sharing helps them learn how to put the needs and desires of others before their own, as well as keep and advance friendships, and show appreciation.
Listening: Those who are good listeners tend to be more successful in speaking, socializing, and communicating with others. Intently listening can help them develop relationships and is the building block of proper communication, language, and intelligence. Poorly developed listening skills can significantly impact a child’s language and communication development.
Following directions: Properly following directions can keep children safe and maintain order, and can impact their ability to complete tasks to reach the desired outcome. Age-appropriate directions will also help set expectations for your children, helping keep them feeling calm and secure because they know what comes next.
Collaboration: Collaborating helps children discover their own and each other’s strengths, interests, and capabilities. They are able to learn from each other, developing a unique set of skills and knowledge in a fun way. It can lead to deeper learning, improve self-esteem, and build an understanding of other perspectives while improving confidence and increasing attention, motivation, and response levels.
Cooperation: Teaching kids how to cooperate helps them understand teamwork, builds trust with others, increases empathy, promotes social skills, forms healthy relationships, and gives them a sense of belonging. It helps them build the ability to work effectively and respectfully with other people, make decisions, and understand responsibility.
Patience: It is challenging, but necessary to teach children how to be patient. Being patient is even tough for adults. However, patience can counteract impulsivity and acting out. It teaches self-control and delayed gratification, and can promote better long-term mental health, relationships, and progress toward goals.
Empathy: When children are empathetic, they are able to build a sense of security and stronger relationships with others. Empathy encourages tolerance and acceptance and promotes good mental health. The child will be able to better understand how to be considerate of those around them, cope with feelings, and promote helping behaviors.
Respect: When children know how to respect themselves and others, they know how they should be treated and how to treat others around them. Most kids have a greater understanding of emotional and physical boundaries, helps them feel loved and safe, and promotes good relationships.
Positivity: Children with an optimistic mindset perform better academically, boosting their ability to motivate themselves and learn. When children feel good about themselves and their own abilities, they learn better, have less anxiety, and have more confidence. It also helps them build coping skills and resistance to peer pressure.
Examples of Social e-Experiences for Children
Helping your child improve their social skills doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. There are a number of things you can do throughout the day, both big and small, to help them improve.
Examples include:
Participating in before- or after-school programs or clubs.
Going out to eat.
Studying with friends.
Introducing self to new people.
Play/cooperative play (like tag, hide and seek, and similar games).
Recreational activities.
School activities, classes, and trips.
Enrichment activities (music lessons, art classes, book clubs, and related activities).
Family activities, such as playing a game, doing chores, running errands, eating together, and even watching a movie together.
Conversation with others.
Team sports.
Talking to neighbors or other adults.
There are also activities and situations you can create at home to help children build social skills:
Have a staring contest.
Take turns doing something around the house.
Play emotion charades (write different emotions on paper, the child picks one and must act out that emotion. This helps children learn to recognize emotions using facial and body cues).
Tell improvisational stories (collaborate and create a narrative without thinking about it before hand).
Play Simon Says.
Play with characters, like stuffed animals or dolls.
Play pretend.
Play decision-making games or board games.
Scavenger hunts.
Sign Up for a Maryland Before and After School Care Program
All kids need to learn how to interact with their peers and with adults. Enrolling your child in a Harford or Baltimore County before and after care program is a fantastic way to provide extra social time for your child. Contact Caliday to learn about our affordable before and after school care programs in Maryland, or start the process of enrolling your child now.
