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Developing a child’s social skills can help them become good communicators. Aside from successfully relaying and expressing their ideas, thoughts, and feelings, they can be able to form meaningful relationships with their family and friends.  

Do you see your child sitting alone in the classroom corner and not joining the other kids playing outside in the school playground? Does your child prefer to sit in front of the TV instead of going out of the house to play with the other kids? Or, does your child has a problem expressing themselves clearly, not knowing how to relay what they need or want? 

As parents, these are warning signs that you need to be aware of that should tell you that something is off with your child’s social skills. If these concerns are not addressed at the earliest instance, the danger is that this would create a domino effect that would affect the child’s overall development.  

The child’s initial stages of communication in Gramlich’s book were highlighted. Jo Ann Gramlich’s Talk, Play, and Read with Me Mommy focused on getting the child on the right track in their development through enhancing and stimulating their speech and language skills – all of which are essential components for the child development phase. 

Child development encompasses more than just physical change and evolution. It also includes a child’s mental, emotional, and even language and social interaction development. The kind of quality growth a child goes through in their infant, toddler, and preschool years is critical since this will determine the type of adolescents and adults they will become later on in the future. 

How essential are a child’s social skills?

Many benefits come with having good social skills. Especially to a child’s milestones, social interaction skills significantly impact how a child can become later on as they progress through life. 

Social skills’ progression varies according to a child’s age. For instance, kids aged two to three are likely to follow and adapt according to what they see, hear, and feel around them. From age three to four, they start being more creative and gaining more initiative. From ages five to six, they begin to join in conversations, speak their minds, and relate to humor or anything that impacts their emotions. 

If a child didn’t go through any of these phases, and they’re not relating and conversing as they’re supposed to, this would lead to poor child development. 

A child with excellent social skills is likely to have a stronger resiliency in life and can better cope with life’s problems or stress. They can get along well with other kids, make new friends, and build stronger friendships or relationships with other children. 

Those with a poor childhood development social skill phase reflect the exact opposite. If a child’s language and communication skills are not developed and enhanced at the earliest period, the result is that they’re likely to become socially isolated. They’re prone to loneliness and have behavioral problems in the future. 

Getting the Child to Interact Effectively

Teaching a child how to effectively and successfully socialize and interact is an individualized approach. Just as every DNA make-up is different, by nature, every child has their unique needs and wants that set them apart from every other kid. Hence, teaching them language and communication should also be a personalized approach. 

Here are some steps that parents can follow to improve their child’s social interaction skills. 

Question and Answer Method

One of the beginner ways of teaching child speech and communication is by engaging them in a question-and-answer situation. This method is often utilized as early as the age of one. It could be as simple as presenting a colored picture of an animal and then asking the child what the animal’s sound is. Picture cards are a fun way of getting a child to interact, such as letting them identify the colors on the card, the name of the things drawn into it, and so on. 

Jo Ann Gramlich’s Talk, Play and Read with Me Mommy is also an excellent example of a question-and-answer interaction between a child and a parent. There are stories found in the book that the parent can read out to the child. The parent can then ask the child questions about the stories that are not answerable by yes or no, stimulating the child’s mind to come up with a proper fitting answer or make them use their imagination. 

Knowing the Child’s Interests

Identifying the child’s likes and dislikes could help the parents or teachers form learning materials to which the child is more likely to pay attention. Call this an attention-grabbing technique because the best way to teach a child is to get their interest first. So, if a child is into music, playing a cartoon musical to get their attention could be the first step. Singing with the child and the songs in a movie is another way to enhance their interaction skills. 

Exposing the child to other kids with whom they share the same interest is another good idea. If the child is into sports such as basketball, then letting them join a basketball club with kids of their same age can also help build up their socialization skills. 

Boosting their Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is crucial to a child’s socialization skills. A child needs to feel confident in themselves whenever they approach other people. They need to feel assured and confident of their talents and abilities, including their successes, however big or little. They need to feel valued for who and what they are because this feeling of worthiness will make them more resilient to cope with life’s challenges. And that is also including any challenges they’d encounter in engaging and interacting with other people.  

Takeaway

Social skill is one of the essential skills, a life skill, that a child needs to develop as much as possible at an earlier age. The ultimate goal of building good social skills at an earlier age is to create overall healthy individuals; that includes the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of their lives. 

Grab a copy of Jo Ann Gramlich’s Talk, Play, and Read with Me Mommy and start on that journey to properly teach your child how to communicate effectively. Talk, Play, and Read with Me Mommy is available on Amazon, or you can head to the author’s website at www.talkplayandread.com.