*This is a collaborative post
As your child moves through life, they will encounter a range of different social situations. From making friends to meeting their peers and working with others in professional settings. Being able to do so and remain calm requires social skills. The ability to interact with others both verbally and non-verbally. You will be surprised to learn that the non-verbal elements are the ones that say the most about us as up to 55% of communication is nonverbal. It’s in our body language and the facial expressions that we display. Here’s some guidance from a prep school in Sussex on helping children with their social skills.
Empathy
As mentioned above, non-verbal communication says a lot. Being able to read situations and people’s feelings can help them to reflect the appropriate body language in social situations. Something that you can do by exploring emotions together and what they look like. From doing so, they will also be aware of the kind of impression that they give off.
Role Play
Practice makes perfect and acting out potential social situations can help children to respond to them if they ever encounter them.
Model
Children pick up on the things that they see around them and look to their parents as their role models. So do they in social situations. Being confident, polite, and demonstrating the right body language will teach your child the right way of dealing with them. Being rude on the other hand in their presence can lead to them picking up on your bad habits.
Questions
Questions show interest. They help you to engage with others and learn more about them to form relationships. For some it can be quite challenging to create or hold a conversation and this gives an easy way of doing that.
