Why is it important to promote social skills in children?

Human beings have the ability to socialize and establish social relationships through various means, including verbal language. The social success is determined by our social ability to interact with others. Thus, social skills become a necessary competence that must be acquired by boys and girls from an early age.

Within multiple intelligences, a theory proposed by Howard Gardner in the early 1980s, we find emotional intelligence that is defined as the ability to perceive, understand and regulate our own emotions and those of others. Social skills are a set of abilities that make up emotional intelligence . Therefore, people who have learned and acquired different social skills are more competent to establish and maintain social interactions with the people around them.

Phrases such as: “I have hardly any friends”, “I am afraid to speak in public”, “I am ashamed to ask a stranger”, “I get very nervous in difficult situations”, etc., are typical of people who have Insecurity when it comes to communicating and they are quite common in general, since we are not born with this acquired capacity, but we must learn it through imitation and experience.

Within social skills we find numerous capacities that will be very useful when solving social conflicts. The most important ones are:

– Active listening : this ability implies not only listening to what another person is communicating to us, but knowing how to respect the turn to speak, give appropriate feedback and adapted to the moment. It is about transmitting to the other person that in addition to listening to them, we understand what they are saying and we will try not to mention any comment that may offend or hurt their feelings.

– Empathy: “put yourself in the place of the other”. It involves paying attention to, understanding and appreciating the feelings or emotions of other people . This ability will help us to take other people into account when taking an action or saying a comment. It also implies the ability to know oneself and the ability to know how to read non-verbal language , with which we transmit more than half of the information through our eyes, smile, space, facial gestures, body posture. , etc. Empathic people are more sensitive, flexible, kind and capable of maintaining stable, solid and positive social relationships.

– Assertiveness: it is the most effective communication style . It is about defending our own rights while respecting the rights of others. This skill is quite difficult to acquire, as it requires a lot of personal and social training. To carry out assertive communication , it is important to know how to recognize and regulate emotions, as well as to maintain an internal balance, since it is in the most problematic or conflictive situations where this ability is necessary. Knowing what to say without harming another person or ourselves is not easy, but with practice it can lead to success in many areas of our lives.

HOW CAN WE LEARN THESE KINDS OF SKILLS?

Social skills can be learned, at any age, through different means, as long as people have the opportunity to socialize and maintain relationships with family, friends, and classmates or work.

In the case of boys and girls, the closest referents are parents and educators. There are various ways to enhance children’s social skills, but the most important are:

1. Reinforce appropriate behaviors: it is important that children receive positive comments when their behavior is appropriate, and errors or failures are not pointed out so much. Self-esteem is an essential factor, if we feel good about ourselves, we will be able to feel better about others. If children only receive negative comments for failing in a school task, they will acquire fear and anxiety to teach their exercises or their knowledge and will carry out avoidance behaviors towards classmates, teachers and parents. Therefore, it is important to reinforce the self-esteem of our children to achieve greater personal and social competence.

2. Learning by imitation: most of our behaviors are the result of learning that we have acquired through the observation of reference models. Therefore, we must avoid those behaviors that we do not want children to learn, and show those that they do. When children observe that their role models obtain positive reinforcement for the behaviors they carry out, they will feel more motivated to imitate and carry them out. Thus, show affection, empathy, adequate communication, etc. and receiving positive things in return will help children learn these types of behaviors.

WE BEHAVE IN RESPONSE TO OUR ADAPTATION TO THE ENVIRONMENT

Understanding the meaning of children’s behaviors is necessary to respond to them in the most appropriate way possible. Remember that trying to enhance the social skills of our children, we are training our social skills at the same time.

The consequences of having a maladaptive social behavior can lead to different problems. People, whose social behavior is aggressive or withdrawn, show their inability to adapt effectively and appropriately to the social environment. In this way, boys and girls who have greater social competence will be more accepted and loved by the people around them, while those with less social competence will be ignored and rejected., damaging not only their interpersonal relationships, but also their self-esteem, their academic performance, ability to achieve and motivation, and their ability to handle internal and external conflicts. All this will lead to greater insecurity and helplessness when facing goals and social situations, which makes it difficult to obtain personal, social and work success.

The sooner we begin to develop our social skills, the sooner we will receive positive personal and social rewards. Fostering respect, tolerance, empathy, assertiveness, effective communication as the main means of achieving success and solving problem situations, etc., is not an easy task, but the effort to work on it every day will make us better people and bring us closer together. increasingly to success in all aspects of our life.