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Consequences of Good Social Skills With a full repertoire of social skills, students will have the ability to make social choices that will strengthen their interpersonal relationships and facilitate success in school. Some consequences of good social skills include: * Positive and safe school environment. * Child resiliency in the face of future crises or other stressful life events. * Students who seek appropriate and safe avenues for aggression and frustration. * Children who take personal responsibility for promoting school safety. * Better, more rewarding relationships with people. * The ability to make friends and create a social life. * Opportunities to have a more fun, varied, fulfilling life. * Relief from problems like shyness, insecurity, loneliness, and poor self-esteem. * Better career opportunities. * An overall better ability to function and succeed in the world, because pretty much everything you do involves social interactions in one way or another. As anyone will tell you, it's very hard to do well in life while totally having to avoid getting along with other people. In contrast,if you're a good communicator, it can make up for a lot of your other weaknesses. Consequences of Poor Social Skills Students with poor social skills have been shown to: * Experience difficulties in interpersonal relationships with parents, teachers, and peers. * Evoke highly negative responses from others that lead to high levels of peer rejection. Peer rejection has been linked on several occasions with school violence. * Show signs of depression, aggression and anxiety. * Demonstrate poor academic performance as an indirect consequence. * Show a higher incidence of involvement in the criminal justice system as adults. Impact on School Safety Given the demonstrated relationship between social skills and school safety, schools are increasingly seeking ways to help students develop positive social skills, both in school and in the community. Social skills related to school safety include: * Anger management * Recognizing/understanding others' point of view * Social problem solving * Peer negotiation * Conflict management * Peer resistance skills * Active listening * Effective communication * Increased acceptance and tolerance of diverse groups In isolation, social skills are not sufficient to ensure school safety; interventions should not be limited to student instruction and training. Change in the school culture should be facilitated by infusing social skills training into a comprehensive system of school safety and discipline policies, emphasizing relationship-building between students and faculty (teachers and administrators) and between schools and families, and providing effective behavior management and academic instruction. Do you have good social skills? Do you feel that you are missing something when it comes to social skills? Do you have trouble making and keeping friends, feel uncomfortable around new acquaintances, or have difficulty getting along with colleagues? Praise children when they behave correctly. Create a culture that fosters good social skills. Focus on all age groups. DOs and DON'Ts of Social Skills Regardless of your child's personality type, your goal is to help your child understand what constitutes good social skills. Following is a list of DOs and DON'Ts for how to join in with a group of children and make a good first impression: DO: * Watch others - check out what the group is doing first and determine if it's a group that you'd like to join. * Watch yourself - make sure you appear friendly and approachable, especially in your tone of voice and your posture. * Think of what to say ahead of time. * Think of when to say it - wait for a break in the conversation or the game before speaking. * Look at others straight in the eye when speaking to them. * Go with the flow of the group. * Find common interests and talk about them. * Ask a question that shows interest - this makes the other child feel very special. DON'T: * Tease others. * Brag about yourself. * Criticize others. * Take charge and try to control the behavior of other children. * Stand too close or too far away from other children. * Disrupt the game. Sit down with your child and review the DOs and DON'Ts lists. Ask your child if he can come up with other DOs and DON'Ts to add to the list. Focus on the DOs of good social skills, praising your child when he exhibits an appropriate behavior. One way to reinforce good behavior is to role-play at home. Reverse roles often so that your child gets the chance to play not only himself, but also the role of the other person. This gives your child the opportunity to see things from another person's perspective - an essential element in a child's understanding of his behavior and its impact on others. How Parents Can Help Often children are unable to manage the details of running a social life on their own. With a little bit of advance planning, you can help make your child's social life more like a playground than a battlefield. The following tips will help: * Work on ONLY one social skill at a time - wait until one goal is mastered before you move on to the next goal. * Reward your child when he makes progress. Look HARD to find any small, yet noticeable, signs of improvement. * Carefully arrange a supervised, time-limited, date for your child to spend with other children to practice newly learned social skills. * Review social goals with your child PRIOR to social outings. For instance, "Tell me, Andrew, what are you going to do when you first get to the birthday party?" "Well, Dad, I'm going to walk up to the birthday boy and wish him a Happy Birthday. Then I'm going to walk over to where the other kids are playing and ask them if I can join them." "That's right, Andrew, you've got it!" * Help your child nurture ONE or TWO friendships through more regular contact. * Involve your child's teachers and guidance counselors in helping to reinforce social goals. For example, teachers can use check-off sheets to give you daily feedback on progress, as well as to encourage accountability and consistency in your child. * Invite your child's friend to a HIGHLY attractive activity - for instance, the movies or an amusement park. This type of invitation is more likely to be accepted rather than rejected. * Videotape or audiotape your child at home. Reviewing these tapes with your child allows children to see themselves as others see them. * Encourage sibling cooperation. Sibling relationships often provide a "safer" arena in which to practice new social skills. * Continually stress the importance of keeping promises and commitments to others. * With gentle reminders, help your child return phone calls to friends. |