Hi! I'm Nicholeen Peck. I'm a parenting expert and an author. And today,
we are going to talk about how to teach social skills to preschoolers.
Toddlers are oftentimes social but sometimes in the wrong way. And so, we have to help them
understand what the best social skills are. In this video, I want to share with you 5 different
ways that you can teach your children good social skills when they're in those tender preschool
age that will help lay the foundation for future life. And I think you'll like some of these ideas
because some of them are pretty fun. Who is the perfect trainer for your child socially?
Hopefully, it's you. Hopefully you've worked on your own social development so that you
are the perfect example for your child. That's number 1. Number 1 is the parents should be
setting the example for proper social development. I've seen situations before where parents set
terrible examples socially. They say things that you would never want your children to say.
They will attack other people, back talk in front of children. Those kinds of things are not good
training for your children socially. So, keep that in mind as social as you are is as social
as they will become. You are the ultimate example. And of course, they're going to have other social
examples in their life like grandparents and friends and people they may see at preschool.
But you will become the primary example especially if you take that job seriously. The second thing
is to pre-teach good social skills. So, what does that mean? That means trying to go on a hunt and
identifying what social skills we see around us that are good things, right? So, if we go and
meet somebody and they stick out their hand to do a proper greeting, then we can say to our child,
"Oh, did you see how that person wanted to shake your hand?" That's a good social skill. Let's add
it on to our list. So, maybe you can make a master list. But always be hunting those things out. And
maybe even extend a challenge to the child. See, if you can find something that feels good to you
that you think might be a good social skill. Something we want to do in order to make more
friends. So, they've got to have a reason to care about these social skills. So, make sure that you
give them something like more friendships or being better understood or getting their problems solved
something like that that they can hold on to for while they're going to care about these
social skills in the first place. Some things that we teach the children are skills, proper
skills like how to follow instructions, how to accept "no" answers, how to accept consequences,
and to disagree appropriately. That's a great social skill. So, the third thing that you can do
is practice skills. You can role play. So, we role play all kinds of things in our family and it can
be a barrel of laughs. So, let's say you teach your child how to disagree appropriately. The
steps to disagreeing appropriately are you look at the person, you keep a calm face, voice, and body.
You say that you understand the other person's point of view, you share your point of view,
and then you listen to what they have to say you say okay and then you drop the subject.
So, then we come up with crazy scenarios where someone might be disagreeing appropriately.
So, maybe they'll say, "Oh, mom. Can I write with marker all over the walls?" And then you'll say,
"Oh, no. I'm going to give you a "no" answer about that." Because that's one of their other
skills that they know. And then they'll say, "Okay, may I disagree appropriately?"
And then you say yes. And then they'll go into this crazy reason why they think they need to be
able to color on the walls. And everybody can laugh about it. Of course, they know nobody's
going to color on the walls. But sometimes doing some of those silly things as you practice those
skills together that they're going to be using with teachers, with grandparents, with neighbors.
And most importantly with you and your family will be so much more fun. So, you do know
(right?) that your family is the first social unit of society. When people think about social skills,
they think about friends usually only. But actually, if they are not good socially with
their siblings in your family, they're not going to be good socially with friends. They'll probably
break a lot of friendships. You've got to make sure you maintain really good
sibling relationships in order to have good social outside of the family. That brings me to number 4.
You've got to catch the mistakes. So, when they're not doing the social skills that you taught them,
when they're not disagreeing appropriately with their siblings or with you, you need to catch
it. You need to say, "Oh, that's a moment where they're not using their skills that I taught
them." And then you need to correct that skill so that they can have time practicing doing it the
right way. And that's step number 5. Doing things the right way. After you've caught, "Oh, that's
not the right way. This is what we did that wasn't right. Now let's practice it the right way." Then
you can do even more role play. The children love role play. They love to practice doing things the
right way. And when they get a little bit older, they can practice being the mom or the dad
and you can practice being the child and acting like them. And it is so much fun. Toddlers need
more opportunity doing things the right way than the wrong way. So, if your preschooler is
doing something that needs to be corrected, spend more time teaching it the right way than you did
talking about what went wrong. And allow them to practice it the right way again and again
because their little prefrontal cortexes are very small and they're developing slowly over time. But
the more things you do the right way, the more you will grow that area of the brain and their
problem-solving abilities and social skills will all improve. Preschoolers are so much fun. They're
learning to see things so quickly and they can learn all the social skills that you want to teach
them. But they also can try your patience from time to time and you might need some help with
some skills for you. I think you might enjoy the next video I have which is called How to Be a More
Calm Parent? If you think you would like some help improving your calmness, click on the link to that
video. And I think you'll find some skills that can take you to the next level in your parenting.