Supporting Social Skills in Friendships

By: Elizabeth Kaplan, LCSW

Social skills are an important set of tools that will help your child learn how to make friends, interact with the world around them and navigate social environments. These skills are crucial throughout your child’s life in order build, grow and maintain meaningful relationships. Social skills help children develop emotionally and will teach children how to interact with others.

Creating healthy friendships can be empowering for a child, allowing them to feel like they are a part of a community and can help shape their identity. Learning social skills can help a child feel more confident around friendships as they will gain tools to navigating different relationships. It is important to ask your child about their friendships to understand their relationship dynamics and to learn if they are struggling with their relationships to best understand which social skills may need some tweaking. Here are some tips on how to support your child who may be struggling with friendships:

1.     Teach your child how to communicate with their peers. Your child may be struggling with how to keep a conversation when communicating with their friends. They may feel shy to ask questions and open up. You can provide tools to help teach your child to ask questions about things their friend may be interested in. Provide your child with some questions they can ask and talk to them about how to ask these questions. This can be a positive way to help your child to feel secure when they communicate with their peers.

2.     Practice social skills prior to playdates. Before your child’s play date take some time to review social cues with your child. If they are hosting a friend, talk to them about being the host and how they can make their friend feel comfortable. Work with your child to come up with some games that they can suggest to their friend. You can even try role-playing different situations that may occur and how to navigate those conversations. Role-playing will allow your child to really understand and practice the skills while also giving them the space to learn.

3.     Talk to your child about how they feel when they are with friends. Your child may not be as outgoing as others and that’s okay. Some children are a little more hesitant in social settings and take a little more time to warm up to various situations. In this instance, it is helpful to provide ideas to your child with new opportunities to make friends, such as through a sport or activity that they enjoy. This way there is a feeling of comradery amongst teammates instead of feeling like they are struggling to fit in with a specific group. This can also provide a skill where they learn to empower themselves when it is feeling difficult.

Relationships at any age can be challenging to navigate. It is important to help your child learn social skills at a young age so that they can have successful and meaningful friendships. If you feel your child may need support around social skills, please reach out to us today at hello@upsidertherapy.com.