14 Ways to Build Your Child's Social Skills From Home

In a recent Parents magazine article, Dr. Jaclyn Shlisky offers advice on ways to build your child’s social skills at home. While replicating social skills learning without the help of classmates and peers may seem tricky, these easy activities focused on listening, interacting, and storytelling will keep your kids socially engaged all day long even at home.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

"Everyone can learn reading, writing, and math from home," says Jaclyn Shlisky, a clinical psychologist and mom of three, including a kindergartener who's now being homeschooled. "While it's not ideal, it is doable, but social skills come naturally for kids through modeling and the experience they get when they're in a classroom setting and on a playground or interacting with other adults, like teachers."

Here are some social skills activities you can do with your kids while you're stuck at home.

Perspective Taking: 

This is an easy activity all about identifying the feelings and thoughts of others and you can do it when you are watching TV or a movie with your child, suggests Dr. Shlisky. Press pause and say to your child, "How do you think that he or she feels right now? What are they thinking?" Let your child respond and then you can also provide your own answer, "I think they feel scared because they are being chased" or "I think they feel happy because I see the rain is stopping and they can go outside." "It's important to let your child practice identifying the thoughts and feelings of others," Dr. Shlisky adds. You can also do this while doing role play activities or acting games. You can have a puppet show and have the puppets talk to each other about their feelings and thoughts. The Good Dinosaur, The Incredibles and Inside Out are great film options for talking through emotions and feelings.

Character Play: 

Get out a bunch of character toys, like Peppa Pig or Barbie dolls, and have them pretend to talk to each other. Maybe you have a toy kitchen and your characters can pretend to bake a cake and have a pretend birthday party together. Use language like, "what do you say to a friend when it's their birthday?" Then listen to your child's answer and respond, "That's right, we say, happy birthday! I hope you have a great day today!" (If your child is someone who jumps to the front of the line to help blow out the candles, take this time to role play with the character toys how the birthday boy or girl feels when that happens. "Use this game as a way to work on the things you feel like your child needs a little extra help with," Dr. Shlisky adds.

Playing Board Games: 

While playing board games is probably the most obvious way to practice and encourage social skills, it's really because it's the best bang for your buck. "Playing a game requires patience, being able to wait and take turns, negotiation about who goes first (or what character piece or color you are), agreeing to and sticking to the rules, and being a good sport whether you win or lose," says Dr. Shlisky. Some of the most popular games for optimal social skill learning are Candy Land, Jenga, Apples To Apples Jr., and Connect 4, but card games like Go Fish and UNO are also excellent academic games too. Dr. Shlisky advises making sure the game is age appropriate for your child (the age requirement on the box is really there for a reason!)—if it is too hard or has too many instructions, your child will get bored and give up and they won't absorb the skills you really want them to get from playing the game in the first place. It's best to keep it simple and fun.

You can read the full article on the Parents website.