5 Ways To Improve Your Toddler's Social Skills

Team AckoFeb 9, 2024

Teaching your toddler social skills is a huge part of her development. She needs to learn how to socialize in order to have friends and to build a good self-esteem. Teaching social skills to toddlers is not an easy task as they have their own fears and desires. The fear of losing their materials is a big hindrance in learning to be social for them. Developing social skills and interacting with the world around your toddler will be a critical part of her life to get success in future. Some kids are born social than others. They don’t require proper socializing training. But for your shy toddler, teaching social skills and interaction with others is a big task for you. Get ready to teach the life’s important lesson to your child.

5 ways to improve your toddler's social skills

The foremost important thing to teach her is to manage her emotions. The second thing is to develop empathy for others and lastly to express her needs to you and others. 

Teach your toddler emotions

It is never too early to give words to your child’s emotions or feelings. Give her words to express her emotions so that she can process the emotion verbally instead of physically. Like, laughter means someone is happy and crying means someone is sad. Teaching your toddler how to describe these feelings will aid in the development of empathy. Let your toddler imitate a variety of emotions—happiness, anger, disappointment, excitement, danger, etc. Play a game ‘Identify the emotion’ by making faces or showing flashcards of different smileys. This helps her to identify emotions and express better; and not get confused when mingling with other kids or people. 

Empathize

If your child receives empathy for her feelings, soon she learns to empathize with others. 

Make her communicate

Verbal or non-verbal, your toddler should learn to interact with others. Talk to your child often and make her learn different words. If she can communicate well, it makes it easier for her to get along with others. Help her learn appropriate greetings and responses. Guide her to interact with others aptly, to overcome shyness, to manage a response and express feelings.

Read: How to develop your child's social skills?

Give her the environment

Give your toddler an environment to interact with different people of all age groups. Arrange playdates, or take her to playgroups or parks to have an interaction with other kids. At such places, she can learn to play next to other children her age and how it feels to be in the company of other kids. Don’t get surprised if she ends up hitting others, this is normal behaviour and you need to teach her to manage her emotions once again. Make her learn to ask for things rather than snatching it from others. 

Be a great role model

Set a good example. Always be polite, respectful and caring to each other if you want your child to behave the same way.  Your child will learn from you. Show him how you socialize with others. This way you help her learn socializing with all age groups. 

Other tips to improve your toddler's social skills

There are few important lessons which you need to teach your toddler for socializing

Teach your child to share

Practice together at home to share. Like, let’s share this candy, “You can have some, and I can have some”. Use playdates as a chance to help your toddler learn sharing. You could stay nearby and encourage her to share her toys with others. Let her decide how long she wants to play with a same toy. Snatching and giving it to another child will model the snatching and grabbing for her. Instead, ask your child politely to share her toy with friends. 

Ask your child to wait

Help your child to learn to wait for her turn while playing in a group. Empathize to your kid, tell her, “It’s hard to wait you can use another toy till your turn comes, come sing a song while waiting. Showing this kind of empathy will probably make her learn to wait for her turn and happily move on.

Encourage your child to play together

Remember parallel play is common for toddlers. You can expect your child to play next to her friend without a lot of interaction. This is a foundation for comfortable engaging; in fact, it is how most toddlers engage. Help her learn to play together few games.

Help your child respect others’ emotions

When your child is well aware of the emotions, she can easily identify how her friends feel about her behaviour. If her friend is feeling sad because your toddler has taken away her toys from her, ask her to share and play together turn by turn. 

If your child still seems to have difficulty in socializing, it may be the time you can intervene and help her. Give her some time with regular practice of social skills, you will be successful soon.

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