The dance of social skills

An exploration of how Covid might have affected children’s friendships and social skills today and how we might be able to help.

Our needs for love, protection and belonging are designed to be met within relationships, but it takes time and practice to develop all the social skills necessary to keep on making and growing our relationships in their many forms throughout our lives.

Social skills are those set of communication skills we use every day to interact with others. They include verbal and non-verbal communication. They are first developed through interactions with primary caregivers and siblings, and they are the foundation for the skills children will use to build peer relationships and ultimately all kinds of relationships later in life.

Social skills need to be practiced, repetitively, with a variety of different peers and adults in real life situations. The younger the child, the more practice they need in order to grow in social competence with peers.

What if learning social skills with peers is like learning a dance? But you can’t learn the dance from a book, by knowledge, you learn by dancing with a partner. And what if to really know the dance well, you learn how to dance it with several different partners over time?

You progressively learn how to dance with the partner you’re with, you learn that each partner is different, they move differently, they have a different energy, they enjoy different kinds of moves within the dance. You know you have your part, and they have theirs, both are needed. Sometimes it’s very awkward, sometimes it’s unpleasant, sometimes you don’t get the dance you expect but, it is all all-important learning. As you dance more, you learn to anticipate movements and it gets easier. You fall back on the set of moves that you know have served you well and will also help the other person enjoy the dance.

During Covid, many children lost all of their dance partners. It was a set-back, to be sure. But, it’s time to get back out on the dance floor.

If your child is struggling with friendships, it may be making you feel really sad and hurt on their behalf. This is normal. We want our kids to be well liked, to be seen for the treasure inside them. We cannot control how other children treat them, but we can help coach them, remind them of social skills and cheer them on.

If they’re feeling left out, tell them to look for the others who are alone and approach them. They are almost never the only one. After all, we can probably all say there was at least one time we felt left out at school.

Cecelia Hilkey (Happilyfamily.com), wrote about helping your child think of different ways to get included. Firstly, they can ask. There is a chance of rejection, yes, but then ask someone else, don’t give up. Secondly, observe the game they want to join in and invent a role for themselves in that game. Approach the group with the idea. Thirdly, create their own game and invite others in.

It takes time and practice, and inevitably as with all human relationships, some heartbreak. We can’t protect our children from this, they have to go through it in order to develop what they need.

They’ve got this, and so do you.