Nurturing Social Skills In Early Childhood: Strategies For Fostering Positive Interactions 

Helping young children acquire strong social skills can help them to achieve their goals throughout life and maintain a healthy social community. Development of social skills is crucially important in early childhood and has many long-term benefits. In this article we discuss several strategies for nurturing social skills in early childhood, including: creating a nurturing environment, promoting cooperative play, teaching empathy and emotional literacy and resolving conflicts. 

The Significance of Social Skills in Early Childhood 

When children are learning to talk, their social skills play an influence on the way they interact with others and conform to social cues and norms. Learning social skills is fundamentally important to knowing how to behave appropriately and handle disagreements too. In addition, strong social skills allow children to mix and share with diverse communities and enjoy themselves in social settings throughout their life. 

Strategies For Fostering Positive Interactions 

Create a Nurturing Environment 

Creating a diverse and inclusive early learning environment is so important when trying to teach children social skills. Children will, of course, imitate the behaviour of adults, so teachers and parents should both attempt to include everyone in an early learning setting. By maintaining a healthy respect for cultures of all shapes and sizes and encouraging self-expression and admiration, early childhood educators can effectively create a nurturing environment for their students. 

Promote Cooperative Play 

Cooperative play helps children to develop their ability to share and communicate in order to solve problems. Board games, puzzles and other logic-based activities are a great place to start when teaching cooperative play. Put children in teams and assist them in coming to conclusions and solutions together. Turn-taking, sharing and teamwork are crucially important in this setting. 

Teach Empathy and Emotional Literacy 

Empathy is a foundational skill that helps to foster positive social interactions between youngsters. Reading books about different perspectives can help children to learn to accept things that are different from their immediate environment and become positively inclined towards foreign concepts. Teachers and parents should also make a titanic effort to listen to children at all times and repeat what they say back to them to show they are listening. This form of open communication helps children develop empathic skills to use when they are interacting socially. 

Resolve Conflicts Appropriately 

Sometimes, bad tempers or less sleep than is ideal can lead to conflicts between children. This is especially common when they are asked to share a favourite toy or food. Teaching conflict resolution is an exceptionally important lesson for early childhood educators and parents. Always listen to both sides of a story and explain slowly to children what the right outcome is, then ask them how they would both like to get there. 

Contact Robyn Taylor    

At Robyn Taylor Early Childhood Centre, we keep a safe and stimulating environment for your children to learn to socialise in. If you would like to learn more about the Robyn Taylor Teaching Method, book a tour of our education centre or enrol your child, please use our contact page to reach out to us or call on 02 9705 8309.