Family Early Help
Social Skills
Social skills are the skills we use everyday to interact and communicate with others. They include verbal and non-verbal communication, such as speech, gesture, facial expression and body language.
Social skills are vital in helping children (and grown ups!) have and maintain positive interactions with others. Many of these skills are crucial in making and sustaining friendships.
Social interactions do not always go smoothly and a child needs support to learn and use appropriate strategies, such as conflict resolution, when difficulties happen.
An important social skill is’empathy’ (i.e. being able to put yourself into someone else’s shoes and recognise their feelings) as it allows us to respond in an understanding and caring way to how others are feeling.
Social Skills Resource Packs
The Emotional Literacy Support Assistant (ELSA) website has a huge range of resources you can buy or download for free to help children of any age to think about social skills. These can be sent to you at your home, or posted direct to a family with their permission.
https://www.elsa-support.co.uk/downloads/
Ideas for Developing Social Skills
This list from Kids Sense has some ideas for helping develop social skills:
Visuals
Make up a poster of rules to remember when starting a conversation (e.g. using a friendly voice, making eye contact, using appropriate greetings, such as ‘hello’)
Role play
Practice playground/party scenarios where the child does not know anybody. Model and create a list of different things you can say:
- To join others who are playing (e.g. “Can I play too?”).
- To introduce yourself (e.g. “Hi my name is ….”).
- To politely negotiate with peers (e.g. “I don’t want that one. Can I have the blue car please?”).
Masks
Make masks together to help improve eye contact.
Turn taking
Play turn taking games (e.g. board games) to encourage a child to say whose turn it is in the game (e.g. “My turn”, “Your turn”).
Games
Play board games with the child. Make sure the child is not always the ‘winner’ so that they learn about ‘losing’ in a game and are able to cope better when this happens with their peers.
Bean bag conversation
Throw a bean bag around a circle and each child takes a turn to contribute to the conversation. Think of different ways to contribute to the conversation (e.g. ask a question, comment on what has been said, add something related to the topic).
Watch and comment
Role play different situations and comment about appropriate and inappropriate attempts of communication (e.g. standing too close or too far from another person, not using eye contact, interrupting a conversation).
Social Stories
The term social stories was created by Carol Gray in 1991. Social stories are short descriptions of a particular situation, event or activity, which include specific information about what to expect in that situation and why. Whilst social stories have often been used with and for children who have autism or learning difficulties, they can be used in a wide variety of ways with children and young people.
Social stories can help a child or young person to:
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develop self-care skills (eg how to clean teeth, wash hands or get dressed) and social skills (eg sharing, asking for help, saying thank you, interrupting)
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help someone to understand how others might behave or respond in a particular situation
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Cope with changes to routine and unexpected or distressing events (eg absence of teacher, moving house, thunderstorms)
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provide positive feedback about an area of strength or achievement in order to develop self-esteem
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learn how to name and manage emotions and behaviours that come from them (eg what to do when angry).
You can read more about social stories here
Here is an example social story (you could also try the 'Tools for Story Telling' section of the Kit Bag for more ideas for creative visual ways to tell social stories)
