Teaching Social Skills Is So Important To The Adult Your Child Will Eventually Become

I have been familiar with Boys Town Press for a while now and I love what they are doing to help families through love, support and education. Social Skills are important and unfortunately they are mostly taught to children who are on the spectrum but not through mainstream education. My son always had social skill in his therapy sessions, classes, with his teachers and counselors and is the kindest person I know. When I worked in the school I found it odd that social skills which are so important to a happy life are not taught. A mother I made sure to teacher BOTH my children how to be good people, how to handle situations and themselves based on the situation. How will they learn unless someone teachers them. In my mind, it was my job to make sure my children were good people that others would want to be with long after I was gone. 

I guess others would have called me a helicopter parent but that is NOT at all how I saw myself. Often times at the park I saw a lot of children trying to navigate a great big world without any input from their parents who were often engage in adult conversations or on the phone. While their child either hogged swings, wouldn't let others go down a slide, took toys away from other children or just said very mean things. I stayed near and made sure my children knew how to take turns, say excuse me, help someone who needed help, or just use manners when they spoke to people. I sometimes worried that they would think they couldn't do anything right but I gave them freedom and allowed them to make mistakes so that we could correct and talk about it later.  Social skills unlike math, writing, reading, science and social studies are something that will be used every day so why are they not included in educational plans? 

All children should be taught at home and at school how to use their manners, use patience, kindness, how to take turns, focus on tasks, help others and more. These things are not hard to teach and they take practice so the more you talk about it when the situation arises the better.  

Books like Herman Jiggle Go To Sleep, But I Need Your Help Now, and Fix It With Focus are wonderful reads because they serve as reminders for children in an easy to follow way by using real situations your child will encounter in life.

But I Need Your Help Now is about a little boy learning how to get an adults attention without interrupting unless completely necessary and what makes something necessary

Fix It With Focus is about a little boy who needs help staying focused. He learns that staying focused means he can get to the fun quicker. He is given an outline by some well meaning adults who show him the Fix It With F-O-C-U-S.

Herman Jiggle Go To Sleep is about a little boy who has so many questions while his very sleepy mommy does her best to answer them all. She keeps reminding him that he needs to sleep. I loved this book so much. As a preschool teachers I can tell you that I can tell which kids have a routine bedtime and get a proper amount of sleep and the ones who go to sleep whenever they pass out for the night. 

Children do require a certain amount of sleep and if you keep the routine the same every night your child will go to sleep. At school we have 10 kids we need to get to sleep at the same time and they are not in cribs but we manage with most of them out within 10-15 minutes. It is because we do the same thing every single nap time. Kids are creatures of habit and if you maintain a routine and they know what is expected they will do it. I teach 2-3 year olds and I am here to tell you it works! Even though most parents are amazed they stay on their mats for 2 hours without talking or getting up. All it takes is a routine!