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Reading Others & Deciding How Someone Feels
Knowing how you feel and how to describe your feelings is important. It is just as important for your child to be able to read others feelings and decide how they are feeling. You can openly communicate your feelings and ask how your child is feeling during daily routines to incorporate understanding feelings.
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Knowing Your Feelings
Understanding feelings is just as important as identifying your feelings. Many children have a hard time verbalizing how they are feeling. When your child is showing a feeling you can ask them to describe how their body felt when they were having that feeling. Exposing your child to new words to describe their feelings is important as well. For example: happy/good- fantastic/fabulous.
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Knowing When to Tell
Children should feel free to approach adults to discuss ways of dealing with a problem or to talk about the feelings associated with a situation. These are positive behaviors, as opposed to tattling, which has a negatives purpose. If your child does approach you about minor peer conflicts, a helpful response is "How can I help you deal with that?" Help your child distinguish the difference between telling something and tattling about something. This will help your child build their understanding of when it's appropriate to share or tell something.
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Saying Thank You
Teaching your child to say "Thank you" and "No, thank you" are important terms to implement using manners. Generate with your child ways of saying thank you, such as "That was nice of you to do for me" or "I felt good when you said that to me." Providing them with a compliment when they use "thank you" will motivate them to use these friendly terms more throughout their day! Also, having your child write 'Thank You Notes' when appropriate is another great activity to reinforce 'Using Thank You'.
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Using Nice Talk
Remind your child to use nice talk throughout their day. Whining and loud talking can sometimes get other people upset! When using nice talk you can help improve the day somebody else is having and bring a smile to their face. A compliment can go a long way!
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Dealing With Mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes and it is okay to make mistakes! Take the time to model for your child how you deal with making a mistake when the situation arises in daily routines. Following these steps will help your child understand mistakes are made and that is okay!
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Layout of Social Skills for the Year
This is a chart that shows the social skills that will be addressed each month throughout the school year. This is a general layout, we may change the order of skills or add additional skills based on the needs of the class throughout the year. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to let us know.
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Trying When It's Hard
For the child who is afraid of failure, this will be a particularly valuable skill. Reinforce the idea that the only way to learn new things is to try when something is difficult. When a task arises that may be difficult for your child to complete, remind them to keep on trying and not to give up. If it is something they need assistance with to achieve you can reinforce the skill of 'Asking for Help'!
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Solving a Problem
Solving a problem is a skill that all children need to learn so they can become independent at finding a solution to a problem that may arise. This is a skill that can be addressed on a daily basis. During a time where you can hold a conversation (breakfast, dinnertime, before bed), pose a real-life problem that could arise and discuss different possible solutions that could solve the problem. The more you implement role-playing and conversation regarding how to solve problems the better your child will become at creating solutions to problems on their own.
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Asking for Help
Have children list and/or illustrate the activities or skills each is particularly good at. Discuss individual differences, stress that it is OK to ask for help if it's needed. These lists may also stimulate the children to ask for help from peers who have listed certain areas as strengths.
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Asking a Question
Young children often phrase questions as statements. Modeling the question form when such situations arise will help them learn an alternate way of expressing themselves.
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Dealing with Feeling Mad
It is important to offer children a choice involving a physical response, such as relaxing or doing the turtle. The turtle technique is to: 1. Stop2. Tuck and Take 3 Deep Breaths3. Think
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Ignoring
Discuss that sometimes someone who is acting silly is trying to get attention. A good way to teach that person not to act silly is to avoid giving him any attention at all. Also discuss the idea that sometimes friends will bother others because they really want to play, too. In this case, the children may want to ask the child to join in. Finally, talk about other ways of ignoring, such as leaving the room or getting involved in another activity.
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Accepting Consequences
Some children may have difficulty verbally admitting their behavior or saying they are sorry. You can pose scenarios that may be executed and talk about appropriate consequences to fit the undesired behavior. The more you talk with your child about these types of situations the more at ease they will be at accepting their consequences.
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Accepting No
Accepting being told no is often very difficult for young children. Develop "Accepting No" cards that depict a special privilege on the back (e.g.: computer, book, board game). Throughout the day, when your child uses the skill, let your child choose a card to show which privilege he or she has earned. *This skill may be difficult for many young children to accomplish, many practice sessions should be planned.*
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Waiting Your Turn
Waiting your turn may be difficult for children that may be impulsive. Opportunities to apply this skill can easily be incorporated into daily situations: waiting your turn to play a game, waiting to use playground equipment, waiting until it's time for you to go to a movie, waiting your turn to have a toy, etc.
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Interrupting
It will be important to discuss situations in which children should not interrupt (i.e., to ask a question that could wait) and situations in which they should interrupt immediately (i.e., in an emergency).
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Following Directions
Sometimes directions given to young children are too complex for them to complete successfully. Give directions consisting of only one or two steps until the children are familiar with following directions.
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Listening
Adults often tell young children to listen without explaining the specific behaviors or steps necessary to do so. Once the skill of listening is learned, it can be incorporated into the classroom and home rules.
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