Encouraging your child to socialize with people beyond the family

• As a parent, you are the right person to shape your child's social development by nurturing his/ her social skills.¹
• Sending your kids to school, lets them have an opportunity to put their social skills to work. Apart from meeting new people from different backgrounds, education helps them to improve their social skills.¹

How to help your child to socialise^1,2

• Have a good relationship with your partner; this can help your child learn the importance of creating lasting relationships.
• Your parenting styles or discipline techniques play a role in influencing your child's social behaviour. If you use forceful measures to enforce proper behaviour, the child usually tends to be withdraw, and unhappy and unhappy kids can find it difficult to socialize.
• Be loving and ready to enforce appropriate disciplinary measures to raise an independent and socially confident child.
• Try to be consistent in your parenting approach and take time to understand the social needs of your children.
• You can teach them social skills by modelling, role-playing and providing opportunities to practice new skills.
• You can suggest your child to "use words" to deal with problems instead of violent actions.
• Also, remind your child that when two children share a toy, each must get an equal turn.
• Suggest how they can reach a simple solution when your child and another child want the same toy, which can be done by drawing for the first turn or finding another toy or activity.
• By your own example, you can show your child how to cope peacefully with conflicts. If you have an explosive temper, attempt to tone down your reactions in your child's presence. Children tend to mimic your behaviour whenever they are under stress.
• When your child's anger or frustration becomes physical, restrain him/ her from hurting others and if he/ she doesn't calm down immediately, move your child away from the other children. Talk to your child about his/ her feelings and try to find out the reason for being upset. Let your child know that you understand and accept his/ her feelings, but let him/ her know that physically attacking another child is not the right way to express these emotions.
• Help your child to view the situation from the other child's point of view and suggest more peaceful ways to resolve the problem.
• Once the child understands what she's done wrong, ask him/ her to apologize to the other child. At this time, simply saying "I'm sorry" may not be helpful for your child to correct the behaviour; he/ she also needs to understand the reason for apologizing.