Helping Your Children Learn and Practice Social Skills

It’s embarrassing to say this, but one day I realized that my then 3-year-old son had learned to curse from me. One day as I was cooking dinner, we heard a crash in the back of the apartment. The wind had blown a curtain and knocked something off the dresser. My son immediately responded with my favorite expletive. I couldn’t chastise him for it, but I knew it was time to teach him better social skills and to do a better job of modeling them myself.

Parents as teachers

As parents, we are our children’s first teacher. Even though children will learn much from what they see us do, we must intentionally teach them specific things we want them to know. We love them unconditionally from birth when they look like perfect angels to us. Yet time quickly shows us they are not actually perfect. Therefore, God has given us the mechanism for helping our children to grow spiritually, and that is through teaching them. Deuteronomy 11:19 tells us to take every opportunity we have to teach our children the word of God. This scripture directs that teaching should be done in multiple scenarios. These are often referred to as “teachable moments.” In other words, we are to look for opportunities to teach and guide our children in the word of God. 

When my toddler used profanity, I had to explain to him that those were not the kinds of words we needed to be using. But I also had to admit that I had been wrong in using profanity myself, and then commit to changing my vocabulary. In experiences when a child repeats profanity from other sources, we can remind them, like Joshua, that things are different in our house (Joshua 24:15). 

This segues naturally into teaching our children appropriate words for expressing their emotions. Depending on age, a child can offer suggestions for new words or look for new words to express their emotions. When they begin to show the correct behavior, we can commend them for the change with statements that specifically identify the new behavior. Saying something such as, “George, I like the way you expressed how you are feeling. I’m proud of you for using kind words.” When we admit to our children that we, too, sometimes want to say something unkind, but we are choosing Christ-like words instead, we are modeling correct behavior for them.

Parents as models

Sibling rivalry is a hotbed for unkind social behavior, thus giving parents many opportunities for guidance and instruction. (That’s just a nice way of saying that brothers and sisters love to get on each other’s nerves and drive their parents crazy.) A father may hear himself screaming, “George, I’ve told you for the hundredth time to not hit your sister! We don’t hit girls, and she is younger than you.” George may be wondering if he could get away with hitting if his sister were older. We might need to take a step back and consider how our responses to our children’s misbehavior and other family conflicts could be a better model of the social skills we want them to have. 

Children will treat others the way that we treat them and how they see us treat others. The wisdom given in Proverbs 15:1 is that gentle responses diffuse situations, while agitated words fan the flames. Of course, if George is running into the street without looking, a loud voice is certainly needed. After the danger has passed, we can whisper a quick prayer for the grace to respond in the right tone of voice, as we should do in every situation. When we respond to our children angrily, they feel that our responses are directed toward them rather than toward the behavior. A child’s need for acceptance is fragile and must be handled carefully.

Somehow, children seem to remember more about what they see us do than what we tell them to do. Our social skills are consistently on display, and our children’s observation batteries never seem to run down. They hear what we say in various settings and know from our comments, expressions, or tone of voice what our true feelings are. Therefore, our actions habitually model the types of social skills we want our children to practice so we need to make wise choices.

Parents as practitioners

The same scripture in Deuteronomy tells us to be diligent in teaching throughout the day. In addition to teaching and modeling correct social behaviors, parents are to put God’s instructions into practice consistently. Using the same process as before, we can guide little George to talk about his actions when he yanks a toy away from his sister. Researchers suggest that we should ask a child what he wanted rather than what he did. We saw what he did; so there is no need to ask. After we’ve calmed the situation, we can begin to ask him what he had wanted in that moment. It may turn out that George just wanted his sister to keep her promise that he could play with the toy next, and she seemed to be keeping it too long. This leads us back to a teachable moment about how to speak and how to respond to others. 

We could ask George, “What are two other things you could have done first?” or “If you had the toy first, what would you want your sister to have done when it was her turn to play with it?” Similar questions could be asked of the sister so she has an opportunity to learn about empathy. Inquiries such as these help children to become problem solvers as we help them consider whether their solutions may have worked. They can also select a solution they will commit to using the next time a similar problem arises. Again, when we see them putting correct behavior into practice, we can give them specific compliments about the changes we see them making as they practice appropriate social skills. Positive affirmation serves to reinforce that good behavior.

Our children are constantly exposed to an overwhelming amount of improper social behavior outside the home and through social media. Overcoming that is no easy task. Yet throughout his time on earth, Christ was a consistent model of appropriate social skills. He took teachable moments to train, discipline, love, forgive, and show mercy to everyone he encountered. I can’t say that I became a perfect parent or that my son became a perfect adult. But I did learn to put intentional effort into living out the words of Paul which we can all say to our children, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (I Cor. 11:1).