Helping your child build their social skills is important to their development. Whether you are looking for offline family activities or those that involve team-building activities with friends, here is a list of activities that will help to build your child’s social skills.
Escape rooms
Booking an escape room for kids is a great activity for a birthday party or social get event for children. It encourages children to work together, go outside of their comfort zone, and think outside the box. Children will come together to find a solution, which will help to improve their team and social skills.
Likewise, it is an activity that will help to build their own decision-making and cognitive skills. They will have to think for themselves, in the hope that their decisions will enable them to escape. It will help them build more confidence in making decisions for themselves and in a sense, also help to improve their responsibilities.
Retreats/camps
When your child has time off of school, they might lack socializing. When they are at school, they are constantly socializing with new people – friends, classmates, and teachers. Therefore, during the school holidays, it will help if you continue the daily socializing.
This can be easily achieved by signing them up for a camp or retreat. This doesn’t have to last the entire school holiday, as it is important that you spend quality time with them to. But, a week or a few days at a camp will ensure that they continue their socializing, which will improve their social skills.
Moreover, signing them up for a camp will likely mean that they have to meet new people as they might not go with their friends. Although this can be scary for them, it will help to build their social skills even further. It will help your child become more emotionally capable when dealing with unfamiliar social settings.
Take turns creating and sharing short stories
Story-telling is an effective practice to boost social skills, cognitive skills, and language skills. Therefore, it is a great activity to encourage your child to get involved with. You could take it in turns to create your own story and verbally voice them to one another.
Although speaking out loud and presenting an idea can be scary, it is good practice for your child. It will help them improve their speaking and presenting skills, which can help them build confidence when they are in similar situations throughout school and adult life.
Practice manners at the table
Manners are an important social skill to have. Therefore, it can help to practice them at home or when you are out with your child.
For instance, you could practice table manners at dinner every night until the manners become natural to them. Moreover, you could encourage your child to pay for your shopping and see how well they can cope with the situation. With practice, your child’s social skills and manners will improve.