Teaching kids manners and social skills is one of the most valuable gifts you can give them, setting the stage for healthy relationships and confident interactions throughout their lives. As social dynamics evolve, parents must equip children with insights to navigate these interactions and empower them to build strong connections in a variety of environments.
Whether it’s sharing, active listening, or understanding non-verbal cues, developing social skills early will make a significant difference when it comes to emotional and social well-being. In this post, which is a transcript of our podcast episode titled “Social Skills: Practicing Good Manners,” we’ll explore practical strategies and activities to help your child master the art of social interaction.
See our lesson on social skills (for members) for links to videos, activities, resources, and more.
Here’s the transcript of our podcast interview on social skills and manners, featuring Uplift Cofounders Jon Ogden (curriculum designer), Amanda Suarez (school psychologist), and Michelle Larson (marriage and family therapy associate).
Jon: We’ll start with a quote from our “What the Science Says” section of the lesson, which is in our lesson library. It says, “Young children with more social competence skills are more likely to live healthier, successful lives as adults. Children who scored at the higher end of the spectrum for social competence were four times more likely to obtain a college degree than children who scored at the lower end of the spectrum.”
Those are findings from a 20-year study on the outcomes of children screened in kindergarten. And so having an opportunity as a family to gather around to role play and discuss ways to practice simple social skills. It seems small, but it can have a big impact on kids’ lives.
Amanda, you’ve worked with kids in school counseling. How have you seen manners play out in that space?
Kids Aren’t Getting Enough Practice with Manners
Amanda: What’s really interesting is the way culture is evolving.
The number of opportunities kids have to organically practice social skills is dramatically decreasing. And that’s not to say that there aren’t social skills involved with interacting on social media or interacting on an online platform. That’s its own thing. But when it comes to in-person one-on-one interactions, the number of experiences kids have to practice is much less. And if you think about things like unstructured play in the neighborhood without adult supervision getting phone calls on a landline and you don’t know who’s calling and you don’t know who they’ll be asking for.
But you answer and you practice and you muddle through hundreds and hundreds of times. We did that during childhood just to practice basic interaction and basic social skills. And there are a lot of other areas, community gatherings with a variety of age groups or visiting friends’ homes unannounced.
These are just things that don’t happen as commonly. So kids don’t get the repetition of practicing in person social skills the way that they used to. This definitely shows up in school settings and more and more often It would be a common thing for me to do would be to run social skills groups with kids to just help practice the basic interaction basic back and forth connecting with other peers and other adults.
Jon: Can you tell us a little bit more about what that looked like?
Roleplay Social Skills
Amanda: Yes. There are two sides to it. One side is using a systematic approach such as roleplaying and formal teaching. And the other side would be organically practicing social skills as they come up. A situation might come up where a student could use just a little coaching in the moment with either a teacher or another peer, and you just step in and just do a little coaching organically.
I’m thinking of a student in particular who I worked with who came into a school I worked at in kindergarten and this student hadn’t had a preschool experience um, and hadn’t had a lot of experiences around other kids. And there was a real need to just practice basic interactions back and forth.
Conversing, turn taking — those kinds of social skills. And for a few weeks, we’d been doing the more systematic approach with the student where we were just explicitly teaching lessons about, how do you greet your peers? How do you greet? Options included:
- Do you like to give a fist bump?
- Do you like to shake hands?
- Would you like to just wave?
- What words do you use?
And after a couple weeks of that we were walking together down the hallway and there was a fifth grade class getting ready to go into the library and we’d just been practicing greeting other peers and teachers.
And so it was the spontaneous opportunity for this kindergartner to practice greeting with the fifth graders and He loved the attention from the older students and the older students really valued being included in helping the student learn how to practice their social skills and it became like a school phenomenon everyone knew this kindergartner was working on interaction skills.
Practice Greetings for Good Manners
And so he would get so many opportunities to do that. And kids would come up and want to give him a fist bump and invite him to, and if he wanted to, he would. And there was so much reinforcement. And so it took on a life of its own. And he just really enjoyed the practice of learning how to interact.
But it reminded me of how important the repetition was — so much repetition and a lot of positive reinforcement and there was a lot of social growth in this student and it was powerful for a school community to meet a child where they were at and support their social growth and development and yeah, so just the systematic teaching.
And coupling that with natural organic opportunities to reinforce what we’re talking about is a powerful combination.
Jon: Yeah, I’m sure it’s so hopeful to see a child be able to learn those skills because a child might get in their mind, Oh, I just can’t do that kind of thing. It’s just not who I am. It’s just not how I function. And maybe adults might say the same thing. Oh, he just doesn’t respond. He just doesn’t really interact with other people.
And then that can be really limiting and defining and preclude a child’s from being able to stretch and grow and realize Oh, I can actually change. I can actually be somebody who is outgoing and does start a conversation or whatever it might be. And so it’s cool to be able to see that transformation over the course of a school year.
Accept Kids as They Are — and Encourage Them
Amanda: Yes, it is really powerful and there is a balance between a community accepting that child exactly as they are, accepting their nature and the way they like to interact, but also a child honoring the extent to which they want to connect with others and giving that child skills to connect in the way they want to.
Both of those are so important.
Jon: Wonderful. Do you have any thoughts about Michelle?
Michelle: Yeah, I love that the example that was given here was such a basic social skill, and especially because the research, what you mentioned, Jon, it really shows that there’s a direct correlation between healthy lives and having good health. Good basic social skills, so that we already know that they’re connected and that some of these are actually quite basic.
Some of the things that are listed in the research are things like resolving problems, listening to other people, sharing. cooperating. So one thing that I noticed when I was digging into the research is how often these really basic skills show up in a counseling setting, especially with couples counseling.
We’ll be in the deep end of a relationship, but so often we can come right back to what’s happening when the other person is talking. What’s the quality of your listening and that these basic skills will take us really far in relationships and that adds to our health when we have healthy relationships.
Use the Golden Rule
Jon: Yeah, we talk about the root of social skills which is perhaps phrased as the golden rule. And so in our “What the Wisdom Says” section of this lesson we pull from different traditions that are talking about the golden rule, about treating others how you’d want to be treated. And it can be a really good frame for all of this conversation.
And like you’re pointing to Michelle, it’s not like we. master every social skill as grown ups, we still need to return to that root and say, “Okay, how would my spouse really want to be treated? How would I wanna be treated? Would I wanna, would I want somebody to react the way that I react in the social situation? Or would I be irritated if somebody acted the way that I act in this social situation?”
And so there are the specific skills which are really helpful. But we are really pointing to the root. Of the issue, which is thinking about others and how we can be somebody who brings delight as much as we can, or just a sense of calm or a sense of peace to our community and our relationships.
Weave in Emotional Regulation
Amanda: I’m also struck by how the foundations of many social skills, which you two are talking about developing perspective, taking, developing empathy, coupled with emotional regulation. This is like the foundation of relating and connecting. It’s the foundation of social skills, and it’s often the foundation of a lesson we’re talking about here at Uplift, those two skills having empathy and also regulating ourselves internally.
Michelle: Yeah, when we’re not emotionally regulated we can feel like the other person was trying to hurt me.
So at the most basic level is to give other people the same benefit of the doubt that you’re giving yourself or treat others how you want to be treated. And an extension of that is to treat others how they want to be treated. And we don’t know what that is unless we’re able to put ourselves in their shoes.
So extending that into what would they want in this situation? If there’s a conflict in the relationship.
Jon: Yeah. That’s one good way to practice a social skill is to be aware of how you’re talking about a person when they’re not there.
Gossip has its utility in terms of being something that can, you know, be effective against power. but it can also be corrosive. And so we can be attentive to how we are talking about others and realize that also is a social skill that can be effective.
Harm, community and relationship, or in the case that it is useful in terms of opposing power, be helpful for opposing those things.
Remember: Grownups Need Practice Too
Michelle: I want to loop back around to something Amanda said at the beginning, when she was talking about these different ways of learning social skills. I just want to emphasize practice that even as adults, as kids, the more we’re actually tuning into, even if we chose one particular skill let’s say this week, I want to pause after speaking to really give the other person a chance.
A chance to say something, or I want to really tune into people’s body language. So I’m not just listening to what they say, but what they’re, you know, how they feel even if we chose one thing and just practiced and tuned into that thing. This is how we develop these skills. So I just want to really emphasize practice and like keeping it simple, choosing something to focus on.
Jon: Yeah, how often does that come up in therapy?
Michelle: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I’ll be so surprised, Oh, okay. We’re not going to get anywhere unless we come right back to listening because nothing’s happening unless they can actually hear each other. So We can come back to the most basic skills and just practice it.
And sometimes it’s somebody taking it slow enough to really develop good listening. And if they’re doing that an hour every week, then that will extend into other parts of their relationship in other times as well.
Jon: Yeah, it really is the same skill we talk about in this lesson of not talking over the other person. Really listening to what another person is saying when they’re talking. It’s a pretty timeless skill for all stages of development. Anything else that we want to say as we wrap up here?
Start Simple Rituals for Manners at Home
Amanda: I’ll say something, another powerful aspect of social interaction is the ritual of it and how important it is for kids to have a ritual of social skills day in and day out, how we greet each other. Maybe what we say to each other when we’re parting, what we say when somebody walks in the door, what we say right before we go to bed.
They’re these touch points of social connection. And when we can ritualize them it really sinks into the being of children as they grow and develop. I’m thinking about in Japan, whenever somebody walks in the door or leaves. The house there’s a call and response, you say something, and whoever’s in the home says something back to you.
And it’s just a really lovely ritual to say welcome back. I’m so glad you’re here. And someone says, I’m here, or when you’re walking out the door, just to just have that ritual of there’s just this point of connection before you separate and I think it’s powerful for children to have those.
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