Social skills include joining and leaving interaction, noticing context, checking meaning, communicating boundaries, handling disagreement, repairing harm, and seeking help. They do not require one personality, constant eye contact, or compliance with peers.
Start here: Teach skills in context, allow multiple safe styles, address the peer environment, and never make one child solely responsible for exclusion or bullying.
Five Areas to Support
- Access: entering play, finding available groups, and asking for help.
- Reciprocity: balancing ideas, listening, leading, and following.
- Boundaries: noticing and communicating space, consent, and exit.
- Conflict: clarifying, disagreeing, problem-solving, and repair.
- Belonging: fair group practices and adult action against repeated exclusion.
Choose a Specific Guide
- For shared play, read balancing leading and following.
- For boundaries, use helping a child notice when someone wants space.
- For repeated friendship rupture, see losing friends after conflict.
- For exclusion, distinguish accidental and deliberate exclusion.
- At school, use support after peer rejection at recess.
- For group teaching, see friendship-skills small groups.
Teach Without Scripts
Scenario cards should invite observation, uncertainty, and several options. Role-play briefly, preserve the right to pass, and measure whether the child can choose an effective response—not repeat an adult-approved sentence.
Related Resources
- Choose friendship scenario cards
- Use social scenarios flexibly
- Help with not being invited
- Browse social-skills materials
Sources
Sources and further reading
- Problems With Peers: How to Help Your Child Navigate Social Challenges — American Academy of Pediatrics — HealthyChildren.org
- What Parents Can Do to Support Friendships — American Academy of Pediatrics — HealthyChildren.org
- What Is the CASEL Framework? — CASEL
