Social skills are the tools we use to interact in social situations and they are something we continually learn throughout childhood and beyond. They are important because they enable children to form and maintain healthy friendships as they grow up.
Social skills for children include being able to take turns, learning to lose or win gracefully and to be able to work as a team, but it is vital to remember that these are still quite complex actions. Fully grasping the concept of sharing, for example, often isn’t achieved until children are into the pre-school phase. So if a toddler is struggling to share a favourite toy, that’s perfectly understandable developmentally! As for children with SEND, they may be working at a different developmental age to their chronological age so we must take into account where they are developmentally for their social skills. Some children with SEND may also find the dynamics of social situations more difficult to understand.
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