Tips for improving your child’s social skills

Some children find eye contact very difficult.  Making that connection is important.

• Try and make sure you are face to face with your child and then begin your message. An idea is to get down to their level when you speak. Another worthwhile tip is to buy inexpensive glasses or fun glasses. You can ask the child to ‘look at your glasses’ – for some children it can be quite stressful for them to keep listening to the instruction of ‘look at me’ – these plastic lucky bag glasses can be a fun way to engage your child.

Some children find sharing It is important that they learn how.

• Children learn by example. Remember you are the first teacher of your child. Use daily opportunities for yourself to share with your child. For example let’s share this cracker / cookie. Some for you and some for me. We can share this cushion to sit on for our story. We can share this book and look at it together. With this tip you are explaining what the word to share means and doing it. It is important to follow through on showing an example of sharing.