Lifelong Social Skills Development
Social skills development is a quality and characteristic that develops over your whole life. Social skills development must take place over your whole life because the situations you encounter and the demands you will have to meet socially will change as you grow and mature.
When you are open and willing to take cues form the people around you and your environment, you will be able to adapt your social skills as necessary to fit he present need.
Social skills development is essential throughout life, but the following list of occasions provides some insight into what social skills development throughout a lifetime can mean.
1. Social skills development begins in early childhood.
Instincts tell a child to cry when they are hungry or have other unmet needs, but as cognition develops, a child learns that crying and other forms of getting attention will render the necessary results.
This trial and error approach to finding out how to get food and other necessary attention form adults is a way that child undergo social skills development. As children grow older, they learn that when they are cute or funny, they are rewarded with candy and treats.
They learn that smiling and talking gets attention and pats on the head. Children learn from an early age what pleasing behaviors are. They also learn anger and frustration, and some children learnt that overtly expressing anger and frustration can provide a means to getting what they want.
2. When children go to school, they are introduced to more refined social skills development.
Rules within the classroom simulate rules within society a person must obey. A child learns to raise his or her hand, to wait in line, to share, and to listen at school.
These skills are essential throughout life, and are a key foundation to continuing 1social skills development.
3. When a person enters their teenage years, they are challenged to continue social skills development at a most difficult time.
Body changes can cause emotional responses that alter the way social skills appear. As teens work through relationships with each other and discovering the opposite sex, they are encountering social skills development on an interpersonal level that may set the stage for future courtship practices and relationship interaction habits.
4. When people go to college, they undergo a new definition of social skills development. They learn to balance an unsupervised social life with the demands of work and school.
The activity on a college campus can be surreal, and challenges the person to determine the difference between acceptable behavior at school and in the real world.
These examples give just a little insight into social skills development that takes place as a person is preparing to enter a career and the real world. Social skills development continues, though, until we die.