Developing Social Skills From the Ground Up
Developing social skills begins in the very beginning of your life and continues until the very end of it.
Developing social skills continues constantly because the situations you encounter also change continually. As you develop and mature, the situations you are in will become more complex and the social skills you require will have many more nuances.
Developing social skills can occur in a school-like instructional, with speech classes or demonstrations by teachers and parents.
Developing social skills also occurs in social settings where you will be free to experiment with interactions and socializing to determine which social skills techniques work best for you.
The list that follows details some of the ways developing social skills are nurtured.
1. Developing social skills - When you were an infant, you began learning social skills, and many of these were inherent or instinctive.
When you were hungry or afraid, you cried. You had a limited ability to vocalize, but you could utilize your vocal chords and powerful lungs to seek the comforts you needed to feel okay.
When you were a baby, you were not required to adhere to other social norms or to petition with politeness. The social skill you used here was in being assertive to get what you needed rather than timid and hungry.
2. Developing social skills - You learned to use polite words such as please and thank you with the very first words you uttered.
Your parents most likely modeled using these words at dinner. While crying elicited a feeding response from adults when you were an infant, in this stage you were likely required to say please before you could get a cookie.
The cookie provided additional incentive. At this age and level of understanding concrete rewards were necessary to developing social skills.
3. Developing social skills - As a school age child you learned social order and respect for taking turns.
These are very important social skills that protect he structure of conversation. Raising your hand to speak may have been your first instruction against interrupting a person while they are talking.
Standing in line, walking in an orderly fashion, and abiding by a time to play and a time to work all create a foundation for later social skills such as accountability and respect.
4. Developing social skills - As an older child and during your college application process, for example, you learned that some words and phrases would elicit a better response from the listener than others.
At this age, an understanding of profanity and awareness that some topics are not polite to be discussed in public were instilled in you.
These are important understandings, as a key social skill is to bide by the unspoken rules f appropriateness in society.
5. Developing social skills - As an adult, you have probably witnessed the correlation between good social and communication skills and promotions.
People who have good social skills are more likely to receive promotions than those who don’t because good social skills are key to retaining customers and earning new clientele.
You have been developing social skills for years, and you will continue to do so for as long as you live.