What is it?
Many people believe that social skills are innate and those who do not exhibit prosocial skills are “wired differently”. However, social skills are learned within the environment. Small children watch the social behavior of others and mimic their behavior. They gain an understanding of what is considered acceptable and not acceptable behavior by how other’s behavior is reinforced. This understanding is either cemented or destroyed by how society responds to the behavior they are mimicking.
In an ideal world, we would positively reinforce the prosocial behavior and “punish” inappropriate behavior. Unfortunately, circumstances are rarely ideal and there are instances when inappropriate behavior has been rewarded. While some inappropriate behaviors are minor, major inappropriate behavior can result in peer and societal rejection. Remember that if prosocial behavior allows us to blend into the crowd, then inappropriate behavior causes one to be easily identified in the crowd. Sustained inappropriate behavior can bring unwanted and unkind attention from peers and adults.
This is not to say that one must deny core aspects of their personality to fit into some larger societal norm. Rather, socially acceptable behavior is more of a range than simply right and wrong. They key to understanding if behavior is appropriate or inappropriate is based on the context of that moment. What is acceptable behavior in one area, may not be acceptable in another. For example, it is acceptable to wildly scream and cheer at a sporting event. It is not acceptable to wildly scream and cheer during a math test.
How do I know when it is a problem?
There are some children who are better at discerning whether their behavior is appropriate for the setting and others who find it quite difficult. For the children who find it difficult, they tend to struggle socially without a clear understanding as to what went wrong. Children with these struggles are usually children who have a desire to be social and socially interact, but are often rejected by peers quickly during their interactions. The child is unable to make the connection between their behavior and the impact it is having on their peers. Their inability to understand how their behavior may be negatively impacting peers, sustains a cycle of negative peer interactions.
What can I do about it?
Fortunately, there are specific interventions that can be used to improve a child’s social awareness. Early this school year, I was asked by a first grade teacher to do a classroom wide activity to address what the teacher believed was social miscommunication between her students. The teacher reported the class appeared to desire interaction with each other but appeared to have inappropriate ways of gaining and sustaining peer attention.
Addressing the problem as the teacher understood it, the intervention needed to focus on improving age appropriate social interactions. At 6 to 7 years old, friendship consists primarily of who do I want to play with at recess. Understanding the level of social play in which children at this age engage, the intervention did not need to focus on building long lasting friendships between students. Rather, the intervention needed to focus on helping students better understand that their actions were negatively impacting their peers; and now, as a result of said negative interactions, their peers do not want to play with them.
While I could have gone into the class to do a lesson about what it means to be a good friend, I did not think it would have a long term impact. However, teaching the class how to better attune to the feelings and the responses of their peers, would be a strategy they could use in various settings.
The Activity.
As my intentional intervention, I decided to pin each student as Social Detective. I provided them 3 cases they would need to solve and explained to them how we would gather the clues we needed to solve the mysteries. I used The Meanest Girl in Second Grade video to have them use their eyes to see the expression on the person’s face; use their ears to hear to the words the person said; and use their brains to figure out how the person felt and why.
I will spare you the nitty gritty of how I broke down the video to demonstrate the lesson, but take a little more time to focus on why I put so much effort into explaining this concept to 6 and 7 year olds. People often assume that children cannot understand complex concepts; because, when an adult explains the complex concept to the child, the child does not seem to understand. In reality, it is not, usually, the complexity of the concept with which the child struggles, but merely the complexity of the language used. Speech is not an indication of intelligence; but, rather, the ability to convey the intelligence within. When communicating with young children, it is important to break down concepts into terms they can understand. Additionally, it is important to use a familiar medium and to add hands on activities to address the various learning styles of each child.
Feel free to contact me if you would like more information regarding this activity.
The Results
At the end of the 45 minute lesson, the kids were able to understand and put together how the 3 different characters felt and why. Additionally, we discussed what to do if you do something unkind and make your peer upset. Unfortunately, at the end of the lesson, a classmate did something unkind to his peer which made his peer sad. Fortunately, the class was able to identify that the peer was sad and why he was sad. They were even able to suggest to their peer that he should apologize. In later conversations with the teacher, she reported improved social awareness and communication amongst many of her students.
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