Facilitating Social Development Skills in Early Childhood

©2015 Cengage Learning.
All Rights Reserved.
Chapter 15
Facilitating Social Development

Social Development
• The Four How’s
– How to Approach
– How to Interact
– How to Deal with Difference
– How to Manage Conflict

Social Skills and Overall Development
• Social skills cannot be separated from
overall development.
• While engaged in a social conversation,
language, physical skills, and cognitive
skills are intertwined.
• Therefore social skills need to be taught
and reinforced to all children.

Defining Appropriate Social Skills
• Appropriate social skills are rules and
expectations prescribed by particular
groups as to how group members will
conduct themselves in private and in
public.

Defining Appropriate Social Skills
(continued)
• The major social skills learned in early
childhood relate to getting along with
others.
• Children need to be provided opportunities
to interact with peers, adults, and family
members.

Acquiring Social Skills
• Temperament and emotions
– Three main types:
• Easy
• Difficult
• Slow to warm up
– Emotions are felt, but reactions to the
emotions are learned.
– Appropriate responses to an emotion need to
be taught.

Acquiring Social Skills (continued)
• Social reinforcement
– Adult responsiveness
• This refers to how an adult responds to a young
child’s needs.
• If the response is immediate and appropriate, then
the child and the adult are satisfied.
• If the response is delayed or inappropriate, then
the child becomes mistrustful and wary of the
environment.

• Impact of developmental problems
– Infants who do not respond in the typical
sense with smiles, coos, or eye gazing often
are not stimulated by the caregivers to
express emotion.
– Overstimulated children tend to withdraw and
turn away from caregivers’ show of emotion.
– Over responding children cannot control their
responses and often turn a caregiver off
emotionally.

• Social skills in sequence
– Attachment
– Joint attention
– Separation protest
– Fear of strangers
– Stranger anxiety
– Theory of mind
– Pretend and role-playing

The Role of Early Learning
Programs
• Play
– Unoccupied behavior
– Onlooker behavior
– Solitary play
– Parallel play
– Associative play
– Cooperative play

The Role of Early Learning Programs
(continued)
• Teaching children to play
– Arrange for children to be near each other.
– Physically guide them into the play.
– Give them materials to stimulate play.
– Place objects in their hands.
– Verbalize actions.
– Rejoice.
– Help others join in.

(continued)
– Provide social reinforcement.
– Move the child toward a group.
– Teacher slowly removes herself from the play
experience.
• Gentle insistence
– Teacher gently prods a child into participating
in an activity.

(continued)
• Incidental social learning
– Explain differences among children as
needed.
– Answer questions honestly and openly.
– Use simple words the child can understand.
– Encourage social interactions.

(continued)
– To encourage incidental social learning:
• Move closer to the children playing.
• Smile and encourage play with all children.
• Bring new materials to the interaction.
• Make encouraging comments, keeping the play
going.

(continued)
– Sharing and turn-taking
• A difficult concept for children because they have
to give up what is theirs to meet the needs of
someone else
– Self-assertion
• Teach children to stand up for what is theirs and
not let others just take from them.
– Materials and equipment
• Provide multiple materials in areas where more
than one child can play at a time.
• Encourage imitation by providing two of some toys.

(continued)
• Imitation and modeling
– Arrange the environment to ensure that
interactions take place.
– Reinforce the children for playing together.
– Reinforce imitation of appropriate behaviors.

Teacher-Structured Peer Interactions
• Create activities in which all children must
participate for the game to work.
• Discovery play sets up the activity for the
children to engage in and work together.

(continued)
• Peer tutoring and peer mediating
– Children who are typically developing are
given a chance to explain a new idea to a
peer.
– Mediation is done to keep children engaged.
– Children with disabilities get the chance to
play with others.
– Teachers provide support and
encouragement.

(continued)
– Peer tutoring
• The child with the disability learns from the peer.
• The peer is given a chance to refine and master a
skill.

(continued)
• Additional ways teachers can structure
and facilitate learning:
– Choose stories that focus on character
development.
– Practice manners.
– Seat children close to appropriate models at
circle time and large group activities.
– Provide group projects.
– Initiate a buddy center.

(continued)
– Fair play
• Rules in the classroom are for everyone.
• No one child should be allowed to break rules
because of his or her disability.
• Encourage rule-following and reward appropriate
behaviors.

When More Intervention is Needed
• Provide a quiet small group area for the
child to practice social interaction.
• Give the child time to practice with the
teacher before engaging another child.
• Use the tiered framework for intervention
to model support.
• One-to-one shadowing
– Model and support child in interaction.

Facilitating Social Development Skills in Early Childhood

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