These days parents are often busy working and only able to spend a minimal amount of time with their children. As a result, they barely find time to spend instilling social skills and manners into their children. This is where a day care preschool comes into the picture.
To ensure complete and healthy development in all aspects parents require an intermediate to help teach children social skills when they are at work.

Preschool or day care isn’t just about giving a child the best possible start in their educational life but also instilling some of the most important personal skills that go on to help children become better students for further studies and adults later on in life.

What Social Skills Are Developed in Day Care Preschool?

Preschool isn’t just an important place for building the foundation for academic learning, it also acts as the first step to helping children develop as people with all the right social skills to have a healthy and strong mind. Children actually learn a multitude of social and behavioral skills. Take a look at some of the ways children grow from attending preschool.

Emotional Regulation

Children are subject to feeling emotions and sometimes acting purely motivated by them. This usually results in actions that may affect other children around in a negative manner. Therefore, emotional regulation is necessary.

Experiencing all the emotions is necessary for children but ensuring they are able to cope with and express themselves is even more vital for further growth into a well-rounded child. Expression is a way of coping with overwhelming emotions and compassionate teachers help along the way.

Manners

Manners need to be taught to children from a very young age because if not, bad manners become a habit. The most common form of manners is teaching children to say “please” and “thank you” when speaking to anyone.

Manners is a core detail taught to children throughout day care preschool, all the way up to schooling years. So, it is highly beneficial to children and parents to get this important lesson out of the way at the earliest possible time!

But do note, that turning good manners into a habit will require parents to follow through with training at home too.

Sharing

Children are often very possessive of their belongings and it becomes increasingly difficult to teach them otherwise later on. Preschools often have equipment that needs to be shared between children but this is on purpose as it fosters an environment in which children will go on to learn how to share.

An example of a sharing exercise could include giving two children two colors each and asking them to exchange or share the colors with each other. With time it can progress to sharing more items with each other.

Social Confidence

Young children may not be the most confident beings especially if growing up in a home environment where they are overshadowed by siblings. Furthermore, staying in a home environment may not expose children to the outside world and this may lead to children becoming intimidated when outdoors.

Preschool teaches small children to become confident around other children as well as when in an external environment. Social confidence stems from being self-confident and preschools have multiple activities aimed at helping young ones become more aware and confident.

Conversational Skills

If left around adults for too long, children often pick up on a certain type of dialect which is not appropriate for children so young to use. In order to avoid such instances, preschool activities are important to ensure children are accustomed to speaking with other children as well as learning the right vocabulary for starters.

Conversation skills are developed through two main activities, these are listening and responding. Some children are good at listening but may struggle in responding due to a lack of vocabulary or lack of confidence. Patience and opportunity will solve these problems.

Additionally, many parents send their children to a day care preschool to give them the foundation for learning another language other than the one used at home.

Obedience

Obedience doesn’t just refer to being respectful to elders, it also refers to being able to listen to orders being given by a person of authority. In this case, children must be obedient towards teachers.

Teaching the importance of respect is not just a lesson that ought to be taught at preschool, it should also be taught at home with parents and other family members getting involved. Also, children will need correction when making a mistake but it is best to do it in a gentle and reassuring manner.

How Does Preschool Teach Social Skills

Preschool acts as a social development partner for parents and aids in helping parents instill good manners and social skills in their children. Sometimes parents alone can’t hone the social skills of children.

Various indoor and outdoor activities should be used to enforce social skill teachings and ensure that it is an enjoyable process for children. Besides, research shows that teaching children in a natural form of learning such as toys and games is the most effective way to get a message across to such young children.

Conclusion

Sending a child to day care preschool has become the number one choice for parents who are looking to not only provide education to their child but also social skills that may very well affect their character as they grow. It is definitely something every parent should seriously consider.

FAQs

Q.1) Can a day care or preschool accommodate children with differing social needs?

Ans. A preschool can accommodate children with every social need even if it is different. A bit more patience and an understanding teacher will be instrumental in helping children who need different needs.

Q.2) What are the long-term benefits of social skill development?

Ans. Strong social skill development has several advantages, a few being improved relationship building, better academic performance, and overall a better chance at having a highly successful career.

Q.3) How can teachers and preschool owners reinforce social skill learning?

Ans. Teaching young children social skills requires highly compassionate and patient teachers. Also, it requires normalizing speaking about feelings and emotions not just with teachers but with other students as well.

Q.4) Is it too early to start teaching children about emotions in preschool?

Ans. The earlier you start teaching children about emotions the better. This is also because managing personal emotions plays an important role in managing every situation and becoming successful later on in life.