teaching social skills – Parenting by Dr. Rene

Coaching: Encouraging Behavior Change a Few Minutes at a Time

I teach parenting workshops on positive discipline often. At least weekly, I am reviewing the language of I messages, empathy, positive intent, choices and natural and logical consequences. This language is meant to provide parents with a framework for managing children’s behaviors in the moment. It is a flexible and effective approach for shaping behaviors … Continue reading Coaching: Encouraging Behavior Change a Few Minutes at a Time

Your Child’s Social Skills and Play

A child’s social competence is most simply defined as their ability to play while keeping friends. If the other kids are happy when your child shows up, they want to continue playing with them and the play tends to go well most of the time then their social skills are likely developing at least fairly … Continue reading Your Child’s Social Skills and Play

Hypotheticals to Teach Social Skills

Asking hypotheticals to teach social skills means asking children open-ended questions and discussing answers based on their scenarios. In our house, we call this the “what if” game. Let’s say you have a four-year-old that is always taking small things that don’t belong to them from preschool and playdates, asking hypotheticals would be asking what … Continue reading Hypotheticals to Teach Social Skills