How Your Baby Makes Friends

Social skills are critical for a child’s future success — but it’s easy for you to help your little one build them.

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Social development covers the broad range of skills people use to relate to, play with, learn from, and teach others. Social skills are important for survival and for a good life. They also are a way to show a person's individuality. The judgments of others about us are based largely on our social skills, including our adeptness at expressing ideas, our concern for others, and our ways to solve or prevent problems. In this sense, social development will be as vital to your child's success in school, in friendships, and in work as any IQ test score, perhaps even more so.

An infant's social skills influence what people do. From early on, some babies seem like real "people babies," wanting almost constant time with others. Others like more "alone" time. Some babies smile and laugh more than others do. As far as we know, such differences affirm individuality. They may also be linked to genetic propensities. Fortunately, there are many ways for infants to become socially and emotionally adept and to fit into their social worlds well and with ease.

As with emotional skills, social abilities develop right from birth. Beginning with an infant's emerging sense of self, social skills grow to include:

• trusting others
• gaining self-confidence
• having a good self-image
• playing happily with siblings and other children
• sharing
• getting help from parents
• acting within prescribed limits
• cooperating
• respecting authority
• respecting the rights and needs of others

What You Can Do
Clearly, social and emotional health affects every other sphere of a child's development and an adult's life. Research increasingly shows how soon and fast many of these essential skills begin to emerge. Happily, this research also shows that you can best help your baby develop these skills by being:
• responsive
• tuned in to your child's cues and individuality
• genuinely happy and interested in life yourself

From Right from Birth: Building Your Child's Foundation for Life by Craig T. Ramey, Ph.D., and Sharon L. Ramey, Ph.D. Available wherever books are sold. Copyright © 1999 by Goddard Press, Inc.

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