Engaged in the mental and physical development of their children, many parents lose sight of emotional and social development. Does your preschooler be able to listen to others? Ask for help? Cope with aggression and bring the matter to the end? Children’s psychologists Svetlana Krivtsova and Galia Nigmetzhanova tell about important life skills.
What is life skills?
These are the basic skills necessary to live among people. Several such skills are easy to notice in the behavior of children, starting from four and a half – five years. A small person learns to interact with others, seek help, declare his needs, get acquainted, enter into a discussion, show initiative – this is life skills. Scientists have 45 such basic skills and competencies. In the book “Life skills for preschoolers”, I give the whole list of skills, noting what mistakes at what age is still permissible to make.
Life skills are an adult (in accordance with age) behavior in a certain repeating situation. Behavior in some sense is a reference, mature. Take a closer look at the child: does he know how to listen to other people, whether he asks questions how he enters into a conversation, can he offer his help to an adult or peer? The child masters these skills, observing the behavior of adults, copying it. But if for some reason he has not yet mastered certain skills (perhaps because the adults themselves do not own them), then it is necessary to connect to parents. For
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example, you noticed that the child takes other people’s things without demand. Think about what you can do together, help him “try on yourself” the best way out of this situation. “Do you want to take your favorite toy? In order not to be convicted of theft, be sure to find her master and ask for permission to play “.
If the child, in principle, has such an idea – turn to others and ask, and who is the owner of the thing he wants to take – it means that we can say that the skill is formed. Moreover, it is important to find the one to whom the thing really belongs, and not ask the first one who runs past, – “I can take?”After all, he will easily answer:” Yes, take it, she is not mine!»A child who took a thing without demand will easily call a“ thief ”, but he simply did not master this skill. The task of the parents is to carefully see at what step the child makes the mistake and explain the procedure for him.
Another important skill is the ability to listen. Watching parents, the child gradually adopts their way to perceive the world. Later, from 4.5-5 years, this ability will become one of the basic skills necessary for life.
How to understand that the child knows how to listen? Pay attention to the following important criteria. When the child is listening, he ..
- Looks at the person who says,
- Trying to understand what they say to him,
- shows this “body language” (nods or expresses disagreement),
- He asks counter questions,
- Silent, while the interlocutor says.
When the skill is not formed, the child ..
- does not turn to the one who turns to him,
- He runs away from the speaker,
- interrupts or switches (as if intentionally) to another lesson at the moment when they talk to him.
Life skills – like the top of the iceberg. Socially acceptable behavior is not laid in 4-5 years, but earlier, from birth. For example, the first experiences of listening to the baby gives a mother who reacts to his crying, enters into dialogue with him: “Yes, I know you are hungry, now I will warm up the porridge and we will eat”. The child remembers: the adult hears him. This becomes his experience. Feelings that dictate this or that behavior, develop gradually and spontaneously in communication with parents, with peers. It is difficult to form a skill to ask permission from the child who does not believe that if he asks, they will give him. Probably, life has already taught him: when you ask, you are most often denied. But this experience can be adjusted. Yes, parents don’t choose. But, as Jean-Paul Sartre said, freedom is what I did with what they did to me. At any age, I can reconsider this and change my attitude.
What to do in a situation where the child chose a lesson (playing a piano or dancing), and after six months he was disfigured him? It is necessary to listen to his desire, or still we must teach the child to bring the matter to the end?