What Do You Know About Your Preschooler’s Friendships?

Humans are social creatures by nature. We crave interaction and connection with others before we even have the ability to vocalize the desire. A crucial life objective is acquiring the social skills needed to establish and maintain healthy interpersonal relationships. As a parent, you play a key role in shaping how your preschooler will learn to interact with others. It’s important that you prepare yourself to help guide this development, which will have lifelong implications for your child.

To begin, you should understand what early childhood friendships are all about. Learn how children naturally interact with one another, and know what to expect as the years progress. The following post provides good beginnng information:

Understanding toddler and preschooler friendships

“Who are my daughter’s/son’s closest friends?” is one of the most frequently asked questions our child care staff get from parents.

The answer to this question can change from day to day depending on the age of your child.

Children from 1 to 2 years old typically engage in parallel play — where they sit beside one another, but play alone with very little interaction. However, they are still picking up play behaviours and vocabulary by sitting side by side.

Once children move into the preschool years, though, they start to notice one another and are more likely to move out of their own little zone to interact with their peers. From 2 to 5 years old, children are learning how to share, listen to others, and co-operate with one another, forming deeper attachments to others and using their words to describe emotions and manage conflict. Read more at YMCA of Greater Toronto…

Be aware and make note of the changes in the way your child relates to his or her peers over time. This will give you added insight into your child’s personality, strengths and weaknesses as they grow.

We’ve established that your child wants friends and will seek them out, but will these early friendships have lasting importance to your child’s life, since he or she is so young? The following post explores these questions:

Friends Matter: The Importance of Friendships to Your Preschooler

During your child’s first few years, he has been aware of and interested in his peers, but he hasn’t quite been ready to play together with those kids and form true friendships. You may have seen him make his first friends at around 2.5 years old, but most children start making friends between the ages of three and four. These friendships are very important to your child and help with his social and emotional development. They teach him how to interact with and relate to others and show him that other people have different interests and opinions than his own. Read more at Playful Bee…

So you see, your preschooler’s friendships play an important role in helping them achieve key developmental milestones. You need to encourage this process for their long-term benefit.

One of the best ways you can do this is by helping your child gain good social skills, which will in turn help them create and sustain good friendships. Here are some valuable tips to assist you with this process:

Helping Your Preschooler Develop Friendship Skills

Are you puzzled by some of your child’s social behaviors? Have you noticed that your toddler doesn’t interact with other children very often? Does your three-year-old get frustrated when a classmate won’t play with him? Will your four-year-old only play with her best friend?

These are all normal social behaviors for preschoolers. Learning how to develop friendships is a lifelong process. Children’s social behaviors evolve from smiling and cooing at others, to engaging in parallel play, to eventually forming friendships and playing together.

Below are ways we help develop friendships in the classroom, as well as ideas for you and your child to do at home. Read more at Discovery Isle Preschool…

Another excellent way to enhance your child’s social skills is enrolling him or her in a preschool that prioritizes socialization, personal skills-building and guided play. If you reside in the Raleigh, NC metro area, Spanish for fun! is just what you’re looking for.

Spanish for fun! is a Spanish immersion preschool with an original curriculum that teaches the Spanish language and culture in a way that encourages an appreciation for diversity, fosters empathy and facilitates healthy, play-based interactions between our attendees. Your child will learn to value people who are different from them, a critical social skill in our changing world.

We would love for you to meet our exemplary staff and see our successful teaching methods in action. Please call us at 919-881-1160 or fill the contact form on our website to schedule a tour of our Raleigh Campus. We look forward to your visit.

The post What Do You Know About Your Preschooler’s Friendships? appeared first on Spanish for fun! Daycare Preschool Raleigh NC.