Every time your child interacts with others, they have important choices to make. You can empower your child to lift others up, promote mental health, and develop a sense of integrity and self-respect in the process. 

Modeling kindness in your own behavior is critical. You can also reinforce these ideas by helping your child build emotional literacy, gain an awareness of social cues and see things from another person’s perspective.

The social landscape in our country has changed since today’s generation of parents was young. However, the basic courtesies of being kind and reaching out to help others feel a sense of belonging are still the same. In this article, we’ll share six tools you can use to teach your child how to spot someone who’s feeling left out.

6 tools to help you teach your child to spot someone who is feeling left out

The best approach to take will depend on your child’s age, their prior experiences and their personality. Each person needs to develop their own unique set of skills that work for them, and this can take many years. Asking your child about their school day and their friendships is a good way to start these conversations.

Kindness isn’t something we can take for granted. Everyone eventually finds out what it feels like to be left out. Noticing when someone is being excluded can help your child make a difference in another person’s life and in their own.

Use the following tools to teach your child to spot someone who is feeling left out:

• Modeling inclusive behavior 

Since you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance you care about kindness and integrity. At the same time, everyone has biases and flaws. 

Becoming conscious of them and making an effort to include others takes mindful awareness and courage. Talking through your experiences with your children and sharing your social observations can help you establish belonging and inclusion as family values.

• Teaching emotional literacy 

Emotional literacy and emotion regulation skills play an important role in how your child treats others. Young children need to learn to recognize their own emotions before they can start to notice them in others and truly empathize. 

If they’re feeling angry or upset, they can find a way to stay grounded and do something with that emotional energy so they don’t take it out on someone else.

Picture books and videos about emotions can help with this. Naming emotions as they happen helps put emotional literacy into action.

• Body language awareness 

Learning nonverbal cues is a critical part of each child’s social development. Age-appropriate activities for toddlers might include making facial expressions for different emotions or engaging in parallel play. 

Preschoolers might play make-believe and start to share their toys. School-aged children may start observing their favorite characters’ behavior in TV shows and learn from their mistakes with some guidance.

• Perspective-taking exercises 

Real-world practice is one of the best teachers of social-emotional learning. If your child has siblings, you can do this at home by encouraging your children to name their feelings during squabbles. In interactions with other children, you can point out clues to give them an idea of how another child is feeling.  

• Role-playing scenarios 

Role-playing can be an engaging and effective way to practice social observation skills and kindness. When you come across an example of what not to do, or when your child is upset about something that happened at school, you might ask them to role-play and imagine what it might look like to make other choices. 

• Positive reinforcement strategies 

Rewarding your child for good behavior and growth is much more powerful than punishment. When they show kindness to others, explain to them what they did right or ask them why they chose to act the way they did. Then give them a high-five or another appropriate reward.

Practice mindful awareness for social-emotional growth

You can’t always be there when your child has a chance to be kind and make someone else feel included. You can prepare them to recognize those opportunities and put themselves in the other person’s shoes. 

You can also teach them how to speak up and be brave when necessary. Not only will their conscience be clear, but they’ll also make good friends and help make their community a better place.

If you’re not exactly confident about your own social-emotional skills, know that there’s still time. Not everyone learns these things at an early age. There may be some local resources or a support group where you can learn and practice in a safe space.

At Lightfully, we build social-emotional learning and interpersonal skills into our comprehensive mental health treatment plans for adults and teens. We know that your relationships are an important thread in the fabric of your overall well-being. 

Along with relationship skills, our Precision Care Model (PCM) also includes the core life processes of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. These are the building blocks we use to help each client build their proactive strategy for sustainable mental wellness.

If you’re ever in search of comprehensive mental health care, please contact us. We can help you learn to lift others up as you care for yourself.