Social Skills: What’s Not Said

This past weekend, we held another (free) parent seminar - Social Skills: What’s Not Said. Thank you to everyone who attended! I hope you found it helpful. Or at minimum, found it thought provoking on how nonverbal social communication may affect you and your teen.

We discussed what nonverbal social cues are and why they are important. Nonverbal social skills/communication is any nonspoken skills used during interactions with other and can include body language, facial expressions, tone, and volume. Nowadays, it also includes electronic communication, such as texting, emailing, and social media. If someone misses the nonverbal social cues during interactions, they may not be able to gauge or assess how an interaction is going. If the other person is sending signals that they are not enjoying the interaction, but you keep going with it because you don’t notice they aren’t enjoying it, the other person may not want to talk with you again. This can be a road block to developing and maintaining deeper friendships.

We talked about using a three step procedure to learn nonverbal social cues:
1. Identify what nonverbal social skills confuse you! Is it reading facial expressions? Is it understanding tone of voice? Put a label on it and define it
2. Come up with a plan of action whenever one of those nonverbal social cues arise and practice it. But remember, practice makes progress. No one is getting everything right the first time, so let’s give ourselves permission to try and try again.
3. Troubleshoot as things come up. Nonverbal social cues will change depending on age and situation (e.g. at school vs. at work), so you will inevitably come across a new situation that stumps you. Find a person or two that you can discuss and troubleshoot with!