Helping Your Toddler Socialize

Socialization is an important part of childhood development that should not be ignored.  Some toddlers socialize more easily than others and many need help and direction from adults to truly get the concept.  Socialization starts with the parents early in life and can actually be a lifelong process of trial and error learning.

Start by talking to your baby.  Respond to their babbles, laughs, wants and needs.  This reinforcement and interaction will help your baby to see that involving someone else in their day is a normal part of life.  This is the basis for learning how to interact with other people.

As your baby gets into the second year of life, he may see everything as his own.  The "mine" stage can be very frustrating and even cause parents to avoid social interaction with other children.  However, this is an important stage in development that should be taken advantage of.

Being protective of toys may make your child throw some real tantrums.  They are feeling intense emotions that they have never felt before.  Remember that it is good if your child makes it to this stage.  Now the goal is to coach and help your child learn how to cope with these emotions so that they can realize that it's not the end of the world to share.  They may not understand your explanations because they are so overwhelmed at first.  However, with a little practice (and a lot of patience on your part) they will see with their own eyes that sharing is not the same as giving away.

Around age two, when they start to get past the anxiety of sharing, children will normally start to become interested in other children.  Encourage this as much as possible.  Make sure that you call other children their "friends" and talk about how fun it is to play with other kids.  It may be a good idea to have your child make friends on neutral ground, like at a park, where sharing is not an issue.  You can tackle sharing on a separate occasion.

When your child has some regular friends, invite them over to play with your child's toys.  Carefully arrange the room so that it contains toys that are easily shared.  Many preschool toys are good for this purpose.  Blocks, a train table, an activity table, crafts, and other toys that have multiple items are good for getting started.  Once your child learns that it is fun to let other children play with their toys, you can move on to taking turns and other more advanced social skills.