Saturday, December 1, 2007

Socializing Your Child With A Balanced System

Submitted by copitek

Finding a balance of alone time and group activities is crucial to socializing your child. Between the two, you will be able to raise a balanced child and assist them with growing into mature and social individuals. Although it can be a difficult process, you have complete control over the effects that you see.

Typically you will find that children prefer individual contact when they are younger and move on to group interactions as they age. Because of this, it is up to you to make sure that your child gets a balance of group and individual contact.

From the moment your child is born until they go off to pre-school and elementary school children tend to prefer personal contact. This is fine because you want to maintain a close and healthy relationship with your child. But it is vital that you socialize your child during this phase. If you keep them confined and do not push them to meet and interact with others, they will grow up to be shy and not outgoing.

This is not to say that being shy is a negative characteristic. But it is much healthier to have a balance between the two kinds of interactions. What you can do is set up a play time for your child to go and play with other children or a time for other kids to come over. Sometimes your child will be glued to you because of the need for personal contact. In this instance it is fine for you to stay and play with your child as long as you include another child as well.

The goal is to get your child to socialize with others their age. Without giving them the opportunity to interact with their peers, they will know no better than to stay within themselves. Give them opportunities to play at the playground or meet and play with other children their age.

As mentioned above, the older children get the less they will want to hang out with you. Obviously you still want to see them interact and have fun with their peers. But part of socializing your child includes hanging out with them yourself. Because of this, it becomes more important for you to try and find alone time with your child as they age and become teenagers and go off to school.

This can be done by setting up a time where you can go fishing with them, play basketball, or just sit down and talk about what is going on. If you socialize in groups with your children at a younger age, this will be easy to interact later down the road. Try not to force the situation, but attempt to set up quality individual time with your children.

Socializing your child is not an easy process and does take a great deal of time. But it can help your child turn into a healthy and mature person. The key is to help your child find a balance between individual contact and group settings.


Source: ArticleTrader.com

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