Need Help: Teaching Social Skills

[nee1]

I got this article from Lee Binz the HomeScholar in my mailbox. It's about homeschooling socialisation. Link - http://www.thehomescholar.com/blog/a-little-story-for-the-next-time-youre-asked-about-socialization/329/

The comments were particularly insightful. One comment read:
``We were at our local nursing home recently to play music for the residents. Coincidentally, the bookmobile was there the same day. The librarian asked my daughters if they were homeschooled, and when one of them answered affirmatively, the librarian said, “Yep, I could tell.” My daughter asked her how she knew, and the woman said, “You have better socialization skills.” I about fell over.''

And Lee Binz responded to another comment as follows:
``I have also noticed that some will fear that academics may suffer, while others will fear the kids could become “too smart” – like kids who win contests and things. You can’t please everyone.''



Here again is the link to the entire article-  http://www.thehomescholar.com/blog/a-little-story-for-the-next-time-youre-asked-about-socialization/329/. And also read the comments on the article.

[mybabyian]

http://www.stanford.edu/~sloeb/papers/How%20Much%20Too%20Much.pdf

I posted this elsewhere but I think it is relevant here.  This study of 1400 children says that kids who do not attend preschool are better socialized upon entering kindergarten. 

[nee1]

In Joanne Calderwood's book ``The Self Propelled Advantage'', she mentions that it was the behaviour of 2 homeschooled boys that made her even want to have children. Prior to this time, she did not want to have children because she did not want to deal with the crummy attitudes she saw in the children she taught as an elementary school teacher. But when she saw the attitudes of these boys, it gave her hope that yes, one could raise well-behaved children. So she went crazy having children (her own words). And she ended up with 8 children. 

An excerpt from the book:

Pardon me for going on a tangent here, but I'd like to relate how I learned about home education. I was born, raised, and educated in Pennsylvania, and had never heard about home education or homeschooling until my husband and I moved to Nashville, Tennessee in the summer of 1988. I will never forget when a woman I met - who had two strikingly well-behaved boys, told me she homeschooled her sons. My response was an indignant--`` Is that even legal here?''.........

I have to tell you that what initially drew me to home education was the behaviour of the two young boys I told you about. They were probably ages eight to ten, and they had a respect for their parents that I had never seen in my classroom teacher years. That's how striking and stark the difference was in these boys’ attitudes. My friend's family was a cohesive unit, and I enjoyed being around them. After teaching other people's children, I was turned off by the crummy attitudes that the children possessed, and I honestly didn't want to have children of my own. But when my husband and I discovered a family whose children were delightful to be around as a result of the parents taking responsibility for their education, my heart changed. I had hope that we could train our future children to be as respectful and loving towards each other as these boys were. So I went crazy having children. Yes, I did. 

In an article on her blog (February 2010), she said the same thing. Link - http://homeschoolcoach.wordpress.com/2010/02/. An excerpt:

Tim and I only knew one other family who homeschooled when little Nicky was young, and it was the behaviour of this family’s homeschooled children that convinced us that homeschooling was the answer for our family. Behavior. I had spent way too much time in a classroom and as a houseparent observing the attitudes displayed by children who were raised by their peers. To see the peaceful fruit of homeschooling in the lives of real homeschooled children gave me hope that raising children didn’t have to be a tug-of-war struggle.''

Another testimonial (this time from a former classroom teacher) on the effectiveness of home education in producing better-behaved and well-socialised children.

[Krista G]

I have six children between the ages of 6 and 17 right now.  In the early years of their lives we lived somewhat isolated on an island in Belize.  They have never attended school a day in their lives.  Here is the outcome, they are very friendly and talk to anyone.  People love them because of this.

All of my nieces and nephews attended school, and I have a lot of them.  Most of them do not know how to say hello or carry on a conversation.  So much for the socialization myth.

I have found that this requires training on the part of the parent.  There were times when we would go to town to visit my husband's family and they would not answer questions that they were asked from others or they would be shy.  This was discussed at home and fake conversations were practiced.  The children were told that they were expected to smile and answer questions when they were spoken to.  If they did not, this was treated as disobedience.  This has really worked for us.

On the contrary, I have a nephew that never spoke to me until he was 12, and then it was because he wanted to buy something at my shop and needed the price.  He has always gone to school.  When I would speak to him he would not answer and his mother would complain in front of him that he was shy.  I think the parent's attitude plays a tremendous role here.

Also, I know you have just one child now, but if you have more they have to learn social skills.  Getting along with people who don't know every side of you is easy.  Can you get along with the people you are with 24 hours a day?  Even when your grumpy, tired, hungry, sick, etc...  We seem to save our ugly for home.  If you can get along there, you can get along anywhere.

[nee1]

What about homeschool socialization? Excellent audio by Dianne Flynn (as one of freebie audios offered by homechool.com). She cites some of research that have been done on homeschool socialization. She also gives other great insights.

Link to the audio -  http://www.homeschool.com/test/podcasts/homeschooling101.asp. Scroll to the audio ``What About Socialization?'' by Diane Flynn Keith

[Tamsyn]

When we were dating, my husband never thought I was unsocialized, I was certainly capable of holding my own in our conversations.  However, socially there was a little something different about the WAY I interacted with his friends that he couldn't put his foot on.  After we had been married for a couple of years he had a Eureka moment, and told me that homeschooling is it's own culture.  When people ask "What about socialization?", I now think that what they usually mean is "What about the public schooling culture?"  The mutual culture of sending your kids to school every day at the same time, of participating in spelling bees, going to parent-teacher conferences, of doing the same activities as the kids the same age as you, and counting on doing the same thing as the kid one year older than you, next year.  It's a real, genuine culture, and that culture is very important to some people.  Homeschoolers are not a part of that culture, we have our own culture- the culture of going to local homeschooling group activities, a culture with it's own lingo, like Classical Education, Unschooling, Charlotte Mason method, etc.  A small part of why I have been determined to homeschool my kids is because I grew up in the homeschooling culture and wanted it.

But I digress.  This thread is specifically about teaching social skills.  While learning to get along with siblings is great practice, I am learning more and more that social behavior is something that needs to be taught.  I had the wonderful pleasure of spending time with Ashly yesterday, in person, and she told me more about a program she is using called Kimochis.  She had the teacher curriculum for me to look at and I was amazed at the high quality of the book.  At the end there is a helpful index where you can easily thumb through to a specific negative behavior, like your kid saying "You're not invited to my birthday party!", with suggested lessons to work on.  I've been ho-humming about it.  The dolls are available for $25-$30 dollars, both on their main website and on Amazon, but the teacher's manual is ONLY available in a $350 package which includes 5 dolls and extra "feelings" pillows.  I realized that the whole reason I even want the dolls is so I can use them to teach my children to have emotional intelligence, and the curriculum is what I need to help make it happen.  I really do think that at the heart of misbehavior is negative emotions, and that the solution is to understand our emotions, how they work, and what we need to do to overcome them.  Kimochis teach that it's okay to be angry, but it's not okay to be mean.  I have a few highly sensitive children (okay, I've seen the neighbors do it too, it's normal childhood behavior), and my husband and I have not seen anything in the market that comes close to teaching emotional intelligence as these toys.  From an EL point of view, Ashly said that her kids LOVE the fact that the feelings pillows have words on them.  She has had some amazing success with the Kimochis, both in her home, and at church where she has occasionally taught young children with them.  They are a big ticket item, but they're next on our list.  My husband hasn't wanted any EL product as much as this one.  In the end, good behavior and social skills are something we want our children to have even more than the reading, math, and other academics.  Being nice and polite will get you far in life.  I truly haven't seen anything on the market that compares to Kimochis.  If social skills is something you want to accelerate, take a look!

http://www.kimochis.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/kimochime/videos

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Y51Rtb2LyAY&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/Y51Rtb2LyAY&rel=1</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/DeJb58VKqZA&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/DeJb58VKqZA&rel=1</a>

[Tamsyn]

PS, I found a 10% off coupon code among the pictures on their facebook page.    https://www.facebook.com/KimochisWay

[Wolfwind]

OK, I love this Kimochis idea, Tamsyn!  But I can't find the coupon code.  Can you give me more directions?

[Tamsyn]

You bet- sorry for being vague.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151411920213860&set=pb.33240273859.-2207520000.1373603290.&type=3&theater

The code is KimoFBK13.
I can bring the teacher's manual to the treehouse if you want to see it. 

[Wolfwind]

Thanks so much!  I'm actually buying it right now.  :-)  I think I'll start another thread about why - I'm volunteering to run a playgroup to teach social skills to some foster kids and high-functioning autistic kids, and I think I'll need this!

[ashlymcgee]

We are in the lesson right now of the It's okay to be mad but it isn't okay to be mean.  We just "opened" the lesson last night. Tonight we are going to be learning the different degrees of mad with a recommended Mad-ometer. Hahah!! I thought that was super cute and it sounds super helpful with the meter measuring from "Not Mad" to "Pop-Your-Top Mad." I love the dialog it gives. There is dialog all throughout. I am hoping my child will simply state: I am "Pop-My-Top Mad" instead of showing it. I am on page 83 and we have done many lessons. This is the first time that the lesson has asked me to pre-make something for the lesson.  It has given recommendations but never pre-make for a lesson. I found that interesting. On the topic of recommends, there was this pretty great idea a few lessons ago for teachers in classroom settings to take pics of (willing) children while having an expressive emotion. Then it suggests to print them up and place them in different binders for the set of emotions and place in a quite corner so children my relax and browse through the different binders with pics of the children they see the most expressing different emotions so the student can have a better understanding of what a friend maybe going through by simply glancing at them.  The lesson for that night was about what to do when you see a sad friend and what to do if you *are* sad. 

Great stuff!!! You will not be disappointed.  So glad you were able to purchase a set.  I just love this product!

[Krista G]

It sounds really nice.  I think it is interesting that many things like this are never taught.  Even as adults we can benefit from understanding our emotions and how to process them.  I heard a sermon recently about emotions and dealing with anger.  It was very interesting and with all that we teach our children, this should not be overlooked.  While I don't have a curriculum to use, I teach my children about what is and is not acceptable from a Biblical perspective, and these lessons happen all day long.  Too bad we are not all neighbors and can't look at each other's curriculum before we decide to buy.

[lelask]

Hi , I am trying to find a discount coupon for the UK shop. Please let me know if you find any. Thanks

[Wolfwind]

We've had our Kimochis for a week now and my almost-3-year-old daughter LOVES them.  I can't tell you how much she adores them.  We haven't done the specific lessons in the curriculum guide yet, because playgroup should be starting next week (fingers crossed!), but I've skimmed through it and it looks really cool.  If you go to http://www.shop.kimochis.com/ and click on the Teacher's Tool Kit, it has a pretty good-sized sample of all the different things available in the book.  Nice stuff.  The Early Childhood lessons are nice introductions to the feelings and give some impulse-control suggestions.  But to me, the Elementary ones are the real meat of the program.  They really walk kids through how to deal with all kinds of interpersonal situations and stand up for themselves without being rude or unkind.  I'm excited to get to that part!

What my daughter loves is Kimochis shows.  When there's misbehavior, we still use our normal way of dealing with it.  But later in the day, when she's playing with the Kimochis, she and I put on a show of what happened and think about other solutions.  For example, one day she was using the slide so much that her little sister never got a turn.  So I asked her to play on the swings or trampoline or something else while Baby S got a turn on the slide.  She got mad and tried to slide down and knock Baby S off, so I removed her.  She came back, even angrier, and hit Baby S and me.  Uh-oh!  Big trouble, which we dealt with.  Then, when we went inside, I offered a Kimochis show: "Cat is playing on the slide.  Lovey Dove notices that Bug is feeling Left Out (feeling in pocket) and asks Cat to give Bug a turn.  Cat is Mad (feeling in pocket)!  Cat tries to knock Bug off the slide.  Cat hits Bug and Lovey Dove!"  It was really funny to see the look of shock and horror on my daughter's face.  Now that she wasn't mad, she sure knew that this was NOT an acceptable way to behave.  So I asked her what Cat should have done, and we tried out some different choices.  It was lots of fun and she even asked to do it over and over.  How often to I get ASKED to repeat a lecture on behavior?  Awesome!  She's also been much better on the slide for the past day.

Cat is also the bossy character, which is one of my daughter's problems.  So in one Kimochis show Cat bossed Big Girl A around.  I almost couldn't finish the show because Big Girl A said she was NOT going to play with Cat anymore after that!  It was very eye-opening for her when she realized that that's the way she talks to us a lot.  Now I can say, "I feel like you're bossing me around, like Cat," and she'll immediately rephrase her request.

It's not anything completely new, but using the Kimochis characters to act it out makes it so much more popular and easier to teach.  It's a great reinforcer.  And the lessons script out a lot of things that I want to teach to my children and have struggled with putting into words.  The first five lessons are on addressing someone by name, making eye contact, and waiting for a response.  I've tried to teach that, but it's been hard and hasn't taken yet.  I think playing with the Kimochis will give a wonderful way to practice that my daughter will like.

It was a lot of money for me to spend.  But I want to homeschool, and the main reason everyone around me tries to dissuade me is that they think my kids won't learn this kind of interpersonal skills.  My husband and I are both quite shy, and I know I don't have all of the skills taught in the Kimochis teacher's guide.  There are some lessons in the Elementary section that I'm eager to practice myself!, like dealing with frustration, which is one of my pitfalls.  So I'm confident that it will be worth it for me.  This can be my response to those questions: my kids will be taught how to get along with others, even better than most kids in public school.  Now I just need a response to the accusation that they will never gain any independence.

[Krista G]

Wolfwind, thanks for the detailed look into what you are doing.  It sounds very cool.  I have no need for this product at this stage in my parenting, but it sounds wonderful for schools and church groups.  I love how you use stories to point out errors and flaws in behavior.  It reminds me of the prophet Nathan coming to see King David after he sinned with Bathseba.  He did not come scolding him and belittling him, he told him a story of injustice and David reacted angrily about it, and then he realized he was the character being portrayed.  So cool.

My oldest 2 just finished home school high school.  I still get amazed at the way children from public school settings socialize.  It baffles me.  The other day my neighbor had a 12 year old niece over and an exchange student from China, and my kids were playing soccer in the yard,  They invited the girls to play with them, but my neighbor's niece wouldn't.  She refused to socialize.  She wouldn't swim with my kids around and so forth.  She kept insisting that she wanted to leave and do things alone. Afterward we were discussing the situation and trying to figure out why someone would be so antisocial.  Sadly, I meet more children from school that act so weird than those that don't.  It is rare to meet friendly and outgoing children, and this includes nieces and nephews in  my own family.  The point is, just because kids go to school does not mean they know anything about being social in the real world.  It sounds like the lessons in the Kimochis would be very helpful for this.

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