Tips for parents: Help your child to become prosocial

Overview

The term prosocial denotes the behaviour of anyone who may be a child, student or an adult. It is intended primarily to encourage social friendship and acceptance by the society. In principle this behaviour should always be positive and helpful in nature. Prosocial behaviour, also known as voluntary behaviour, is a social action used for the benefit of other individuals or the society. This can be exhibited in the form of sharing, volunteering, co-operating, donating or helping. Children and adults can be motivated to be prosocial by showing understanding or concern for the welfare of other people.

Motivation required for prosocial behaviour

There are some children who need special and extra motivation for being prosocial. Their introvert nature or failure in social skills may be due to disabilities or poor performance in academics. Here, it is extremely essential for the parents to assist their child in the art of socialisation. Competency in being prosocial is vital as it is linked with academic achievement, acceptance, and gradually in achieving career goals. If the problems in social skills are not addressed early in a child, it can cause devastating effects. These skills can certainly be mastered when the child is taught to utilise them suitably. There are a few tips that parents can adopt to help their child to become prosocial.

1. Parents like you, can use the method of incident teaching. Here, social skills are taught while handling natural situations. You can support your child in using the appropriate social skills where required.

2. You can act as the child’s emotional coach in guiding him/her emotionally to be aware of circumstances where he/she should socialize properly.

3. If, as parents like you, are unable to teach prosocial behaviour in a natural atmosphere, you can adopt the role playing method to depict different settings. Your child can monitor in using these social skills in various situations.

4. You can discuss with your child the positive or negative usage of the prosocial skills in natural situations he/she may have faced. As parents, you can assess your child’s behaviour in a specific situation, find out the skill used and evaluate its efficiency by discovering about the situation through questions and answers.

5. You should not resort to using instruction or control in making your child learn new prosocial skills. The reinforcement skills should be taught to adopt during various situations.

6. As parents the frequency of reinforcement should be decreased after gaining social skills. Your child should choose and utilize the skills learnt in actual situations.

7. Even if prosocial skills are taught to your child, you should ensure that they are used. You can resort to various methods in promoting the utilization of the social skills while dealing with individuals, circumstances and different situations. You, like responsible parents who act as emotional guides, can help your child to deal and understand to control the emotions in contributing as good social problem solvers.

8. You can help your child during emotional guidance by not ignoring or disregarding the negative emotions. Such emotions can be used as a chance to teach to overcome these uncomfortable feelings. You can listen to your child carefully and sympathetically and not question about the situation. You should help your child verbally name such negative emotion so that he/she does not get confused with other types of emotions. Your child should be made to realize that other people experience such emotions as well. During the process of emotional guidance, you should set limits and assist your child to become prosocial and solve the problems.

Conclusion

Parents’ contribution in making their child become prosocial is of prime importance. Since a person is regarded as a social animal, no human being can live all alone in this world. As our world in becoming smaller with the increase in technology, adopting and exercising social behaviour is imminent. A child can definitely lead a healthy and happy life by being prosocial in nature.