What is social competence, anyway?

By definition: Everyone roughly knows what is meant when it comes to the social competence of children or adults – but what does the exact term actually mean? According to the scientific definition, social competence is "the ability, in social interaction, to achieve one's own goals and satisfy needs while at the same time taking into account the goals and needs of all others."

Self-assertion and consideration: Social competence is at its core the combination of two seemingly opposing qualities:

1. The ability to assert one's own interests through clear demands, but also through refusal.

2. The ability to consider the needs of other people or of a group and to cooperate with them to achieve a common goal.

Many researchers are convinced that the basis for these abilities develops in early childhood education.

Children's social competence:

How do I create the best conditions?

Should one actively promote children's social competence, or does it develop more or less on its own through the social environment? Many parents ask themselves this. Because unlike, for example, a child's visual perception or sense of balance, social competence is difficult to measure and depends on many different factors.

Social competence is innate to us – at least the basics. Even newborns intuitively pay more attention to human faces than to abstract objects. The so-called angel smile, the reflexive smile that newborns show in the first weeks of life, can also be understood as a social interaction. All parents will confirm that their babies try very early to imitate their parents' gestures and facial expressions and show their emotions clearly. In its basic outlines, social behavior is apparently innate – however, acquiring social competence is a learning process that continues well into adulthood. There is not really active fostering in the strict sense. Rather, parents can, from the very beginning, create the right conditions for their child's healthy social development:

• By spending lots of time with their child and engaging with them

• By showing their own feelings and/or being willing to talk about them

• By allowing and understanding the child's feelings – including anger, defiance, or sadness

• By listening to their child and helping them perceive their own feelings and place them within the full range of emotions

• By enabling contact with other children and adults (e.g., in playgroups, in daycare and kindergarten), so that the child learns to interpret the facial expressions, gestures and emotions of other people

Children first have to learn to interpret emotions. This applies to their own feelings as well as to the feelings of others. You can practice this playfully by looking at magazines or picture books with your child and asking them how the people pictured might be feeling. A second way to promote your child's social competence is even more obvious – through contact with other children. It is proven that children learn a great deal from interaction with peers. Therefore, daycare and kindergarten are a good foundation for developing the social competence children need for their entire later lives.

Checklist for parents – To-dos for social competence

1. Love and attention: The unconditional love of parents gives children the security and self-confidence to develop their own personality

2. Be a good role model: Listening, letting them finish speaking, being able to apologize – parents who model this behavior shape their children's social behavior

3. Let children work out conflicts occasionally: As long as it doesn't get physical, children should be able to resolve their disputes among themselves

4. Contact with other children: Through interaction with peers, children learn social competence and form friendships

5. Time for free play: When playing, children take on different roles – this trains empathy and the understanding of conflict situations

6. Don't pretend – and also give your child the opportunity to learn about and understand their own feelings

Image credits

Standing boy pulls a little boy up by the hand © TinPong - stock.adobe.com

Girl of color hugs friend © ShunTerra - stock.adobe.com

People holding mud-smeared hands © banphote - stock.adobe.com