Social competence

A central component of self-esteem is social competence. Social competence is a person's ability to initiate and maintain gratifying complimentary relationships with peers. A socially competent person is one who uses the environment and personal resources to achieve positive outcomes. Socially competent children participate in gratifying interactions and activities with adults and peers and see that the interactions improve social confidence.

All children develop social confidence skills during the first five years of life that support or detract from social competence. How children interact with peers is critical to their success in school and life. This is because how you treat people matters and therefore your interactions with people matter. If you're the type of person who gets along with others, you'll get along with your co-workers. If you don't get along with people, you won't get along with co-workers and life will be harder because you don't know to interact with people and associate with them. This is why it's important to teach children social competence, the importance of it and to develop social competence in your children. Next week I'll discuss three components of social competence.