Peer pressure and Social skills

Parents in Dubai send their children to a  Children’s Nursery Dubai, hoping they will make good friends and build on their social skills and learn to communicate with each other in a cordial manner. Instead, what do you do when your child comes home with a new found attitude and new behaviour which is rude, defiant and aggressive. Spending lots of time with peers doesn’t seem to have improved social skills or good behaviour,  but made it worse.

Children like to feel that they belong, especially in Nursery Schools in Dubai and inorder to do this they will engage in certain behavioural patterns to fit in among their peers. They try to adapt themselves to the same behaviour shown by their peers. Even as early as preschool, children are becoming conscious and concerned with what their friends think and do. They want to be liked and included in a group, this makes them susceptible to peer pressure. Peer pressure can affect children as early as preschool age and becomes an even greater risk as they make their transition into school.

Peer pressure in an Early Years Education in Dubai, setting can have a negative as well as a positive impact on the child. Every child is susceptible to various forms of peer pressure. Negative peer pressure can lead to bad behaviour such as bullying and substance use in later years while positive peer pressure may influence a child to engage in healthy behaviour.

Peer pressure in young children centers  around the  toys they play with or what games to play. Preschoolers and young children often exert pressure through teasing, name-calling, withholding friendship, and by threatening exclusion from play. Later on when your child goes to school, the pressure becomes more intense and centers around styles and material things to be "cool" in order to be included in the group.

Peer pressure can be resisted by the style of parenting. Parents should adopt a child-centered approach, which is a balanced parenting style, where the parent-child relationship fosters  healthy, positive relationships, but also helps the child to build confidence and skills to resist negative peer pressures.

Here are some useful tips to help parents deal with peer pressure in preschoolers,

• Build a firm foundation with your child based on culture and norms.
• Set limits for your child, even if this means saying no to certain things, so that they too can learn to say no to things they don't like or want to do.
• Make sure they choose good friends. Invite friends for play dates so that you can get to know the child's parents and observe the child's behaviour.
• Teach your child to take a firm decision. Think out a loud and let your child listen to your decision making process as you consider the outcome. This will help the child think about the outcome and consequences of an act before they do it.
• Build self confidence in your child. Make sure to praise your child when they do well and encourage them to be positive, and surround them with people who value them. This increases self confidence, making their opinions more important than someone else.

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