Starting at about three or four months, babies are ready to broaden their horizons to larger, organized groups. Babies feel safe to explore the world. New environments filled with new adults and other infants and children when supported by a parent or caregiver. The first 12 months of an infant's life are full of social development milestones. They go from being a helpless little creature to a vocal one-year-old with their own personality. They rapidly become more communicative and expressive with their face and body.

For starters, babies will learn to speak more slowly than if you did talk to them. Not speaking with your children means their vocabularies will be smaller. Not conversing with your children also means that you're spending less time paying attention to and interacting with them. Making eye contact, talking to your baby, playing with them and showing interest in them are all brilliant ways to encourage social development (Happe and Frith, 2014; Green et al, 2017). Responding when they share things with you is helpful.

Playing and interacting with your baby is crucial for their development, and will help them reach milestones related to talking, understanding words, and learning to socialize. By three months, your baby will be a master of "smile talk." Sometimes she'll start a "conversation" with a broad smile and gurgling to catch your attention. Other times she'll lie in wait, watching your face until you give the first smile before beaming back her enthusiastic response. Her whole body will participate.

Be interactive and sociable: Remember, kids take their social cues from their parents, so it's important that you maintain healthy social environment. So a six-month-old baby doesn't need to interact with other six-month-olds to learn how to be social, they'll learn those skills by interacting with parents and siblings. As your baby becomes more mobile, they may start to take an interest in other babies . They'll happily play alongside another baby, and once in a while, they'll smile and coo, and imitate each other's sounds.

During his second year, your toddler will develop a very specific image of his social world, friends, and acquaintances. He is at its center, and while you may be close at hand, he is most concerned about where things are in relation to himself. Even toddlers and infants reap the cognitive and emotional benefits of interacting with others. The right socially interactive environment will help children develop strong language skills, creativity, social intelligence, and confidence.

Without socialization, a toddler or preschooler, wouldn't understand how to enter into a group or even child-child situation. Kids aren't born understanding how to behave with other children, adults or in public. Socially isolated children are at increased risk of health problems in adulthood. Furthermore, studies on social isolation have demonstrated that a lack of social relationships negatively impacts the development of the brain's structure.

There are ways to practice social skills at home such as; building relationships through virtual play dates, display kindness by reaching out to a new friend, teach your child empathy by being considerate of others, teach self-control by taking turns, give your child the gift of not always winning and sharing. 

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