Social Skills and A Pandemic? Tips to Support Emotional Intelligence and Connection

Making friends is such an important part of school life. To say it’s harder to do in the midst of a pandemic is an understatement.

But truthfully, some kids struggled before there were masks and mandates keeping them from connection. Whether this is linked to a diagnosis or simply limited social skills, one key area where we can support kids is in developing emotional intelligence and friendship skills.

Remember, emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize emotions, differentiate between them, and control them whenever possible. When it comes to having a healthy friendship, recognizing the emotions of others and choosing behaviors with awareness of emotion are skills that are added to the equation. As much as we focus on the academic needs of students, the truth is school, for many, is the primary place where these skills are explicitly taught and perhaps the only place where they are able to practice. Like anything, practice makes progress so that means school is also the learning field where mistakes will inevitably be made.

There are a variety of curriculums and lesson plans available for whole group and classroom instruction on emotional intelligence and your school may have a chosen tool that is taught across levels. But a booster of additional tools never hurts especially for those kids who need individual work or who struggle with making friends. Make a plan to cover these ideas in your work with students around social skills and emotional intelligence.

Emotions can be controlled

The first step in controlling your emotions is to know that they can be controlled. If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say that they can’t help the way they feel, I’d likely be writing this post on the beach and not from my home office. It may seem counterintuitive, but awareness of the ability to control emotions is in fact a very important step that people often miss. Because emotions are often triggered automatically by experiences or perceptions related to experiences, feeling out of control often complicates our students ability to manage their feelings.

Controlling your emotions does not mean suppressing them

You are going to feel them no matter what. It’s part of what makes you human. How you react to your emotions makes the difference between controlling them and losing that control. Your right to feel and expression emotion does not give you the right to force others to hear or change their own behaviors. This is a friendship lesson that is often tough to swallow. Teaching appropriate ways to express is a key feature of both having a strong EQ and great social skills. If you struggle with having lots of frienemies in your building, this cactus handout is a great discussion starter.

Good friends recognize emotions in others
Recognizing the emotions of others is certainly complicated by lack of facial expressions, but teaching kids how to recognize context clues such as body movements and and tone of voice to decipher their moods is a good place to start.

One of the best skills for friendship AND emotional intelligence is listening

This is a skill that is lacking for many in today’s fast-paced life, especially when many of us are naturally distracted. Listening can help people feel better, build connections and give valuable insight into personal needs. Times of conflict make it harder to listen, so I like to teach conflict resolution skills as a part of friendship lessons too.

Use emotions with logic to make the best decisions

This is the key that kids and teens, due to their level of brain development, can really struggle with, but kids who master this are much more likely to have long term success. This right mix of emotion and logic keep you safe, but also allow you to feel fulfilled and emotionally vibrant and connected to those around you.

You can find more tools for teaching emotional intelligence and social skills on the School Based Session Planner, where there are links to over 300 free resources organized in one handy tool for you.