How to Help a Child With Poor Social Skills: What the Research Says

Some children struggle with social
skills — finding it genuinely difficult
to make friends, navigate peer conflict,
read social cues, or sustain social
interactions. For parents of these
children — watching their child struggle
socially can be one of the most painful
parenting experiences. Research on
social skills difficulties and intervention
provides specific, evidence-based guidance
about what helps — what the most effective
approaches are, what parents can specifically
do, and when professional support may be needed.

This article covers what the research
shows about helping a child with poor
social skills — what causes social
skills difficulties, what the most
effective interventions are, and what
parents can specifically do.

What Poor Social Skills Look Like

Research on social skills difficulties
identifies several specific patterns:

Social initiation difficulties —
difficulty approaching peers,
joining ongoing play, or initiating
social interaction.

Social maintenance difficulties —
difficulty sustaining social
interaction — conversations
that end abruptly, play that
falls apart quickly.

Social reading difficulties —
difficulty accurately reading
social cues — misreading others’
emotions, intentions, and social signals.

Conflict management difficulties —
responding to peer conflict
with aggression, complete withdrawal,
or other responses that damage
peer relationships.

Friendship difficulties —
difficulty forming or maintaining
genuine reciprocal peer relationships.

Emotional regulation difficulties
in social contexts — emotional
outbursts, aggression, or significant
withdrawal that disrupt social interactions.

What Causes Social Skills Difficulties

Research on the causes of social
skills difficulties identifies several factors:

Temperament. Research finds
that some children are temperamentally
more shy, more introverted,
or more socially anxious than
others — and that these temperamental
differences significantly affect
social skill development and expression.

Limited social experience.
Research finds that children
with limited genuine peer social
experience — particularly unstructured
play — have significantly fewer
opportunities to develop and
practice the social skills that
peer interaction requires.

Social anxiety. Research finds
that social anxiety — significant
fear and avoidance of social
situations — is one of the
most common causes of social
skills difficulty — both limiting
social experience and directly
impairing social performance.

ADHD. Research finds that
ADHD — through its effects
on impulse control, attention,
and emotional regulation —
significantly affects social
skills — producing impulsive
social behavior, difficulty
taking turns in conversation,
and emotional dysregulation
in social contexts.

Autism spectrum conditions.
Research finds that autism
spectrum conditions affect
social communication and social
interaction — producing characteristic
social skills difficulties
that benefit from specific targeted support.

Developmental language disorder.
Research finds that language
difficulties significantly affect
social skills — because language
is central to social interaction.

Adverse childhood experiences.
Research finds that adverse
childhood experiences — abuse,
neglect, family conflict —
significantly affect social
development and social skills.

What Research Shows Works

Research on social skills intervention
and child outcomes identifies several
approaches with genuine evidence:

Explicit social skills teaching —
in context. Research consistently
finds that explicit social
skills teaching — naming specific
skills, modeling them, practicing
them, and prompting their use
in real social situations —
produces significantly better
social skills development than
expecting skills to emerge naturally.

The most effective explicit
teaching process:
Name the skill specifically —
“joining play,” “starting a
conversation,” “handling disappointment.”
Model the skill — show how
it looks in practice.
Practice together in calm role-play — before real situations.
Prompt and support in real
situations — gently.
Review and celebrate when the skill is used.

Increasing genuine peer social experience.
Research finds that children
with poor social skills need
more — not less — genuine peer
social experience. Structured
opportunities for positive peer
interaction — in supportive
contexts — significantly build
social skills over time.

Emotion coaching — building
the emotional intelligence that
social skills require. Research
by Gottman finds that children
with stronger emotional intelligence —
built through emotion coaching —
show significantly better social
skills — because emotional
awareness, empathy, and regulation
are foundational to social competence.

Social stories — for children
who struggle to understand
social situations. Research
on social stories — brief narratives
that describe social situations,
appropriate responses, and
social perspectives — finds
genuine evidence for their
effectiveness — particularly
for children with autism spectrum conditions.

Addressing the underlying cause.
Research finds that the most
effective intervention addresses
the specific underlying cause
of the social skills difficulty —
rather than only teaching generic social skills:

Social anxiety — anxiety-focused
intervention alongside social skills support.
ADHD — ADHD management alongside social skills support.
Autism — autism-specific social
communication intervention.
Limited experience — increasing
genuine peer social experience.

Practical Strategies for Parents

Research on parenting and social
skills development identifies several
specific practical strategies:

Arrange supported peer interactions — regularly.
Research supports arranging
regular peer social experiences —
particularly one-on-one playdates
with a compatible peer — rather
than large group activities
that can be overwhelming for
children with social skills difficulties.

One-on-one is better than groups.
Research finds that one-on-one
peer interaction is significantly
more manageable for children
with social skills difficulties
than group interaction — because
it involves fewer social cues
to manage simultaneously.

Choose compatible peers carefully.
Research supports choosing
playdate partners carefully —
selecting peers who are patient,
kind, and socially compatible —
rather than peers who may
be socially dominant or who
highlight the child’s social difficulties.

Use interests as social bridges.
Research finds that shared
interests provide the most
natural bridge for children
with social skills difficulties —
connecting with peers through
shared activities provides
a structured context for interaction
that reduces the social demands of unstructured peer interaction.

Coach before and debrief after
social situations. Research
supports brief, warm coaching
before social situations —
“Remember — if you want to
join their game you could say
[specific phrase]” — and warm
debriefing afterward — “What
went well? Was there anything
that felt hard?”

Avoid public correction and criticism.
Research finds that correcting
a child’s social behavior publicly —
in front of peers — significantly
increases social anxiety and
decreases social confidence.
Private, warm coaching produces
significantly better outcomes.

Celebrate small social successes — specifically.
Research finds that specifically
acknowledging and celebrating
small social successes — “I
noticed you asked [friend]
what they wanted to play —
that was a really kind thing to do” —
significantly builds social
confidence and reinforces the skills being developed.

Protect against peer rejection.
Research finds that peer rejection —
being actively disliked by
peers — significantly compounds
social skills difficulties —
producing anxiety and avoidance
that further impair social development.
Actively protecting against
peer rejection — through careful
peer selection, supported interactions,
and close monitoring — is
important for children with social skills difficulties.

When to Seek Professional Support

Research on social skills difficulties
and professional intervention supports
seeking professional assessment and support when:

Social skills difficulties
are significantly affecting
the child’s wellbeing — producing
significant distress, anxiety,
or unhappiness.

The child has no genuine friendships —
by age six or seven — despite
parental support.

Social skills difficulties
are significantly affecting
school functioning — classroom
participation, cooperative learning.

There are signs of an underlying
condition — autism, ADHD, social
anxiety, language disorder —
that may be contributing to the difficulty.

Parental support alone is
not producing improvement over time.

What professional support may involve:

Social skills groups — structured
peer groups with explicit social
skills teaching — with strong
research evidence for effectiveness.

Individual therapy — particularly
for social anxiety — cognitive
behavioral therapy has strong
research evidence.

Assessment for underlying conditions —
autism, ADHD, language disorder —
whose treatment significantly
improves social skills outcomes.

Speech and language therapy —
for children whose social skills
difficulties are related to language difficulties.

Try This This Week

Practice 1 — The Social Skill Identification
What it is: A deliberate honest
identification of the specific
social skill most limiting your
child’s social development —
and a commitment to addressing it specifically.

How to do it: This week honestly identify
the single most limiting social skill:

Is it initiating social interaction?
Is it joining ongoing play?
Is it managing conflict without aggression or withdrawal?
Is it reading social cues accurately?
Is it sustaining conversation?

Choose the single most important —
and plan to teach it specifically this week.

Why it works: Research on
social skills intervention consistently
finds that targeting the specific
skill most limiting social development —
rather than attempting to address
all difficulties simultaneously —
produces the most significant improvement.

Practice 2 — The Compatible Playdate
What it is: A deliberate arrangement
of a one-on-one playdate with
a carefully chosen compatible peer —
the most important practical
intervention for social skills difficulties.

How to do it: This week identify
and arrange a playdate with
the most compatible available peer:

A peer who is patient and kind.
A peer with shared interests.
One-on-one — not a group.
A structured activity that
provides a social bridge —
a shared interest or game.

Coach briefly before — and
debrief warmly after.

Why it works: Research on
social skills and peer interaction
consistently finds that supported
one-on-one interaction with
a compatible peer — in a structured
context — produces significantly
more positive social experience
and significantly more social
skill development than unstructured
group interaction for children with social skills difficulties.

Practice 3 — The Success Celebration Practice
What it is: A deliberate daily
practice of specifically acknowledging
and celebrating social successes —
however small — building the
social confidence that social skills development requires.

How to do it: This week find
at least one specific social
success to acknowledge each day:

“I noticed you waited for
[friend] to finish before you spoke — that was great listening.”
“You handled that really
well when [friend] didn’t want to play your game.”
“That was really kind when you shared your [toy] with [friend].”

Be specific — genuine — and warm.

Why it works: Research on
social confidence and social
skills consistently finds that
specific, genuine acknowledgment
of social successes — rather
than only correcting social
difficulties — significantly
builds the social confidence
that further social skill development requires.

The Bottom Line

Helping a child with poor social
skills requires a specific,
patient, and multi-faceted approach —
addressing the specific underlying
cause, teaching specific skills
explicitly, arranging supported
peer interactions, building
social confidence through success
celebration, and seeking professional
support when the difficulty
is significantly affecting the
child’s wellbeing. Research
is clear: explicit skill teaching
works; supported peer interaction
builds skills; emotion coaching
builds the emotional intelligence
that social competence requires;
and early professional support —
when needed — produces significantly
better outcomes than delayed intervention.

Sources

Dodge, K. A. (1986).
A social information processing
model of social competence in children.
Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, 18, 77–125.

Gottman, J. M., & DeClaire, J.
(1997). Raising an Emotionally
Intelligent Child. Simon & Schuster.

Bierman, K. L. (2004).
Peer Rejection: Developmental
Processes and Intervention Strategies.
Guilford Press.

Hartup, W. W. (1996).
The company they keep.
Child Development, 67(1), 1–13.