By Susan L. Mulkey
Many teachers (including parents) witness children who lack social competence, which includes critical, life-enriching friendship skills. As a result, these students often not only have difficulty establishing and maintaining friendships, but are poorly accepted by their peers, and may later engage in more serious and violent acts when their discourteous and disrespectful behaviors persist over time. Furthermore, social competence opens doors for academic success.

The following and similar examples support the premise of the importance of social competence in everyone’s life, both young and old:

• “She just ignored me and looked away when I asked her to put her things away.”

• “He walked right by me and didn’t respond when I said hello to him this morning.”

• “Every time they want something, they just say, ‘gimme this’ or ‘gimme that.’ ”

• “The words, please and thank you must not be in their speaking vocabulary!”

• “I have students that refuse to work together when I put them in pairs.”

• “It’s hard to get their attention when they are texting all the time.”

• “Their idea of sharing materials is grabbing and pushing.”