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Teaching Children to Cooperate
Children are required to cooperate throughout the day not only with parents but also with peers. Cooperation involves working together, acting responsibly, and showing respect. When children have poor cooperation skills, they have a lot of trouble making friends and tend to lose friends quickly. Building good cooperation skills is essential in helping children maintain sound friendships.
Cooperation is not easy for every child, but practice and guidance can help. Here are some tips to help build a child's cooperation skills.
Reinforce good cooperation.
Monitor the child with family and friends. Whenever he or she displays good cooperation skills, use praise and identify the specific skills used, such as turn-taking, teamwork, sharing, or helping. If a child is trying to cooperate but is struggling, provide encouragement.
Talk about it.
When a child has shown either good or poor cooperation skills, talk about cooperation. Ask the child questions such as:
- What was the situation like for you?
- What made it hard to cooperate?
- What made it easy to cooperate?
- What did you like/dislike about the situation?
These questions will help children think through situations and identify where they may be having trouble, allowing them to anticipate situations that may make cooperation more difficult for them. They might want to talk through different approaches or avoid those situations until their cooperation skills are better developed.
Practice cooperation.
Siblings can be useful partners when learning to cooperate. Ask siblings to play games together or give them tasks to do together such as building a fort. If one child is having trouble cooperating, give that child a specific, easier part to do. If working with a child alone, let the child work with you to complete a task. This task can be anything from washing the car to cooking dinner. Again, praise good cooperation skills and talk out or re-try strategies when the child shows difficulties.
Helping children learn to work well with others builds the skills they need to make and keep friends and avoid conflict.
Download these tips in pdf form.
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