3 . Building Your Children’s Social Skills

Parents should help build their children’s social skills, which will affect their relationships now and in the future. To start with, tell them that learning social skills is as important as mastering a language or riding a bicycle.

1. Set an example

    1     The way you interact with others teaches your child how to act. For example, if you want help, you should say, “Excuse me, would you mind helping me...?”

2. Encourage sharing and taking turns

The foundation to almost all pre-school relationships is sharing and taking turns.    2    Children who experience problems relating to other children often have not learned to share or take turns. However, if parents encourage their children to share toys and other things with other children, they will get along well with them, not just now but all their lives.

3. Practice social skills

Practice social skills with your child through interaction.    3    For instance, not interrupting people when they are talking is a way of behaving that children should learn from early on.

4. Give them opportunities to play

    4    For instance, take your child to a play group which includes other children of his or her age. As your child grows older, resist the temptation to butt in (介入); in other words, let your child form peer relationships by himself or herself.

5.     5    

Guide your child how to deal with an issue as a response to problems with social skills. When your child reports a problem with another child to you, ask questions about possible reasons for the other child’s behavior. By understanding why a peer acts in a certain way, your child can come up with ways to respond.

4 . The ability to communicate information accurately, clearly and as intended, is a vital life skill and something that should not be overlooked.    1    Here are some suggestions to make it.

Be open. There needs to be a give-and-take when it comes to sharing information with one another. To deepen intimacy (亲近). people need to open up to you. but you also have to he willing to let others in and share details about your experiences, emotions, and opinions.    2    

Listen actively. It involves being engaged with what your conversation partner is talking about.    3     You' re reflecting an their words, and asking questions you may have. Listening shows that you care, It shows that you are interested in the other person's life.

Use appropriate body language and eye contact.     4     For example, using direct eye contact and body language that indicates openness, such as uncrossed arms, can help to get across that a person is ready and willing to listen and to speak openly.

    5     Being open doesn't mean you should give others unlimited access to your thoughts.feelings, or time. There should be some limits on when you spend time together or how often and how long you stay together. It can also involve how much you care about each other's values, goals.emotions, and limitations.

6 . Social events can be frightening for a woman because they usually involve huge crowds. Some manage to become the life of the party like a natural.    1    . Fortunately, there are ways that can help you become the centre of attention during any event.

    2    . People always try to look their best at social gatherings. Therefore, you should spend time dealing with your hair and face beforehand. Besides, a beautiful and comfortable dress will help improve your confidence ahead of the party. For events, ladies must always prefer heels to flats.

Being the life of the party means you have to turn heads as soon as you enter the room.    3    , you should carry yourself with confidence. Start walking like a beauty queen and pose like a model when you reach the hall. With a grand entrance, you’ll be in the conversations of the party guests.

Keep yourself active at the party. Don’t sit in a corner and wait for people to talk to you.    4    , you should acknowledge them with smiles or hugs. Don’t let the thought of becoming the life of the party pull you away from having a fun time with your friends.

There will be friendly strangers looking to start a conversation with you during the party. If someone approaches you with kind intentions, you may act in return for their effort. Getting to know other people in social events will help improve your confidence.    5    .

Some people turn out to be the centre of attention, even if they don’t follow the steps above. The important thing is that you’re having fun, which is better than becoming the life of the party.

Secrets are bad for your health

I grew up in a Midwestern town where the popular wisdom was to only talk about what was pleasant and to keep secrets，if necessary，to make that happen.This meant staying silent when someone offended you，rarely     1     negative feelings and smiling a little more than is necessary. It also meant     2     room for airing any sort of dirty laundry，especially not the kinds of personal secrets that keep people up at night.

Many of us like to believe that sweeping unpleasant truths under the rug might make them     3     go away. Instead，keeping secrets--especially heavy ones--can spin an even more     4     web of isolation and deception. So why do we do it？

The truth can hurt. But in many situations，it s better to get it out and let the     5     start，rather than allowing it to become more dangerous.The burden of     6     in the truth doesn't just disappear. It hides itself in the back of your mind and can cause a number of     7       to your life and health.

"If the situations in your daily life are regular     8     of the secret，and you find it stressful to keep it，then yes，it can have emotional and physical consequences.” says Dr.Dean McKay. “Some people also find keeping secrets stressful out of a general     9     that they will 'slip’. This     10     and recurring thought of the secret can in itself be stressful.”

10 . Gossip—all humans take part in some form of it. Whether its workplace chatter, the sharing of family news or group texts between friends, it's ________ that everyone who talks, well, talks about other people. ________ , a 1993 study found that male participants spent 55% and female participants spent 67% of their conversation time on "the discussion of socially relevant topics."

People tend to think of gossip ________ to ill-intended rumors, negative comments or the breathless spread of a tabloid scoop（小报独家新闻）. But researchers often define it more broadly—as "talking about people who aren't ________ ," says Megan Robbins, an assistant professor of psychology at The University of California, Riverside. "It`s something that comes very ________ to us"—it's an essential part of conversation, information sharing and even community building.

In a 2019 study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, Robbins and a colleague found that, of the 52 minutes a day, on average, that the 467 subjects spent gossiping, three-quarters of that gossip was actually ________ . One subject, for example, spoke about someone who was watching a lot of movies to keep up with the times.

Just a small portion of the conversations analyzed—around 15%—was considered to be negative gossip. So while it is true that people can spend a significant amount of time talking about their peers, oftentimes that chatter is quite ________ .

So, why do people gossip?

Some researchers argue that gossip helped our ________ to survive. Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar first pioneered this idea, comparing gossip to the grooming（清洁皮毛）that monkeys and other primates ________ as a means of forming close relationships. ________ picking fleas and dirt off one another to bond（联系）, we now talk. This is "where gossip comes in, because chit-chat is mostly talking about other people and ________ social information." Says David Ludden, a professor of psychology at Georgia Gwinnet College.

Gossiping, Dunbar's work argues, gives humans the ability to spread ________ information to very large social networks. "We are much more social than our ancestors, so it can be very helpful to get information about people from others when this network is too ________ to observe by ourselves." he explained in a 2003 paper published in the Review of General Psychology.

Some scholars view gossip as evidence of cultural ________ , providing people with examples of what's socially acceptable—and what's not. For example, if there's someone who cheats a lot in a community or social circle and people start to talk about that person in a negative way, says Robbins, the collective criticism should warn others of the consequences of cheating. And as word will almost always travel back to the source of said gossip, it can "serve to keep people in check, ________ speaking," Robbins adds.