It’s too late for me now, because it’s been a long time since I was in school. I’ve managed to learn some social skills by myself somehow, and anyway adults are much easier to get along with, but I’d have loved to have better social skills back then. I didn’t have the faintest idea of how to go about learning them, though.
This is a hard question—what do you do as an adolescent when your social skills are terrible. I don’t actually know a good answer. The best I can think of is to find different groups to socialise in via hobbies/extracurricular activities to just get practice.
I have a hard time believing that the optimal solution really is to isolate yourself and learn them only as an adult (because, indeed, adults are easier to get along with), because that means both your adolescence and the first couple of years of your adulthood are liable to be awful.
School did indeed suck mayorly, even though I did have a few friends. (I wasn’t that terrible, my problem was mainly just shyness.) I still wouldn’t know what to tell young me, though. I guess I’d start by telling her that this is something that can be learned in the first place. Your idea of finding other groups outside of school is good, too. Unlike school, you can always drop those if they don’t work out.
Try for it anyway because adolescence is the time to learn social skills.
It’s too late for me now, because it’s been a long time since I was in school. I’ve managed to learn some social skills by myself somehow, and anyway adults are much easier to get along with, but I’d have loved to have better social skills back then. I didn’t have the faintest idea of how to go about learning them, though.
This is a hard question—what do you do as an adolescent when your social skills are terrible. I don’t actually know a good answer. The best I can think of is to find different groups to socialise in via hobbies/extracurricular activities to just get practice.
I have a hard time believing that the optimal solution really is to isolate yourself and learn them only as an adult (because, indeed, adults are easier to get along with), because that means both your adolescence and the first couple of years of your adulthood are liable to be awful.
School did indeed suck mayorly, even though I did have a few friends. (I wasn’t that terrible, my problem was mainly just shyness.) I still wouldn’t know what to tell young me, though. I guess I’d start by telling her that this is something that can be learned in the first place. Your idea of finding other groups outside of school is good, too. Unlike school, you can always drop those if they don’t work out.