Social Skills in Preschool Children From Their Parents’ Points of View

Introduction: Social skills are acceptable behaviors that enable people to interact effectively with others and avoid socially unacceptable responses. These skills are fundamentally linked with all aspects of children’s lives and affect their compatibility. Objective: To determine the social skills of preschool children in Rasht City based on their parents’ points of views. Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional, analytical study. The sample included 546 6-year-old children in the preschool centers of Rasht, Iran, who were selected using a multistage cluster sampling method. The study data were gathered using children’ and parents’ demographic questionnaire and the Social Skills Rating System-Parents (SSRS-P). The obtained data were analyzed using descriptive (means and standard deviation) and inferential (Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal–Wallis test) statistics. Results: According to the mothers’ viewpoints, the majority of children had moderate social skills with respect to cooperation (72.1%), assertion (65.8%), self-control (67.4%), and overall social skill (67.6%). In addition, significant correlations were found between the overall social skill and father’s age (P=0.021), mother’s education (P=0.001), father’s education (P=0.005), mother’s job (P=0.023), father’s job (P=0.011), child’s gender (P=0.022), attending the kindergarten (P=0.011), and parents’ financial status (P=0.001). Conclusion: Considering that the parents rated the social skills of their children as moderate, we suggest that social skills training be provided for children in preschool centers, so that their social skills could be improved before they start going to school and prevent the negative outcomes of social skills deficiency.