Why Your Childs Social Skills are More Important Than Their Grades

A 2015 study found that a child’s social skills in kindergarten are a better sign of how successful they will be in the future than their academic skills.

Researchers Damon E. Jones, Mark Greenberg, and Max Crowley used information from the Fast Track study, which looked at children from low-income families. The study had a group of students who weren’t at high risk and a control group of students who were at high risk. Participants came from four places, three of which were cities, and one was a small town.

In 1991, when the children were in kindergarten, the first data for the project were collected. After 19 years, when the participants were around 25 years old, the last follow-up data was collected.
Researchers looked at education, employment, public assistance, crime, mental health, and drug and alcohol use to see if kindergarten teachers’ ratings of students’ social skills were a sign of problems that could happen later.

Here’s What Researchers Found

Educational Success

Participants’ social skills in kindergarten predicted whether or not they finished high school on time, went to college, got steady work as a young adult, and worked full time as a young adult.

Public Housing

The participants’ social skills in kindergarten were linked to how likely they were to live in public housing or be on a waiting list for it. These skills also made it less likely that a person would have been involved with law enforcement before they turned 18.

Problems

Researchers said that the results were mixed when it came to the link between early social skills and future mental health problems, but they did find patterns in other areas, such as how people internalized and expressed their problems.

Researchers said that their results were similar to those of other studies that looked at the links between self-control in early childhood and being able to function well as an adult.

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