Many disappointments and conflicts begin with assumptions about another person’s thoughts or intentions.

Perspective-taking helps children recognize how their words and actions may affect others.

Perspective-taking also helps children consider alternative explanations for disappointing experiences.

With summer around the bend and the respite that comes at the end of the school year, maybe you are looking forward to a break from whatever challenges your child has been experiencing over the past few months. Or maybe you are looking at summer as an opportunity to focus on something that felt important but kept getting pushed aside. Not because it wasn’t important, but because your child’s life is busy and so is yours.

Summer Provides New Opportunities for Social Growth

Summer offers a different opportunity. With fewer academic demands and more unstructured time, children often have additional opportunities to interact with siblings, friends, and peers. Those interactions provide valuable opportunities to observe, practice, and strengthen the skills that support the development and maintenance of friendships.

While there are many social skills associated with friendship, it is probably neither realistic nor necessary to focus on all of them at once. In fact, trying to tackle too many areas for improvement simultaneously is often a recipe for disappointment. Whether the goal is improving social skills, getting in shape, becoming more organized, or changing almost any behavior, meaningful change is more likely when we focus on one or two things rather than eight.

By the end of the school year, many children are tired. Day after day, all year long, they have been managing academic demands, navigating friendships,........

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