Writing -- Baby Talk: Busy little socialites

The following article featured in a weekly column on parenting in the Women on Wednesday supplement of The Evening Echo, one of Ireland's leading regional daily newspapers. It appeared in the 12 May 2004 issue.

The children are at yet another kiddies' birthday party this afternoon. There seems to be an epidemic of them going around at the moment. When you add these parties to the frequent invitations to visit friends' houses and factor in the customary return visits to our house the week soon fills up.

Three-year-olds invariably have a fuller social calendar than their parents. It's a sad truth of the parental condition that we just have to accept. Even if we could find the time, the babysitters and, let's face it, the extra cash to go out more often I doubt we'd have the energy. In contrast the twins' have a non-stop schedule of social engagements to attend… and by extension that means it's non-stop for at least one of us as well.

You'd think that with all of this socialising the twins would mix well with other children, but it still takes them time to warm to different places and new situations. Even if it's a party at a house they've been to a hundred times before and they know most of the children from playschool they still go through an initial shy, leg-clinging phase before they head off to play.

I guess because they're twins the girls tend to stick together when they join a crowd of other children. No matter how much they fight at home, put them in an unusual situation and they immediately close ranks. It's all for one, and one for all, and woe betide anyone or anything that comes between them. At times like that we always try and encourage them to join in the fun with the other kids. It's great that they have each other, but it's just as important for them to learn to relate to other children in a positive way as well.

The importance of encouraging our children to develop positive social skills and self-confidence from an early age is easy to overlook in this ultra-competitive era of academic achievement. Our system of education is heavily biased towards the pursuit of academic excellence, often to the detriment of fundamental life-skills. In such a system parents naturally tend to push their children to do better academically, because it's academic results that count on paper. But are they really the most important thing?

Talk to any parent about education and before long you'll be talking about academic achievement. In the early years we focus on basic skills like reading, writing and numeracy. As they grow older that focus shifts to picking out the "best" secondary school, exam grades and report cards. The topic of how well our children relate to their peers, of how they "fit" into a social group, rarely enters the equation. And yet it is something that will have a more profound effect on their lives than any academic qualification.

For children, whatever their age, the very human desire for social acceptance and inclusion is likely to far outweigh any desire for academic excellence. That's something parents need to bear in mind. I think we need to pay at least as much attention to our children's social development as we do to their academic pursuits.

Hopefully the twins' busy social calendar is giving them the opportunity to develop their budding social skills, while at the same time building their self confidence so that they become comfortable with their individuality. The balance between social acceptance and individuality is a delicate one. Part of our job as parents is helping our children to find that balance.