Social interaction skills

New-borns and social skills

When your baby is born they mostly just eat and sleep, but without realising it they are starting to develop their social skills. Babies will learn to show signs that they like being around people and will interact with some people more than others as they learn who they like being around more than others.

Babies like to look at patterns that look like faces more than other patterns and at just a few days old are aware when people are looking at them and studies have shown that babies are more interested in people when they can see their eyes.

Even within their first week of life, your baby may try making faces at you. They will watch your face and may mimic the faces you make at them. If you stick your tongue out at them they may do the same back to you.

Baby’s first smile

Between 6 and 12 weeks old, your baby will start to smile in response to you. These smiles will be real smiles that came from their own emotions. Before this, their smiles are most likely reflexes to passing gas or other body functions.

Reflex smiles are shorter and occur randomly, often when they are tired or asleep. A real smile are responses to something that has made them happy. This could be because they have seen your face or have heard their siblings voice.

You might notice your baby smiling but not looking at you. This is normal, some babies just take a little longer to look directly at their parents as they can get overwhelmed by what’s going on around them.

If you want to encourage your baby to smile you could try:

  • Talking to them very often
  • Make lots of eye contact
  • Smile at them
  • Make silly faces at them

Recognising autism

Some learning disabilities, like autism, can affect children’s’ ability to develop social skills and you can sometimes spot signs of these disabilities when they are babies. These conditions don’t affect their physical appearance but does impact their communication skills from a very young age.

Some of the signs that they may have a learning condition include:

Declining eye contact

Babies normally make lots of eye contact with other people and by 2 months old babies can normally fully recognise different people and make eye contact consistently. This eye contact is helpful for building social relationships later on. Children who have a learning difficulty will start making less eye contact by 2 months old and avoid making connections with the people around them.

Not pointing or gesturing

Babies will learn to gesture with their hands before they learn to talk, it is their earliest form of communication. Children with learning difficulties will point and gesture less than other children. This could also be a sign of delayed language development.

Limited response to their own name

By the time they are around 6 months old, babies will be able to recognise their own name and react when someone says their name. Children with difficulties like autism, don’t normally start to understand their own name until they are older than 9 months.

Reduced emotion in facial expressions

Children will normally make many different facial expressions however children with learning or developmental disorders are known to show fewer facial expressions. This does not mean that they aren’t feeling the emotions, just that they aren’t showing it.

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Social interaction skills

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