by Maureen Downey / © 2024, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Emory University clinical psychologist Stephen Nowicki understands the pain that parents feel when their children fret that they have no friends. He’s dedicated his career to helping children foster healthy relationships, and he’s worried we’re making it harder by giving them more time on the internet than on the playground.
He also understands the frustration of teachers over students who lost the knack of taking turns, making friends or working in groups post-pandemic.
A decline in social skills
His new book, Raising a Socially Successful Child: Teaching Kids the Nonverbal Language They Need to Communicate, Connect, and Thrive, addresses the decline in the social skills essential to developing and sustaining positive relationships.
In researching children who misinterpret voice tones and expressions, he and his Emory colleague Marshall P. Duke coined the term “dyssemia,” meaning unable to translate nonverbal cues. These are children who end up outcasts because they can’t follow the rhythm of conversations or respect the boundaries of personal space. They miss the emotions their peers are telegraphing through facial expressions and body language and fail to sense a classmate’s mood based on tone of voice. The research suggests 10% of children demonstrate dyssemia severe enough to interfere with social or academic success.
“This is a set of skills that kids need to have; they need to learn this language of nonverbal communication,” Nowicki said. “They can learn it informally …, and parents can be very helpful. But schools are important and corrective. School is where you learn how to relate to your peers and to adults. It’s a lab.”
Nowicki is seeing a surge in children who haven’t yet learned how to decode nonverbal signals. He blames the rise in screen time, which erodes children’s opportunities to pick up on social cues communicated through expression, eye contact, voice tone and body language.
“As much as this was a problem when I wrote the first book, it is worse now because of social media,” he said. “Kids spending this much time online creates less opportunity for the real-life interaction lessons.”
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