THE SCHOOL OF LIFE VIDEO SERIES: The Ultimate Test of Your Social Skills

It can be easy to imagine we possess reasonable social skills, because we know how to maintain conversation with strangers and – every now and then – manage to make a whole table laugh.

But there’s a test far sterner than this, surprising in its ability to trip us up: the challenge of having a pleasant time with a child we don’t know. Theoretically speaking, this should be so easy. We were all once kids.

We know a great deal more than they do and – as far as they’re concerned – hold all the cards: if we felt like it, we could buy 26 packets of biscuits and go to bed whenever we wanted.

Yet, in reality, it’s strangely hard to be at ease around children we’re not already close to. Imagine being invited around to your boss’s house for lunch and being left alone at the kitchen island with her moody ten-year-old son; or being introduced into a playroom with two shy five-year-old girls, the children of a friend. We may swiftly grow bewilderingly tongue-tied and inept.  MORE