The prevalence of shyness among toddlers is rising and the pandemic has delayed social skills of young children, according to the Ofsted chief Amanda Spielman.

So why not give your child a head start by teaching them the kinds of social skills that can make their life more fulfilling, exciting and fun?

Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector, said the worst affected were the most vulnerable children, with those living in smaller homes without gardens typically spending more time on screens during successive lockdowns, which also resulted in delays in learning to walk and crawl.

She said it was clear from four briefings on education recovery published by Ofsted that the pandemic had created “lingering challenges”

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Spielman said the pandemic and lockdowns had resulted in delays in learning speech and language; problems with social interaction and confidence, such as not knowing how to take turns and struggling to make friends; and delays in walking and crawling, with more obesity as a result.

Children were also not at the expected level in developing vital self-care skills, such as being potty trained, tying their shoelaces and taking their coats off, she added.

She said: “Children have had less time in early education, less time interacting with others outside the family. For some children they’ve not much interaction at all if they’ve spent all their time looking at screens. Children have been talking in the funny voices of cartoons they’ve been spending enormous amounts of time watching.”

So – what can you do?

To assist your child’s development, speak to your children as much as possible and take them out for walks to the shops and to the park so they could see the world and take exercise.

Let your child see you using good manners, like ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ This will encourage them to act this way with their friends.

Try showing them what good listening looks like through your own behaviour.

Use games like ‘Simon Says’.

Find ways to make taking turns fun. Choose an object and tell your family they have to be holding it when they talk. Pass it between you. If your child is a little older, take it in turns to make made up sounds as if you are having an alien conversation.

Ask them how your actions made them feel. Then show them attentive body language. Take it in turns.

Ask your child to help with tasks and chores around the house, and see if they’ll try activities with others, to build teamwork skills. The ‘We Family Team’ mentality of all of you helping each other.

Teach your child positive ways of responding to winning, losing, or not getting their way.

Show them you understand when they’re upset, but help them see what the positives could be (might the outcome has made their friend happy?).

Show them what sharing looks like when playing at home.

But while they may be happily ‘counting’ from one to five (or more), it’s unlikely your child knows what the numbers actually mean. They don’t grasp the concept of number until they are about 4 – i.e. that one object means the number one.

Learning to count and learning about numbers is a really complex process. Much more than it might seem from the outside.

Lots of two-year-olds can already say the number sequence one, two, three, four, five, which is one of the early signs of learning to count. But while they’ve learnt to say the words for the numbers, and can say them in the right order, there’s lots more they have to do before they understand what those numbers actually represent.

If you ask them to hand you one toy, for example, they probably can. If you ask them to give you three toys, it’s unlikely they’d be able to.

They also need to learn something called the Cardinal Principle, which sounds complicated but is something we all do without thinking. This is where your toddler understands that when you are counting, the last number you say means how many there are altogether. They seem to grasp it very slowly, learning one number at a time.

To help your toddler count, ask your child to pass you one spoon or one toy at a time. They’ll be able to do this and get the idea of what ‘one’ means. But if you ask for three spoons or cars, they wouldn’t know how to do that. Within the next few weeks or months your child will begin to understand how many two is. A couple of months later, they’ll work out what three is and then four.

It’s exactly the same as the advice about reading and talking to babies for their language development

You can help your child learn the counting sequence through singing nursery rhymes with numbers in them or reading them number books.

CBeebies have some super Counting Nursery Rhymes to help. Why not try singing ‘Three Little Speckled Frogs’ or ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Once I Caught a Fish Alive’

You don’t have to sit down and do anything special. Make it as simple and as fun as you can. Do it when you’re climbing the stairs or when you’re out and about by counting cars or birds.

Children tend to think the only things you count are actual objects, but numbers are much more than that.

Counting anything from smiles to claps will help your toddler understand they can’t always physically hold or touch what they are counting.

Nursery rhymes with numbers and a really easy way to introduce the concepts of numbers and counting to your child from an early age.

Using some simple maths language will help your child start to get the early ideas of subtraction and addition long before they actually learn it.

Using your fingers to show one, two, three when you are counting and when you are saying number words is really helpful. This is a great way to get your child to link the number words to the actual amounts.

My daughter is potty trained and sleeps quite well through the night, so I am worried that she may regress on these once we move. Also once we have moved at some point we'll be taken the sides off her cot bed which is something else that I'm a little nervous about. Any help or advice would be appreciated. Thank You. - Sarah

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