Many parents think kids develop strong social skills from memorizing phrases like “please” and “thank you.” But the real foundation is built much earlier, at home and through everyday interactions.

I’ve studied over 200 parent-child relationships, and I’m a mother myself. I’ve found that kids learn to communicate and connect by watching how their parents behave. And being raised in an environment where emotional safety and authentic connection are modeled makes a world of difference.

Here are nine things that parents who raise kids with exceptional social skills do early on.

Kids learn emotional vocabulary when parents name and normalize feelings.

Parents who say things like, “I feel disappointed we can’t go today, but I’ll take a deep breath and try again tomorrow,” are modeling emotional regulation in real time. It helps kids later express themselves with friends, like saying, “I’m sad you didn’t play with me,” instead of lashing out.

Children absorb how parents treat others: the neighbor, the cashier, and even each other.

A simple, “She has her hands full, so let’s hold the door for her,” teaches more about empathy than any lecture. Small daily acts of kindness become the blueprint for lifelong social awareness.

True confidence comes from being loved as you are and from being given the chance to try (and sometimes fail).

Letting kids try out for the team or pour their own milk, even if it gets messy, says: “I trust you.” When paired with encouragement like, “I love how you kept trying,” kids feel capable and connected, without needing to be perfect.

Every relationship includes conflict. What matters is whether kids learn how to repair.

Parents who say, “You hurt your sister’s feelings. Let’s think of what we can say or do to make it right,” are teaching a critical life skill: Repair strengthens relationships, and kids who learn it early grow into adults who can sustain healthy bonds.

If a child says, “My friend didn’t want to play with me,” some parents might brush it off with, “Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal.”

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But parents who say, “That sounds hard. Want to tell me more?” are teaching kids that their feelings and perspectives matter. That confidence in their voice is the foundation of strong social skills.

Kids don’t always pick up on social dynamics naturally. Parents who gently point out, “Did you notice how his voice got quiet? He might be feeling shy,” help kids tune into the subtleties of human interaction.

These micro-lessons add up and shape socially aware, emotionally intelligent adults.

The second kids argue, the impulse is often to intervene. But the best social learning happens when parents step back just enough.

Saying, “I’m here if you need help, but I think you two can work it out,” creates space for problem-solving and compromise. With time, kids learn they can handle conflict themselves because they were trusted to practice.

When parents treat mistakes as evidence of growth, kids build resilience instead of shame.

A parent who calmly says, “You spilled the juice. Let’s grab a towel and clean it up,” models accountability without humiliation. Children raised this way see mistakes as opportunities to learn. That mindset makes them more adaptable and compassionate with others.

Kids need to see what good listening looks like.

When parents pause, make eye contact, give full attention (without rushing to fix or interrupt) and say, “Tell me more about that,” they teach how to be patient and respectful. Over time, kids carry this into friendships, becoming the kind of people others feel safe opening up to.

Good social skills are becoming more and more important in today’s world, and those skills grow from connection and emotional safety. By practicing early, you’re ensuring that your kid will grow up to be empathetic humans who are ready for real-world relationships.

Reem Raouda is a leading voice in conscious parenting and the creator of FOUNDATIONS, a step-by-step guide that helps parents heal and become emotionally safe. She is widely recognized for her expertise in children’s emotional safety and for redefining what it means to raise emotionally healthy kids. Connect with her on Instagram.

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In late 2019, Rachael De Foe was burnt out, so she took a leap of faith that many dream of but never do: she quit her nine-to-five job without anything lined up.

The Singapore-native had spent the past few years working in public relations at various companies, from large agencies to smaller boutique firms.

“Every single business was chasing what I now like to call the ‘agency monster’ … You have too many clients, so you need [a bigger] team. You have too many team [members], so you need more clients. There’s never equilibrium,” De Foe told CNBC Make It. “I had burned out more than once.”

One day, she realized that she couldn’t picture herself in her bosses’ shoes. “That’s just not the life that I wanted. So that’s when I decided to quit at the end of 2019,” she said.

Today, the 31-year-old works as a fractional head of communications through her public relations and communications company, Redefy, which she started in 2020. What she didn’t expect was that this leap in the dark would eventually allow her to more than triple her income.

She went from making $72,000 Singaporean dollars (about $56,000) in her nine-to-five job to about $220,000 a year as her own boss, according to documents verified by CNBC Make It.

After leaving her job, De Foe thought she was going to take some time to decompress during the holiday season before finding another job in the new year.

“I had no plan, if I’m being quite honest … my plan was to figure it out,” she said. “At first I [thought] maybe I should look for a different job. But every time I looked at other jobs in the market, it just wasn’t interesting, and I could see the same patterns happening again.”

Then, all of a sudden a global pandemic hit in early 2020.

“I’ll be honest, it was actually really scary at that point of time, because I think two of the functions [first] to be cut [during an] economic downturn, was both PR and HR … so in my mind, I was like: ’Oh no, what am I going to do?”

However, this also presented a new opportunity for De Foe. As companies downsized and cut their PR and communications teams, many ultimately had to find leaner solutions.

“At the peak of Covid, essentially, I had founders and VCs reach out to me saying something along the lines of: ‘Rachel, we just got rid of our agency, but we have this reputation problem … Can you solve this problem?’” she recalls.

What started as some ad hoc freelancing turned into the next chapter of her career. She incorporated her own company and became a fractional head of communications.

While freelancers are hired to execute specific projects or hourly tasks, fractional workers are more embedded into a business — often helping to lead the overall strategy at a company. Also, as opposed to a permanent or staff employee, fractional workers contribute on a part-time basis for multiple businesses or clients.

“As a fractional head of [communications] … I’m completely responsible for the communications function of a company. But because the company may not [need] a full time person, it’s really up to me to make my own hours,” De Foe explained.

“I answer to three CEOs, but I’m my own CEO at the same time,” she said.

Going fractional has allowed De Foe to escape the cycle of burnout she experienced earlier in her career, she said. Instead of continuously chasing more clients or needing more people on the team, she now gets to choose whether or not to take specific clients or projects.

“In the past few years, it’s been very interesting to see the shift in fractional as well, because people who used to be seniors at companies that I’ve worked for have started going the fractional route too,” said De Foe.

She says that fractional work can make sense in a services-based businesses, because “you are the service,” she said.

“You are the person that people want to work with, right? So it doesn’t matter whether you’re sitting under a [bigger] company or [if you’re working alone]. People are looking for that interaction with you, and if you have [the experience or seniority], that’s enough to start on your own,” she said.

Her typical client load ranges from three to five companies at once. This model of working has not only afforded her more autonomy, but also more money.

In the past five years, she’s earned more than $1.4 million Singapore dollars (about $1.1 million), according to documents verified by CNBC Make It.

“I’m never going back to one boss,” said De Foe. “I’m a lot happier. I’m a lot more fulfilled, and I think more than anything — I feel like I can give myself the permission to chase the things that I want to.”

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Several billionaires and successful entrepreneurs never went to college, from Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg — and 30-year-old Lucy Guo recently joined their ranks.

The California-based founder became Forbes’ youngest self-made billionaire in June, boasting a net worth of $1.25 billion, after her first business, Scale AI, was acquired by tech giant Meta in a deal that valued the AI data labelling company at $29 billion.

Currently the founder of content creator monetization platform Passes, launched in 2022, Guo told CNBC Make It that she didn’t follow the traditional path of completing higher education.

She studied computer science and human computer interactions at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, but dropped out after two years. At the time, she only had one year and eight classes to go before she graduated. This came as a shock to her Chinese immigrant parents.

“They [parents] sacrificed everything to immigrate from China to America to give their kids a better future, and because education gave them everything that they have in life, for their kids to suddenly let go of their education when they were almost done was like a slap in the face,” she said.

Guo instead decided to pursue the Thiel Fellowship, a program launched by the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, which offers young people $200,000 to build innovative companies.

“I think they [parents] viewed that as a sign that I didn’t love them, and they weren’t very happy with it, when it was just me making a bet on myself and choosing to optimize for what I thought would be a better future for myself.”

But even the billionaire college dropout sees some benefits to higher education.

 Guo said that going to college introduced her to a network that became even more valuable to her as a founder.

“My recommendation for people is that one to two years in college is actually just incredibly great, because you’re going to make the best friends in college, and you’re going to meet the smartest people in college,” Guo said. “Everyone’s going to college because they want to meet people.”

She explained there’s no other scenario where there’s such a high concentration of smart people who are also looking to make friends.

“When you go to work at a new company, not everyone you’re working with is looking for a new friend because they already have friends. If you never went to college, and you just dive into a city, you can go to these events and try to meet people, and it does work out. But, again, not everyone is desperate to make friends,” she added.

A company’s greatest assets is the people it hires, and Guo says the best hiring pool is your college peers.

“Make sure to get to know your smartest peers and actually be friends with them. The best place to do this, I think personally, is actually in college,” she said.

“I can’t even think of one place where it’s such a high density of people that are intelligent and that’s the most likely place [college] where you’re going to meet your future hires.”

She says this network of intelligent friends will remain handy, because you’ll already have a talented pool of people to hire.  

Guo said her peers on the two-year Thiel Fellowship program motivated her be successful as an entrepreneur.

“You become part of a community where it’s so normal to build a unicorn company, because in order to build a company, you have to be a little crazy. You have to be so arrogant to believe that you have a shot at building a company that could be a unicorn. And it’s easier to believe that, and to delude yourself, when you are surrounded by so many people that have, and that is, I think, the beauty of San Francisco and the Thiel Fellowship.”

Other alumni of the program, like Guo, have gone on to produce unicorns — startups valued at over $1 billion — from Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum to Dylan Field’s Figma and Ritesh Agarwal’s Oyo Rooms.

This article is part of a series on billionaire Lucy Guo. Read more below:

Stacie Grissom and Sean Wilson lived in New York City for almost a decade, and then the covid-19 pandemic hit.

In early 2020, Grissom was pregnant with their first child and working in marketing at BarkBox, while Wilson was working as an orthopedic surgeon in NYC hospitals.

Seeing the state of the city during that time made Grissom realize she was ready to move back to Franklin, Indiana, their hometown, which is about 30 miles from downtown Indianapolis.

“We had a reevaluation that it’s the people who matter the most, so we wanted to move back to our hometown to be by our families,” Grissom tells CNBC Make It.

“We got our chosen family in New York, and it’s the best city in the world, but we had to go where our family was.”

A couple of months after their son was born, Grissom contacted a realtor friend in Franklin and told him to start looking at “weird old houses.”

“I told him the quirkier, the better, and to send us a fixer-upper,” Grissom says. “His dad saw a school for sale and immediately said, ‘Send it to Stacie.’”

Since Grissom and Wilson were still in New York City at the time, they asked her parents to check out the property instead.

Grissom says the building was a school for local children between 1914 and 1934. After the schoolhouse closed, it was used as a barn.

Since Grissom’s dad had experience running a commercial real estate business, she knew he would give her an honest and expert opinion on the school’s state.

After getting her parents’ approval, Grissom and Wilson made an offer on the schoolhouse without ever seeing it in person themselves — and it was accepted within 24 hours.

“We wouldn’t have bought it if my parents hadn’t agreed because we knew with this kind of project we were going to need the entire village,” she says.

A week after Grissom and Wilson closed on the former schoolhouse, they saw it in person for the first time.

“I think back then I was a lot more naive than I am today, but I was so excited to see it and its potential,” Grissom says. “You could see that there could be giant windows, tall ceilings, and open spaces for a big family to come together around the holidays.”

“It’s like a Midwestern castle in the middle of some cornfields of Indiana. It’s a beautiful little brick building that is home now,” she adds.

After the couple closed on the former schoolhouse, the real work began. By the fall of 2021, the couple got the school down to its bare bones, but a renovation they thought would take two years ended up taking three.

The couple was still living in New York City at the time.

“Things were a little slow to get going but then the new roof started going in February 2022 and things started to move but it ended up taking us three years because we were basically building a new house inside an old shell of a building,” Grissom says.

Grissom declined to comment on how much the couple spent on the renovation but says they are still getting through it and not completely done yet.

While cleaning out the property, the couple and their contractors found random things, including a board that would hold old chalkboards with the words “Chicken coop” written on it.

“It was really cool to see because this is such a beautiful little school built by farmers for the kids in this rural area. The community was really proud of the school,” Grissom says.

Though the couple had to almost start from scratch with the schoolhouse, they were able to keep the floors in one classroom, all of the brick, the original doors and a water fountain that they are trying to restore.

“The time it took was definitely a big challenge and having to renovate from afar was tough. I don’t think we were naïve going into it, but now I know we’re not renovating anything again after this,” Grissom says. “We did it, and we’re glad we’ve gone through, but no more old buildings for a while.”

Despite how hard the renovation was for the couple, Grissom says her favorite part was getting to work alongside her dad.

“It’s been really cool to go through my dad’s renovation boot camp, from how to work with other contractors to how to do the work ourselves. We learned a lot of trade-like things over the three years,” she adds.

To pay homage to the former school, the couple used the same colors that were originally painted on the walls back when the school was still open. Grissom also made two mosaics for the entrances with the name of the school and its date of creation.

Of the décor, Grissom says they’re “trying to get as much school furniture as we can put back into the school.”

Grissom admits that nothing about the renovation has been easy, but a highlight of the experience has been being able to focus full-time on being a content creator and sharing the schoolhouse journey on social media.

“It has been fun to document this process and find this old home renovation community online. I never thought my house could be a job,” she says. “It’s nice to be able to make an income from some of the storytelling while also getting advice and having a community of people who like restoring old stuff.”

Amid ongoing renovations, the couple and their now two kids moved into the home in September of this year.

“Moving into the schoolhouse was easier than moving into any New York City apartment we ever had,” Grissom says. “It was nice to wake up and see the sunrise over the cornfields. It will be a tornado in here for a while, but it was really crazy to finally set up a place that we’ve been thinking about for three years and pouring all of our money, energy, sweat, and tears into.”

The schoolhouse now has four bedrooms and two and a half baths, all on the 4,000-square-foot upper level. The couple still has a lower 4,000-square-foot sub-basement that they are trying to figure out what to do with.

The best part of finally moving into the schoolhouse and being back in their hometown, Grissom says is that her kids will grow up around their families.

“After living through the pandemic and all of the stress and anxiety, we all had a confrontation with our mortality at a much earlier age than most generations do and that totally shifted stuff in my brain. It’s beautiful to see my parents are healthy, our kids are happy and just appreciate the small things,” she adds.

Since moving in a few weeks ago, Grissom says that while she realizes it was a long road to move in, she would go through it again.

“I never want to lose the naivete of whatever made us say that we wanted to buy a school and it was going to be our house,” she says.

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When I moved to the U.S. from Japan in 1994, I was very curious to try classic American fast food. But my body pushed back right away. Fast food gave me low energy, poor digestion, and even weight gain. Over time, I that realized much of what we call “food” here is engineered to be addictive, not nourishing.

Today, I live by the same principles I grew up with: simple home-cooked meals, rice, seasonal vegetables, fermented foods, green tea, and fruits. Nothing extreme. I respect my body and strive for balance.

At the same time, I understand that fast food is everywhere. Sometimes, it’s tempting and hard to escape. But here are five fast foods in particular that I personally avoid — and how I stay healthy without giving up convenience.

Hot dogs are essentially processed meat high in saturated fat and sodium, wrapped in a refined carb bun. Paired with soda (even diet soda), you’ve got a combo that contributes to obesity, inflammation, type 2 diabetes, and even cancer.

What I eat instead: Tofu dumplings or grilled tofu sandwiches make great alternatives. For something a little lighter, try a whole grain pita with hummus, avocado, or falafel. To quench my thirst, I’ll have sparkling water or herbal tea.

This typical fast food combo often contains over 1,000 calories, mostly from saturated fat, salt, and processed ingredients. Add a sugary drink, and you’re getting a full day’s worth of empty calories in one meal.

From a health and environmental view, meat-heavy diets contribute to both heart disease and environmental strain. It takes 1,800 gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef.

What I eat instead: When I’m craving something hearty, I roast potatoes, pumpkin, or sweet potatoes with garlic, olive oil, and a touch of cinnamon. It’s filling, flavorful, and nourishing.

I also love tofu burgers. They’re delicious, protein-rich, and packed with vitamins and minerals, without all the cholesterol. I always make extra to keep in the fridge or freezer.

Many people think chicken is a healthier choice than beef. But most fast food versions are highly processed, deep-fried, and filled with questionable ingredients. 

And chicken breast still contains cholesterol, especially if you’re eating it with the skin on. Even worse, many chicken nuggets are made with only 45% real meat.

What I eat instead: I love homemade tofu nuggets (baked and seasoned with garlic, paprika, ginger, sesame seeds, and nori flakes). They have an equally satisfying crunch and are packed with protein.

Donuts are soft, sweet, and easy to overeat. But they’re mostly refined flour and sugar with almost no nutritional value. Pair that with a sweet, creamy coffee drink, and you’re consuming up to 800 calories and 100 grams of sugar in one sitting.

What I eat instead: Whole grain rice ball or toast with nut butter and a banana. Make your own instant coffee with unsweetened soy milk and cinnamon. It just takes two minutes and you’re out the door!

Pizza is universally loved. But fast food versions are usually high in calories, sodium, and saturated fat, with little fiber or fresh ingredients. It’s easy to grab “just one more slice,” especially in social settings.

What I eat instead: If you must have pizza, go for just one slice. Pair it with a side salad, and drink lots of water. At home, I make my own with whole wheat dough, homemade tomato sauce, and seasonal vegetables.

Life is unpredictable. Kids get hungry and parents get busy. Here’s how I stay grounded when fast food is the only option.

1. Don’t get too hungry. Hunger leads to poor choices. I always carry emergency snacks like dried fruit, unsalted nuts, or rice crackers to keep hunger at bay.

2. Follow the “5-A-Day” rule. Aim for at least five servings of fruits and veggies daily. Choose meals with whole foods, fiber, and plenty of color.

3. Ditch the “value meal” mindset. Upsizing fries or drinks is a health cost, not a bargain!

4. Slow down, even with fast food. Take deep breaths, chew slowly, and eat mindfully to aid digestion and avoid overeating.

Michiko Tomioka, MBA, RDN is a certified nutritionist and longevity expert. Born and raised Nara, Japan, her approach focuses on a plant-based diet. She has worked in nutritional roles at substance recovery centers, charter schools and food banks. Follow her on Instagram @michian_rd.

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