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ability to catch his fancy. He is even capable of interpreting emotional expressions in familiar adults, imitate them and actively seeks out opportunities to be with them. While so far his social skills have been predominantly 'taking' in nature, now he starts giving back in these interactions through imitation, playing, responding, reading face signals, seeking out interactions etc. By two years, the child has developed more socially to be able to start following simple commands, be independent in movement, and cooperate with adults to do the things they do. Till around two years of age, they exhibit more social preference for adults than for other children.

4. Interaction with other children: By the time they are 2.5 -3 years, they start finding same age group more interesting than adults. They have come to the next milestone. They learn to give and take and share with their friends; they begin to take responsibility for their possessions; they learn to cooperate. Putting them in an environment with other children and catalyzing their interactions will result in the faster and more bountiful acquisition of several social milestones. Competitive spirit, cooperative behavior, social problem solving behavior, grouping tendencies, praising, asking for help, giving help, respect for others' work, politeness etc are all social behavioral indicators that they acquire during the course of their interactions with other children. These social developmental milestones continue to get honed throughout their interactions during school.

5. Acquiring social values: An important aspect of social development is to help the child understand his relationship with the immediate world around him and the issues in that world. Education has to enable the child to understand the larger 'non-self' related issues as it occurs in the world outside and figure out for himself as to how he would decide which route to take when faced with a choice. At around 7-8 years, the child is ready to begin his inquiry into his relationship with his immediate environment such as nature, civic sense, diversity in religion, diet, etc. These could be called social values. An example of a social value would be how they would react to throwing filth on the roads, how they would react to children of other religious beliefs etc.

6. Acquiring 'morality': Morality is also a code of conduct, but is larger in scope than social values. It is about judgments and about passing judgments on others behavior and other

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