**4. The role of soft skills in school**

Therefore, soft skills are increasingly central in school, also because they allow the students to be trained, and they will be useful to students not only in the world of work but also in any situation of daily life [13]. For years the European Commission has been insisting that schools take charge of enhancing the characteristics of each student, so that students can develop abilities, such as resilience, adaptation to change, problem solving, leadership, and decision making. In particular, the European Commission [14] has emphasized the need to develop the so-called "European competences", which appear to be eight, to be considered all of equal importance:


#### *Learning Disabilities and Inclusiveness DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.114036*

To adequately develop these skills, however, it takes a learning environment that is marked by real exchange and real sharing [15].

The development of soft skills is in fact directly related to the environment in which one finds himself studying: since they are skills that concern the development of the person in general, they cannot be separated from social interactions. And an environment in which relationships are good allows for great developments; on the contrary, an environment, which judges only negatively or even simply not very stimulating, can be ineffective.

For the environment to be a suitable place for real learning, everyone needs to feel comfortable. Students with learning disabilities do not always feel comfortable. Sometimes it is enough for them to see that what their classmates do well for them constitutes an obstacle to blocking them. And this emotional blockage can invalidate not only the acquisition of knowledge but also the global development of the person, the development of active citizenship skills [16]. Therefore, we must do so as to allow as much as possible a healthy, peaceful learning environment, without stress [17, 18]. In fact, a student is able to give the best of himself only when he feels he is understood and appreciated by his teachers [19].

Below are described some exercises, which have been conducted in a primary school in Sondrio [20], in the North of Italy, to ensure that children learned to recognize and manage emotions.

The activities concerned the following life skills:


selves, what feelings they have felt in relation to themselves and their companions. The elements to bring out are the following: avoid telling another person that what he thinks does not make sense, explain the point of view well, do not be offensive nor aggressive, listen to the others, try to understand what the others think, and compare thoughts with those of the others;

