How to Help a Shy Child
Watching your child awkwardly navigate simple social situations can be painful for a parent. Parents can take an active role in helping their child become more social and self confident.
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Things You'll Need
- Constant Awareness of Child and Awareness
- Positive Attitude
- Encouraging Behaviour
- Actively playing a role in your kids social activities
Instructions
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Identify Triggers - shyness triggers have three things in common, they involve something new, something unpredictable or a situation where the child feels they are being evaluated. If your child is old enough, ask about what causes his reaction. If your child is younger, use your powers of observation. The first step to helping to manage these feelings is know what makes your child react shyly.
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Build Self-Esteem- Talking about and praising past success creates confidence and self-esteem in the future. Shy children may have negative self-images so reinforce shy children for demonstrating social skills and praise them often.
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Plan Ahead - Shy children have a longer "warming up" period than other kids. Anticipate and acknowledge this when introducing new situations or people. You may need to arrive early at school or at a party to let them survey the situation and get more comfortable. Also talk abut the social event and what they might expect.
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Practice and Develop Social Skills - Encourage your child to practice simple non-threatening social graces such as "hello", "please" and "thank you". Socialization is really a must so do lots of role playing and give them opportunities to comfortably try these techniques.
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Gradually Expand Their Comfort Zone - Most shy children have narrow comfort zones of people, places and activities so try to enlarge your child's social environment. Offer indirect social support but don't push.
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Know and Accept the Whole Child - Relax and accept your child's personality. As long as the child does not seem excessively uncomfortable around others, drastic interventions are not necessary. Some "shy" children are deep-thinkers. A shy child with healthy self-worth may be quite happy with herself. Don't create a problem where there is none.
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Tips & Warnings
Shyness is a personality trait, not a fault. Shy people tend to be attentive listeners and exude a welcoming presence even without saying a word. If your child has a healthy self-worth, is polite, behaves well and seems happy with herself then shyness is not a serious problem. Shyness is actually a natural protective device. Help your child recognize and accept their shyness as a characteristic of their personality. It becomes something they know about themselves and it is self awareness that empowers a shy child to move beyond wanting to join the fun to actually taking part in the it.
You cannot "pull" a child out of shyness. The more you pull, the more some children recoil. Never label a child "shy" or apologize for your child by saying, "He's shy", especially in their presence. If you must use words to describe your child use "private" or reserved. Labels of any kind can affect the way others treat your child.
