Other people!
Advice for shy parents with shy kids
There is a looooot of socializing with other parents when you’re a parent, and it starts early. At the hospital tour. At the CPR class. At daycare. At first day of school coffee. At sports practice. It’s not for everyone, and yet we are ostensibly supposed to model that being a social being is easy and fun.
Below is a question I got from a reader about trying to raise a social kid when you’re not always an extrovert yourself. I ran it by a handful of witches I know who can speak to this situation. Just a little quick one today for shy parents with shy kids.
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Q: My 8-year-old girl is struggling with friendships. My spider sense is telling me she is not reading the social room on when to get along to go along and when to stand up for herself in playground situations.
Totally normal and probably even more so in the last two years of not socializing but that doesn’t mean I can just ignore the problem and the tears and the articulation of feeling of being invisible and not being chosen or left out.
We do team sport (ok but she’s not going to be the star) we have play dates (ok but where are the return invites) and we’ve checked in on the school (and they so okay but all 8 years olds are drama queens) so now what?
I feel like I need some coaching to be able to help her create good friends. I will be honest I am not a huge social butterfly friendship circle person.
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A’s!:
“So my child was the only girl not invited to a birthday party when she was in first grade, and that sort of summed up her social experience at that school. We changed schools (not because of this) to a school where people are a lot weirder and although she really only made one new friend - SHE MADE ONE NEW FRIEND! That lasted until 6th grade, and now she is starting to make more new friends! This is to say, sometimes you need to wait it out for many years. She is still weird. Like her 9-year-old sister needs to order for her at restaurants because she gets so nervous and weird.”
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“I’ve got an 11-year-old who is dealing with this. I’ve had lots of conversations with her and there’s not really a silver bullet that I’ve found. Telling her stories of myself at that age seems to help her see that it’s normal. Lots of commiserating and hugs help sometimes too. She also signed up to see the school counselor on her own, and she says that helps her too.”
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“I was SUPER awkward and insecure, and I did start to at least see that my kids were unlikely to fit in with their peers in elementary and middle school. I ended up moving them to a private school that was a way better social and academic fit for them, but I think a big part of it was helping them find ‘their people’ and working on building identity and confidence around their actual strengths and interests so they have been a lot less likely to fall into the trap that I did of wanting to ‘fit in with the popular kids’ despite not actually having anything in common with them.”
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From Julie Vick, a witch who actually wrote a book about being an introverted parent: Babies Don’t Make Small Talk (So Why Should I?,
“I think this can be so tough and it sounds like you’ve taken some good steps (e.g. checking in with the school/playdates/sports). One thing on playdates, as an introverted mom, I find playdates draining so I definitely don’t set them up as much as other people so it may be that the other parents aren’t reciprocating because of their own introversion and/or shyness or it may be other reasons—but I wouldn’t necessarily attribute it to not wanting their kid to be friends.
That said, I do try to set some playdates up and I try a little harder if it’s with a kid who I think would probably click well with my kid, or it seems like a good friendship to encourage. Or sometimes I will reach out to the other parent to see if the other kid would want to do a class/sport/camp with my kid so I don’t also have to be on-hand facilitating.
I’ve also realized that some team sports are not a great fit for my kids so maybe trying to find something your kid is really into — be it an individual sport, chess team, or like mandolin practice might help to find like-minded kids with similar interests. I feel like there is this social pressure to do X kid thing because everyone is, which I definitely struggle with, but trying to find stuff that is a better fit for my kids has helped.
Something I still have to remind myself of as an adult too is that it’s often easier to approach/talk to the person hanging out on their own than the group of people already hanging together so if there are other kids who seem to be looking for someone to play with then they can be good to approach. Just having a handful of good friends can be really good (and there are definitely still some mom cliques who are not looking for new members in the same way kid cliques are).
When one of my kids was reporting some not-great playground behavior, I also tried to say things like, ‘Well, if someone was telling me I always have to be the evil troll while they are the kick-ass princess then I don’t know if I would want to hang out with that person.’ My kids also seem to like hearing stories from my own life of similar obstacles so if there is something in your own life or like a famous person they admire who has talked about similar struggles that maybe helps them feel like it’s not just them. (At my house, we sometimes talk about Dav Pilkey not having a great school experience but then going on to create these books kids love.)”
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Was this you as a kid or was/is it your kid? What if anything smoothed the social runway while allowing everyone to be their amazing weird, awkward, funky selves?
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One witchy thing
I can definitely relate. I would say my daughter and I are "selectively social". Which has been a helpful framework for me to think about my relationships with people, especially other parents. It can feel sometimes that there are so many categories people put on themselves. "I'm an attachment mom," "I'm a free range mom," "I'm an ambitious work mom" etc. That I often felt forced to "find my tribe." What I have come to realize is that I do better with many loose relationships rather than a BEST friend. I remember well that moment of permission when I knew I could talk to anyone, or noone at the park and both are fine. With my kid we have conversations about initiating play "Hi, do you want to play" (shes 3) and the power of words to self advocate. But on other days we'll do our own thing and I like that too :)
I have a friend with a very sweet early teens boy who reminds me of my brother, who def marched to the beat of his own drum when he was younger. She has told me she's worried her son doesn't have many friends and I asked her if he seems worried about it and she admitted no, not really. I told her my bro was the same way--he minded his own until he started to find his people, although it took awhile to get into a bigger pond to find his people (high school.)