To ask how to get my 10 year olds to talk to strangers

[Spry]

At home, my 10 year old daughter doesn’t stop talking. She has a great vocabulary, is very opinionated, excellent at formulating an argument and can be very, very witty. Her twin brother isn’t quite as chatty but nevertheless has plenty to say for himself. In public however, it’s a different story. They both really struggle to have any kind of conversation with adults they don’t know or don’t know well.

For example, I took my son to the GP this morning and he answered her questions with one syllable answers, almost inaudibly, with no eye contact at all.

Over the weekend, my daughter was keen to take advantage of an opportunity to meet a children’s illustrator, whose books she enjoyed. (She had recently won a school competition relating to his work.) I was surprised and pleased she was happy to be introduced to him but she couldn’t say a single word to him. He was very sweet with her, asking her the simplest of questions (what year are you in at school? what was your winning picture like? etc), but she needed me to answer for her.

When I collect the children from playdates, or birthday parties, I still have to prompt them to say thank you and goodbye to their friends’ parents - even though these are adults they know. When they do so, they speak so quietly that often the adults don’t register that my son or daughter is speaking to them.

Both children are very reluctant to join any kind of activities outside school and I suspect that their anxieties about interacting with people they don’t know well is a big factor in this.

I feel that being able to express yourself clearly, being at ease with people you don’t know and observing basic social etiquette are pretty important life skills that we need to support our children in acquiring.

Things I’ve tried are:

Trying to get them to anticipate likely interactions and rehearse their answers (e.g. I talked through with my son this morning the questions the GP was likely to put to him).

Bribery (e.g. in a restaurant, if they want a pudding, they have to ask the waiter for it themselves).

Being strict (e.g. when I collect you from Jenny’s house, I want to hear a nice loud “thank you for having me”).

None of it really works.

My partner (their Dad) is very sympathetic to our children’s difficulties. He remembers feeling acutely self-conscious about speaking to adults when he was a child. He still doesn’t find social interactions easy (particularly greetings or goodbyes) but he can stand up in front of hundreds of people and deliver presentations for work. His instinct is not to push the children too hard to speak to adults as he thinks that could make things worse but building it all up too much. He believes they will just become more capable of doing so as they mature.

I’d be hugely grateful for the advice of anyone who has gone through this themselves. Is there anything that has worked for you and your shy children?

He still doesn’t find social interactions easy (particularly greetings or goodbyes) but he can stand up in front of hundreds of people and deliver presentations for work. His instinct is not to push the children too hard to speak to adults as he thinks that could make things worse but building it all up too much. He believes they will just become more capable of doing so as they mature.
I can totally relate to that. I would still rather present to a room of 1000 people than chat to a stranger but the chatting bit absolutely came with age.

As a child I was acutely aware that I was a child and the adults were adults. And that made any interaction feel weird to me. I was well into my late teens before I wa comfortable ordering in a restaurant, I'd make an excuse to go to the loo and try to time that so I was ordered for when I wasn't there!

At 16 I had my work experience week in a library. They were all lovely and welcoming but I couldn't bear the idea of making small talk during the morning tea break so hid in the loo for all of that too.

But by 18 I was fine! Chatting to anyone, took a gap year working with school groups and teachers.

I just hated being a child with adults. I'd say don't sweat it. They'll probably be fine.

I agree with your husband.

our children are similar.

how much they are able to speak for themselves very much depends on the level of familiarity and comfort.

they are fine with extended family they know well. Also parents of their friends they know well.

i notice here it varies by empathy. One set of grandparents are more pushy for engagement and less willing to read and respect the children’s need. So in return the kids give less. The other set that accept when they don’t want to engage with good humour and no pressure get more spontaneous engagement overall.

our near 11 year old is nowhere near being able to order dessert herself.

Again I don’t plan to push. She has good instincts and is uncomfortable with excessive attention. The reality especially for girls is men can and will leer.

i reckon keep on modelling and they will get there in their own time.

the kids that I know that are very confident around this have other challenges eg can’t stay quiet or be discreet when that’s needed.

they are all different

Also my son (8) is quite like me and my daughter (6) is much more confident. She will happily go up to a cafe counter and ask for water. I would have died at her age before I could do that. DS will do it but only if DD is with him.

I'm proud of DD for being so confident but equally so of DS for being clear where he isn't confident and articulating that. I have no concerns that he'll be more confident later.

When my DD was like this, I sat with her and gently explained how I felt when I was her age as I was like this too. I told her all the times I wish I had the courage to speak up, and the scenarios where I ended up being left out or missing an opportunity as I didn't have the courage to speak up. At the same time as me doing this with her, her teacher was tackling it from that side and explained to her how she hated being quiet and decided to tackle things head on and now teaches. She explained how she hates speaking to parents as she still finds it awkward but she gets on with it because she has to to make herself heard. Suddenly, the penny dropped and my DD has grown in confidence so much since learning how to push herself out of her comfort zone.

I wouldn't worry too much OP, they are still quite young. My youngest DS was very similar at that age and hated even very, very simple interactions with strangers (asking a waiter for a drink while out for a meal, for example). His behaviour appeared quite rude, although I'm sure most sensible adults would have been able to tell he was really just very shy.

Fast forward a year and the move to secondary school, he's definitely made progress and can manage those kind of interactions without too much trouble or prompting from me. He's also enjoying his extracurricular hobby more, which I think is partly because he's feeling more comfortable about the social aspects. I don't suppose he will ever be a massive extrovert but I'm confident he'll get to a place of being OK.

I'd just keep doing what your doing, encourage them to practice little day to day interactions, but don't make a big deal about it.

Have you had them assessed?

I think you are right, it needs work but maybe take DH's view on board too about a gentler approach. A 10 yr old who doesn't speak may be seen as shy but very soon they will be seen as rude. I've seen in my friends son who is now 14 and who literally looks away if I say hello and never says thanks for anything. We were in a group recently and I could see everyone noting how rude he was, he came across as a sullen ungrateful teenager. I had to remind myself that he was always like this and probably has some sort of social anxiety. His mum says he is chatty at home. Unfortunately this child is losing opportunities all the time for friendships and rightly or wrongly my own DS thinks he is weird and tries to avoid him.

OP, I also have boy girl 10 yr old twins. Its a lovely age. They are similar to each other too in that they never shut up talking at home or out and about. Total opposites of yours, they just came into the world that way.

Don't worry about it. You don't need to bribe them, cajole them, implore them to ensure that by the time they are adults they will be able to converse with strangers.

It will happen. The best thing you can do is not make a big deal about it, and give them a good example of how to be friendly and chatty with strangers, if that's what you want them to be. Reinforce when you get a good reaction from someone you've been friendly to, ie, that receptionist was so nice, aren't people kind, and move on. They'll work it out, you don't need to do it for them.

DappledThings, Fernsfernsferns, Oohhyeah, AbbeFausseMaigre, nc42day

Thank you all very much indeed for your thoughtful and reassuring comments. It is interesting that there is such strong agreement with my partner over this, and very heartening to know that things can improve.

However, I find it hard to sit back and watch them struggle - particularly as I feel it’s really limiting them. For example, my son loves playing the piano but he refuses to have lessons. I know this is because he just feels awkward around adults he doesn’t know. (When he was seven, he had a couple of lessons with an absolutely lovely teacher but he couldn’t cope.) He practices for hours each week and has taught himself to read music. He would like to be like his friends and sit a piano exam (he can sight read Grade 2 pieces) but I don’t really see how that can happen if he doesn’t have lessons and if he’d struggle to interact with the examiner.

Separately from this, I think it must be miserable for them to feel so much stress around interactions that really need not be stressful at all.

I was similar to your kids OP in that I was often extremely shy. One of my children is very shy and one of very confident at talking to adults. However both can order for themselves in a restaurant, ask for extra ketchup or something, and say thank you for having me etc.

I remember at about age 10 noticing that my mother often answered for me when an adult asked me a question. I was very very upset that I wasn't given the time and space I needed to respond and jumped to the incorrect conclusion that my mum would be embarrassed my my answer, so I shouldn't try to answer. Have you tried giving your children the time, space and boosts to their confidence that they might need to respond.

Thank you for your reply. No - we haven't had them assessed. I don't really even know what this would involve? Are you suggesting we should find an educational psychologist to assess them?

If so, do you have any sense of what this would involve? If it required them to go somewhere and sit in a room and answer questions, I think it wouldn't give a very nuanced picture - even with the most skilled practitioner: they'd both say nothing, or virtually nothing. They’d also completely hate it.

And if the assessor did give them some sort of diagnosis, is it likely that any useful advice/support would flow from that?

Without certainty that assessing them could potentially result in some very tangible type of benefit, I’d feel quite cautious about going ahead with this as I fear that pathologising the way they are could make things worse, not better for them.

Thank you very much for this. I do try to let them answer for themselves but I probably jump in too quickly - fearful that the adult involved will think us rude for not replying. Very often though, the children (particularly my daughter) are actively asking me to answer for them. I think I should try to be a bit more comfortable around the silences and wait for the children to fill them.

If this was my DD I’d be raising it with her GP and getting an assessment sorted.

It’s not normal to be this anxious around other adults

It can be one of the main signs of ASD or general anxiety disorder

Why wouldn’t it benefit them? If diagnosed you can then access support for their needs, school as well!

Thank you for this. Yes, it is a wonderful age. I worry my children will be perceived exactly as your friend's son is and that it will have serious consequences in many aspects of their lives.

I grew up in the "does he take sugar" era and much as I appreciate that was directed towards interactions with disabled people I'm my current job running a GP practice I am astonished when hovering reception the number of patients both with disabled people and children that the parent speaks for the person. We encourage the staff to direct their conversations appropriately to the person - disabled or child. Obviously a very young child is not able to articulate as well as an older one but sometimes comfort zones should be gently challenged.

Thank you again for your reply. When I say I don't know how it would benefit them, I mean that I don't have any sense of what would actually change if there was some kind of name attached to the way they are. When you say that we would then potentially be able to access support - what type of support would this be? Sorry to labour this point but I feel there are real downsides to triggering any kind of medicalised approach to this and so I'd want to be certain that something tangible and positive could flow from it.

Thank you. I'm always so impressed at the way all the medical people we come across interact with our two - always doing their best to speak with them directly, rather than the doing everything via me. Gently challenging comfort zones is definitely the way to go I think.

My boys could be like this and we're both selectively mute when they were younger. They were always ok for please and thank yous but were very quiet and didn't have easy chatty personalities that some of their friends had with adults. Their friendships with their friends was always good though.

I didn't use to push them at all as their Dad is very similar and they both outgrew it. They are still reserved but have jobs where communication and general people skills are important. So being reserved and quiet hasn't held either of them back.
My girls were much more talkative.

Bloody hell stop medicating kids!

Support will depend on what if anything they’re diagnosed with

So no one can say for certain

Although ask yourself are they doing great now? Are they thriving? I’d say from your posts that’s a no.

what do you mean by medicalised approach?

Who said anything about medication?

What the Op describes is not normal behaviour

What the Op describes is not normal behaviour
It is around here! At the school gates when a child says hello or chats to me I’m surprised as is dh, as are most parents‘isn’t x a great little lad/ girl, so chatty!’ I actually just think it’s life nowadays, there’s less seeing people chatting etc because people are in such a hurry, so kids don’t mirror it

OP you sound like a lovely mum.
Please continue encouraging them to expand their comfort zones. I wouldn’t just leave it, it’s not necessarily something they will grow out of without gentle pushing - I know so many teenagers and young adults who get stuck in social awkwardness, some quite extreme. They miss out on opportunities because of it. The same way you teach children lots of things, like sharing, being safe out there, being responsible, polite social interaction also needs to be taught. It’s not something they just grow into if they’re not exposed to stretching their boundaries.

Children pick these sorts of things up in their formative years from their parents and society. Takes much harder work beyond that stage to engineer a personality change but it can be done

‘Normal’ is subjective. I wish people would move along from trying to label something as normal / not normal. It’s your opinion, not a fact.

Look up bell curves and educate yourself.