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?