Child shyness is a deeper problem than many parents realize. Tightness, tension and depression are her frequent companions. It is difficult for such a child to communicate with children, and in the future avoiding communication may result in the inability to build relationships with people. Therefore, to deal with the shyness of the baby, you need to start immediately, and for this, parents will need a special tactful approach.

There are plenty of reasons why a child is shy.

Shyness may be associated with a child's special susceptibility to criticism, with his vulnerability and propensity for deep feelings.

Also, the starting point can be a single stressful situation or fear of it (for example, fear of speaking in front of the public), non-recognition of the child in the team.

Often shyness is caused by an unfavorable emotional climate in the family, which suppresses the child: excessive control, constant criticism, a ban on expressing one's emotions. Parents can also add fuel to the fire by emphasizing that their child is constantly shy. Looking for ways to overcome shyness in a child, it is necessary to eradicate its causes and help the growing personality to be liberated. Let's look at ways to do this.

You will need:

Talk heart to heart

Every child wants to speak frankly with their parents.

When a father or mother tells stories from their lives, how they went through certain difficulties, the child’s faith in himself is strengthened.

Tell your child how you were able to cope with awkwardness and tightness (for sure, at least once in a life, any person has similar situations).

The child should feel your support - say that you understand his fear and insecurity, unwillingness to go somewhere and communicate with someone, that you yourself sometimes feel something similar.

With your conversations, you should also motivate the baby to communicate. Show all the benefits of communication. For example, say that if a child gets over his shyness and talks to the children on the playground, he will be able to make new friends.

The second direction of a frank conversation is to try to talk to the child himself.

Encourage him more often to talk about his affairs, to share emotions.

If a child reveals his inner world, talks about his feelings at home, then this will help him to liberate himself outside of it.

Don't label

Forget that your child is very shy and do not remind him of this - without this, shyness will most likely not be overcome, no matter how comfortable the home environment is.

Do not call your child a quiet, shy child and ask your relatives and friends not to speak of him in this way.

And in general, avoid talking about this “slippery” topic - you are not required to report to others why your child is “afraid of people” or does not want to talk to someone. By doing this, you fix certain attitudes in his behavior.

Use role play

Role-playing games- an excellent tool for training the missing qualities and skills. In working with a shy child, they are also appropriate. Encourage your toddler to use his toys, which supposedly need help to cope with shyness. Let your child feel confident and demonstrate the standard of desired behavior to a bunny or a bear.

Fantasize more and act out situations that may scare or embarrass the child in real life.

With older children, you can rehearse answers at the blackboard or expressive reading verse.

Also, unobtrusively prompt the child with what phrases it is easier to start and end a conversation. Rehearse the dialogues until the child learns to use them freely in different communication situations. If the child is experiencing excessive shyness and awkwardness, you can start these exercises with telephone conversations.

Encourage your child

Pointing out shyness, blaming a child for it is a step to nowhere. This will only exacerbate the problem. But encouragement is just a magic tool in this situation. If the child managed to step over his shyness, be sure to praise him, because even the slightest step is worth a lot of effort for him.

To increase motivation, stipulate a system of rewards and rewards that the child will receive for each victory. It can be going to the movies, cooking your baby's favorite dish, etc.

Set affordable goals for your child and motivate him to achieve them by assigning a certain reward to each of them in advance.

Don't rush to communicate

The features of a shy child are such that he needs time to get used to new acquaintances, to the situation on the playground. Such children observe for a long time from the side before joining in communication. If you rush such a child and try to forcibly bring him closer to other children, then this will push him away from collective games and interaction with others for a long time.

Let the baby "probe" the situation, take a closer look at each child. It is possible that in a few days he will easily make contact.

You will immediately notice that he is ready for this: he will try to be closer to the children, try to play the same games as them.

Communication with the younger

He feels his psychological superiority and can perfectly reveal himself in joint games, taking on the leading role.

If there are small children among your acquaintances, you can invite your teenage child to babysit them, teach them some interesting game thus making you feel like a mentor. As a rule, shy guys and girls are happy to agree to such proposals, because they allow them to open up completely, which does not happen in the company of their peers.

Less demanding and guardianship

Excessive control and guardianship - clearly not best tactic in raising children.

If you are thinking about how to help a shy child, give him freedom of action, emotions and thoughts.

The tightness that is nurtured in a child at home easily transfers to his life outside his native walls. From early childhood, give the baby the opportunity to make his own choice, solve problem situations, defend his own point of view, so that his self-esteem in any circumstances is consistently high (but not overpriced!). Courage, and readiness to overcome obstacles, and self-confidence, and comfort in any living conditions will come from here.

Another pedagogical trouble is the collapse of criticism of the child and high demands. This is a sure path to insecurity and self-abasement.

Emphasize your child's successes and turn a blind eye to his failures.

Unfortunately, many parents do the opposite, believing that their child will strive for more. This is the deepest delusion. A small child will very soon be exhausted and will no longer strive anywhere, sighing doomedly and drawing conclusions about his insignificance.

Monitor your child's potential friends

Keep track of who your son or daughter befriends. Often completely opposite personalities are “glued” to shy and timid children, suppressing them in a psychological sense. This unequal friendship is more like slavery: a shy child becomes dependent on such guys. To avoid such situations, parents should control their children's friends.

How often do we hear from the parents of a child such a phrase: “He is so shy and timid with us that you can’t get a word out of him.”

Some of the adults do not pay attention to this feature of the young creature at all, while other mothers and fathers, on the contrary, make a problem out of this, telling their baby that he does not do everything that way, thereby exacerbating the situation.

In any case, it is necessary to help the guys overcome shyness and shyness in order to allow them to fully open up and express themselves in every sense. How to do this, we will find out right now.

mom and dad mistakes

Sometimes kids are shy and have a fear of something, just because they think that their parents will scold them once again for awkward movements or incorrectly spoken words.

We, adults, sometimes do not notice behind ourselves that with our phrases, seemingly meaningless to us, we can lower the child’s self-esteem so much, and thus contribute to the emergence of new difficulties in the development of the crumbs.

Some parents will say: “What does our educational moments have to do with it?” But it is precisely the assessment of close authoritative people for the baby that is of great importance, therefore, when the older generation regularly proves to their child that he is clumsy, then it is not worth talking about the adequate further behavior of the little man.

However, children themselves can be shy, and the task of parents is to teach over time to overcome this quality.

1. Teaching your child to be active. The activity of the baby can be manifested in everything: in games, in communication with peers and adults, in learning about the world around. Do not refuse the child's request to tell about the object that interested him or show the thing that is simply inaccessible to him in terms of physical parameters. After all, developing, the son or daughter will be confident in himself, which means that in the future he will be able to stand up for himself, which is very important for him.
2. Teaching your little one how to protect himself in difficult situations. This will be facilitated by public children's places: playground, the park, Kindergarten. It is there that moments may arise in which the young creature will learn to fight back against those children who offend him. You should not isolate the baby from the children's society - such a measure can then turn into the fact that the child will simply not be ready for the fact that he can wait without the supervision of people close to him. He must learn to independently be surrounded by peers, establish contact with them, and naturally adapt to new conditions. After all, in the future a school will come where there are already more rigid laws of life.
3. If possible, we liberate the crumbs in the following ways: this is the acquisition, for example, of the same microphone with which he could show his artistry in a close family circle, and the organization of mom and dad at home puppet theater, where a son or daughter could play out a familiar fairy tale as they want. Such simple actions of the older generation both develop the little man and “remove” shyness and timidity.
4. Try to introduce the child to the nursery more fiction . It can be, like poems, and fairy tales of famous writers. But at the same time, do not forget that acquaintance with the next fairy tale should not end with the usual storytelling, but with a detailed analysis of the characters, unless, of course, your child shows interest. Why is it necessary? And then, considering in detail the behavior of each main character, you thereby explain to the crumbs the elementary concepts of good and evil. It's no secret that many guys take an example from their favorite characters, whether they are characters from a cartoon or a poem. In any case, parents should, if possible, see in the plot of the work those actions of the characters that would suggest that they are brave and can perform noble deeds. Naturally, any literary creation of the writer will not work, where, for example, it is only about the nature and description of the forest inhabitants.
5. Try to organize those games at home in which your child would take on the role of leader. Such a binding role can contribute to the emergence of leadership qualities of self-confidence, purposefulness, etc.

Let every moment spent with your loved one bring you only pleasure and pleasant chores.

I like!

Excessive shyness indicates that the child has low self-esteem. And although he does not realize it, he feels great. Helping such a baby is to increase confidence in their own actions and deeds. And here the main principle will be - do no harm! Wrong words and methods will only aggravate the situation.

Is it worth paying attention?

On the one hand, modesty gives the girl charm. A shy boy is not annoying, pushy or arrogant. These are sympathetic and friendly people, always listen, come to the rescue. True friends come out of modest girls and boys.

On the other hand, it can be a disaster when a child is not able to communicate normally with children, play with them, make friends. He is intimidated by new people and surroundings. The kid is worried, but he can’t do anything with himself.

These small problems grow into huge ones in the future. Shy people often remain lonely, it is difficult for them to find a soul mate and start a family. Because of their timidity and stiffness, they are invisible and unsuccessful.

Man is a social being. He cannot live outside society. And the duty of adults is to help such a child. That is, to learn how to interact with people. And it is better to start doing this in early childhood.

Psychology: Shy children

Shyness, indecision in modern life, if not a drawback, then certainly a character trait that interferes in many ways. Where does excessive shyness come from in children, and how can we help a child?

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Signs of Shyness

A shy child is easy to distinguish from the crowd. When visiting, he does not leave his mother, hides behind her back, silent. Where all the children play, this kid sits quietly on the sidelines and watches sadly.

• General signs. Rapid pulse, muscle tension, profuse sweating, a bright blush are the first symptoms. They shackle the baby, do not let him relax. As a result, the child feels severe discomfort. This is joined by a quiet voice, excessive excitement, if they paid attention to it. The kid is cautious in actions. It’s easier for him not to do it at all in order to remain invisible.
• Self-criticism. Such children are unnecessarily demanding of their own person. They consider themselves inferior to others, inferior. This applies to both appearance and behavior. As a result of complexes, they move away from people even more.
• Closure. Closed children in any team. Pull into a conversation or engage in social activities them hard. When asked, they try to remain silent. fun games prefer solitude.
• Shyness. Any child will be happy when he is praised, but not this baby. It is easier for him to remain in the background than to receive a portion of a little attention. Public praise for him is stressful.
• Shyness. Fear of novelty and the public. New people, places, any unfamiliar situation. The kid is trying to get away from her, to hide. He feels calm only in familiar surroundings.
• Indecision. It is difficult for such a child to make decisions. He feels insecure in his own actions and thoughts. He is tormented by doubts whether he is doing the right thing or not. Even small tasks cause huge difficulties.
• Speech disorder. These children are in ordinary life unsociable, they don’t talk to strangers - they are shy. Speaking in public is contraindicated for them. Fear and anxiety can lead to stuttering and speech stuttering.

Where does shyness come from?

To help a child overcome excessive modesty and insecurity, you need to know the reason for its origin. Sometimes, by eliminating the source, the problem itself disappears.

• Heredity. If close relatives in the family, including parents, suffered from shyness, the baby could inherit this quality.
• Due to temperament. Phlegmatic and melancholy people are naturally prone to shyness. These types of temperament are also characterized by introversion. That is, they are focused not on external communication with other people, but on their inner world.
• Parent example. Children learn to interact with society, repeating the behavior of adults. If any of the relatives in the family has this quality, the child could copy it.
• Upbringing. Sometimes parents themselves, without suspecting it, bring up shyness in the baby. Criticism, frequent punishments, prohibitions without explanation form a certain behavior of the child. He tries to meet the expectations of adults.
• Cruelty. When there is an unfavorable situation in the family, there is psychological pressure, tyranny or assault, the baby closes, grows shy and stiff.
• Long term isolation. In other words, lack of experience. This occurs when the child is often sick and sits at home. The reason may be the closed intra-family policy of the family. Parents spent little time on the communication of the baby with other children.
• Hyper-care. As a kind of special (intentional) isolation. it overprotection relatives and friends over the child. It occurs in overly anxious and suspicious parents. Fearing for the health of the baby, or that he may be offended, adults deliberately do not allow contact with strangers. It is common for parents who suffer from overprotection to keep their children in “home confinement”.

Shy child: a future loser?

How to help a child?

The child cannot cope with this task on his own. And in the future, a small problem can turn into a big tragedy. What should parents do?

1. Praise. Cheer and encourage the child verbally: “You will succeed!”, “You are so smart!”, “I am proud of you!”. Do this as often as possible. When the baby feels supported loving parents, it gives confidence.
2. Show how important it is. Ask your child's opinion on a particular issue. When choosing clothes, any purchases for the house, a surprise for dad, grandmother. Let the kid feel that he is considered, that his opinion is important. Thus, children's self-esteem grows.
3. Show that adults are wrong too. And there is nothing wrong with that. Parental authority is of great importance for the baby. Seeing that even adults make mistakes, the child will have a different attitude to his own failures. Teach him not to dwell on mistakes, but to try to correct them.
4. Practice playfully. Children try on social roles through play. Sharpen your social interaction skills story games: “Visiting”, “In the clinic”, “Bus”, “Toys go to kindergarten”. A child without fear and anxiety can try himself in any way. Here you can rehearse the use of polite words, how to make acquaintances, the rules of behavior in public places and more.
5. Give orders. Simple tasks that the child can complete independently. Start with the simplest: give money to the seller at the checkout, hand over the item to an adult, help collect necessary products in the shop. And be sure to praise.
6. Visit crowded places. Being in places where children gather, the child gets used to being in society. In addition, he sees patterns of behavior of other kids: how they communicate, get to know each other, interact. No need to insist on playing with children, let him watch. Over time, he himself will become interested in trying. But you need to be in such places often.
7. Invite the children over. The child feels more confident in his territory. Here he is the master, here everything is familiar to him. It is easier for a baby to decide on contact with people surrounded by familiar environments and toys.

"Child psychologist's advice" How to overcome shyness in children?

Parenting Mistakes

A timid, modest child is easily hurt. He closes himself from others, but he hears and understands everything. Sometimes relatives and relatives themselves, without realizing it, provoke his shy behavior.

1. The desire to change the child. Adults specifically create situations that the baby is most afraid of. They focus on the problem, discuss it out loud, ask to tell the rhyme to the public. For a shy baby, this is stressful. The effect will be the opposite of what is expected. The child will close even more and stop trusting his parents.
2. They don't pay attention.“He is like that!” or “Grow up, he will change!”. Ignoring is also a mistake. The situation itself will not change. This will develop into a complex with which he will not be able to cope on his own. The kid can remain shy, lonely and unhappy for the rest of his life.
3. Expecting a quick effect. Even following all the rules and precautions, do not expect a quick result. The child needs time. In each case individually. Don't force things. Create conditions, encourage the slightest achievements and his first independent attempts. Be your child's friend!

What absolutely cannot be done

• Criticize.
• Compare with other children.
• Shame publicly.
• Focus on the problem.

Many complexes of people are rooted in childhood. Therefore, the responsibility for timely assistance to a small loved one falls on the shoulders of parents. The sooner an adult pays attention and helps the baby, the easier and faster the child will step over the “shy” stage of development.

Shyness is usually one of the defense mechanisms. Many have often noticed how funny kids get lost in kindergarten at a matinee when they read a poem or hide behind their mother's skirt when strangers try to talk to them. Shy children say little, do little, hide in some secluded place, trying to become as invisible to prying eyes as possible. With parents, grandparents, and with those whom they know well, such children easily make contact, behave completely normally. But as soon as they find themselves in an unfamiliar place, among strangers, they become shy and get lost. How to overcome shyness in a child?

Shy by inheritance

Psychologists do not say with absolute certainty that there is a silt gene for shyness. However, shy parents produce the same offspring. It is not known whether this character trait is transmitted at the genetic level or whether children learn the behavior of their parents in the process of life, but the fact remains. The timid behavior of one or both parents is perceived by the child as the norm and is not subject to dispute.

Do not confuse modesty and shyness

If a child shows shyness, his parents treat it differently. Some reproach the child for his character. Others see nothing wrong with this and even encourage shyness, mistaking it for modesty.

Humility and shyness are two different things. A person can be modest, calm, but at the same time firm and self-confident. And behind the shyness lies low self-esteem and dislike for oneself.

Find causes and help

Experts believe that the main reason for shyness is the low self-esteem of the child, which is most often formed in the family. Many adults, in order not to spoil their child, create an atmosphere of prohibitions and a complete “no” around him.

It happens that parents do not praise their child, often pull him up, tell him to shut up. Parents do it casually, forgetting about what was said after a couple of minutes, but this splinter can remain in a child's soul for a lifetime. Such children are afraid to ask, knowing that they will be refused, they are afraid to speak first, because they are certainly told to be silent, they are the first not to make contact with their peers for fear that they will be repulsed.

If you notice that your child is painfully shy, look at your relationship with him from the outside. Are you being too hard on him? Are you banning too much? Or tell him that he is somehow worse than the rest? Or maybe you have grown a “home flower” and you shouldn’t so zealously fence it off from the outside world?

Try to remember yourself as a child. Most likely, you yourself, for any reason, were also shy and hid behind your mother, and when you grew up, you never opened or expressed yourself, being afraid of being rejected. If you were then taught to overcome shyness and love yourself, who can say how positive your life would have been?

If a child is not confident in himself, is dissatisfied with his appearance, the results of his own work, or is sure in advance that something will not work out for him, help him feel his importance. Every child has many excellent traits that no one else has, and your task is to help him find these traits in himself and believe in himself.

Teach your child to communicate, but remember that shy comrades are incredibly vulnerable creatures, so never reproach him for being shy. Help your child to communicate.

For example, instruct him to buy something on his own in the store or pay for the bus fare, if you are walking in the yard where there are a lot of kids, help him meet someone. Thus, children can be involved in any everyday situation where strangers will be present. Never leave a shy child alone in a difficult situation for him.

Convince him that he is good and smart, or at least no worse than the rest, encourage and praise your baby more often. At the beginning, he will internally shrink and look back at you, but as they say, patience and work will give their results.

Most likely, the baby simply did not acquire the necessary social skills. Most often, these children prefer to communicate with adults, which is quite understandable. With them it is very convenient to remain small, not responsible for anything, always have privileges and shift the initiative to others. If a child feels comfortable only among adults, do not rush to write him down as a child prodigy - most likely, this is a sign of infantilism. Special attention must be paid to this so that infantilism does not take root and become a stable trait of character.

Why do some children grow up shy and timid?

The main enemy of the independence of the child is the overprotection of adults. If the parents decide everything for him, warn all his desires, try to protect him as much as possible from any negative events, from the bad influence of the street, the baby grows not even shy, but anxious and fearful. He does not make contact because strangers seem dangerous to him. Such children refuse to go to kindergarten, and if they are nevertheless brought there, they often cry for a long time, worrying that they have been abandoned, they keep to themselves and look at other children as enemies.

It is no less harmful to make excessive demands on the child, to surround it with prohibitions and restrictions. If you are too strict with your baby and make comments all the time, he may refuse any kind of activity, including acquaintance and communication, simply out of fear of making mistakes. When such a child is brought to me for a consultation, he stands next to his mother, his head bowed, sometimes glancing at me from under his brows. It would never occur to him to walk around the office, look at the toys. At the same time, his mother constantly makes comments to him, pulls him up: “How are you standing? Straighten up! Get your hands out of your pockets."

Both overprotectiveness and excessive exactingness extinguish cognitive activity, initiative and the ability to enter into relationships with peers in the baby. Therefore, if you think that your child is too timid and shy, first of all, analyze your behavior.

How else can you help your child overcome their shyness?

• Never say in front of a child that he is shy, then he will not perceive himself as such.
• If you have a phlegmatic or melancholic child, give him time to get used to the new situation: take the “first blow” of meeting with a stranger and after a while, as if remembering, try quietly, without focusing on it , connect the baby to common activities.
• Praise your baby in front of other people as often as possible. Such praise increases the level of self-esteem of the child and forms a trusting attitude towards others.
• Encourage your baby to communicate with peers - on the playground, in the development center, etc. Be sure to visit. And host: in the role of the owner, the child is guaranteed to be in the spotlight.
• Set an example of communication: let the child see how you establish contacts with people.
• Before going for a walk, talk with your baby about several scenarios for playing together. “You can take some molds with you and invite someone to make a fish too. And you will get an aquarium. “How many cars will you take? Which one will you play? Now let's choose which car you can give another boy to play with. You and I will make a road in the sandbox, and cars will drive along it.”
• Situations in which the child may feel uncomfortable, play at home. For example, like this: “I am Petya, you are Vasya. You have a very interesting machine, but I don't know how I can ask you for it. What do you think should be done? Come on, I'll come up and say: "Hello! My name is Petya. And what is your name? Can I play with your car? Or let's change. Look what a dinosaur I have! ”In the same way, you can play situations at home that arise in kindergarten.