Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. Today's episode, seen but not heard, helping your child find their voice. I want to help all of you who have a child who seems to stand on the sidelines, in the shadows, constantly keeps their head under the parapet. Now this might show up in friendships, maybe there's a reluctance to give their opinion for fear of being left out without a friend, or maybe they don't fully get stuck into soft play and instead watch others. Choosing to always stand by you and not engage unless you are with them, or they just seem to be the quiet observer as life appears. Now, before I start, I want to emphasise a few things, because I think these are really crucial things for us to have in the back of our minds, because it's a big piece here, is that number one is some children are naturally, by their personality and their temperament, more reserved than others. And the same is true with adults. Sometimes these children might be called slow to warm up, or they might be called slow to wake up, or they might be called shy, whatever terminology has been used, but it's just part of who they are. It's their personality, it's their temperament. So the next one leads on from that is that we cannot and we should not seek to change a child or an individual's fundamental temperament and personality and their sense of self. Now this can be particularly challenging if as a parent you're confident, you're outgoing, you're sociable. And you find that you have a child who's the exact opposite. You know, you see the characteristics are exact opposite. This episode is about teaching our children the skills so that when the time comes, or when they want to, or when they need to, they're able to express themselves rather than always allowing things to happen to them. And that's a really important reframe. Often when I'm giving talks about raising confident or resilient children, I will get parents asking me saying, my child is so capable. They're so wonderful, but they're very reserved. They're always on the sidelines. They don't take a chance. And so I want us to really remember this. This is not necessarily about changing who they are at their core. It's equipping them with skills. So instead of looking at it, that there's this problem that they're not sociable, they're not as outgoing, they don't put themselves forward. Instead, we consider it as a, how can I teach my child and equip my child with the skills so that when they want to, when they choose to, when they need to, they're able to stand their ground. They're able to use their voice. They're able to come out from behind the shadows. And that's what we're looking at. So the first thing I would say is that we want to create an environment at home where we are able to encourage all of our children to use their voice. Now, home is a safe space, and it's also a place for children to be able to learn new skills. So it's a wonderful place to start. So rather than us focusing in on the situations outside of the home where our child might be more reserved, if we can equip them with the skills, if they can practice at home in that safe space, if they can learn in that particular place, then that will be really helpful for them to then generalise it into the situations that they find particularly difficult. Now, home is the safe space. Home is a great place to practice. And yet also, home can be a space where our children's definition of themselves, the role that they believe that they have, can also be forged. And so it can also present its own challenges. So we want to be mindful just when we consider our home environment. If you think about it as the analogy that your child is sort of a seed that is germinating and growing, the soil, which is your kind of the family dynamic, is going to impact the way that your child, in terms of their personality and their traits and their temperament, is then going to grow and the situations that they have them within. If you have got a household, through siblings, through the dynamics of yourself and your partner's personality and temperament, where let's say you're a family of four, and your child that you're listening to this podcast about, and you're thinking, my goodness me, that absolutely resonates. And all the rest of you, the three that are remaining, are all outgoing, sociable, and are not in that reserved temperament. Then that, as an environment for your child to be raised in, it's not that you're doing anything wrong, but we have to be mindful that if we've got a reserved child, but we've got all of these confident, outgoing, sociable individuals that are keen to get their opinion heard, that it can then actually amplify the challenges that you're more reserved below the parapet, on the sidelines, observing child can be. So we want to be mindful if we've got some children, or that we are, that are more outspoken than others, to ensure that everyone at home is given an opportunity. So we might create some activities to help our children understand what this is like. So for example, if we've got some really outspoken individuals at home, one thing that we can do that I've mentioned previously before, and other episodes, is about a wooden spoon. And the idea behind the wooden spoon is simply, you can't speak unless you're holding the wooden spoon. So you can do this as exercises, because what it does do is it's really helpful for your more reserved child to then be able to know that I now have the wooden spoon. There is no fear that I'm going to be interrupted. I can then practice using my voice. What's also helpful with that particular thing is if you've got children who are constantly speaking, they're not going to be able to speak, they're not going to be able to talk, they're not going to be able to speak, they're not going to be able to talk, they're not going to be able to talk, they're not going to be able to talk, they're not going to be able to talk, interrupting, talking over, not listening, because they're so keen to impart all of the information and all the knowledge and all of the exciting things that they want to talk to you about. It could also be really helpful from that temperament of actually, I'm now practicing listening skills because I don't have the wooden spoon, and therefore it's my turn to listen. So that can also be really helpful. The other thing you might also want to consider is using my conversation starters. Now, these are in the resource list, library. So if you are a regular listening, listener to the podcast, and you've previously downloaded resources, then you just log in as normal. And what you will be able to do is you will be able to search conversation starters. If you are just listening to the podcast for the first time, or maybe you've listened, but you've never gone into the resource library, it is a free resource library. Most podcast episodes, probably about 95% have a free downloadable printable and they're all in the library. So to access them, you go to www.drmaryhand.com forward slash library. You'll be asked to log in if you already have a login, or you can sign up by just popping your email address, and then you get instant access to all the resources and they are searchable. So you can just do that. And the reason why you might consider the conversation starters is that they often, they ponder a question, they ponder a question, they ponder a question, so for example, you know, one of the questions I think is around, you know, if you could be a parent for the day, or you could be in charge for the day, what would you do? And that's a really good thing that you can kind of ponder. And what then happens is that everyone has a chance to speak their mind, you know, to say what they would do. And again, that that helps your child practice in a safe environment, where we've instilled the wooden spoon, and maybe you even use the wooden spoon, so that they hold that wooden spoon when they respond to that question, gives them that practice in using using their voice. And the conversation starters, I think we've got, I want to say we've probably got about 30 or 45 in there. And you can either just print it on an A4 sheet of paper, or you can then cut them into these strips, and then they can be used as a lucky dip. So we want to maximise the environment at home, whilst just having a bit of a reflection and a bit of an audit about what things we might need to fine tune, tweak, address the home environment, that will help our quieter, more reserved, underneath the parapet, standing on the sidelines child to be able to practice those. So that's what that's the first thing. The second thing I want that I think is a really crucial thing to look at is, I want you to look for clues to assess if your child might also benefit from support in other areas too. So in other words, you're looking for cues to see, is the reason why my child stands on the sidelines? Is the reason why they don't put themselves forward so they don't use their voice fundamentally about my child's temperament? Or are there other areas that I can also focus on scaffolding and equipping and bolstering my child, which will also help them feel that they're then able to do that. And what you're really looking is to see whether there may be specific things around their self-belief, maybe, and that's to do with the narrative the conversations that they have in their head, which dictates how they think of themselves and their role. within the family and this is a whole big piece I've done a whole episode on this and it is a really kind of helpful thing to consider if you think of yourself as an adult and the role that was sort of either given to you explicitly or you had within your family dynamic and this is the same if you're an only child as well as if you've got if you've got siblings is that there would have been we get all sorts of labels you know where maybe we were told that we were the academic one the musical one the creative one and maybe we were sporty maybe we were lazy maybe we were helpful at all of those things at some point we pick up these sort of aspects of who we believe we are and the role within our family and that carries through in terms of your child's belief about themselves and then the narrative that they have about who they are and so when we're creating the environment at home it can be really helpful to consider what are the roles if I had to put a give it a label when I look at my children and I look at us as parents what roles do our children and we have and we see that played out quite a bit when you think about who your children go to in terms of who's the decision maker who's the empathizer who do they go to when they're feeling emotionally overwhelmed who do they go to when it comes to a who do they think is a bit more of a soft touch as in I won't ask that one because they'll probably say no but I know if I ask them they're much more likely to say yes so that's what I mean by roles and that can really play out beyond the home environment in terms of our children being able to use their voice but we're looking for for these clues is are there other things that we could be looking at do we need to redress how my child sees themselves within the home so maybe they see themselves as the quiet one because siblings are much more outspoken and so they never get a chance to talk so they just learn it's easier actually if I just say nothing then in which case we obviously want to find opportunities for them to use their voice and we also want to address how they may view themselves within the family the other things to look out for might be things around their self belief or their confidence and that could show up in a couple of ways you could notice that they make a lot of generalization and they make a lot of generalization and they make a lot of generalization negative statements about their capabilities or their ability so I am not good at or a dot dot dot that could be absolutely anything I'm not good at sport I'm not good at maths I'm not good at friendships I'm not good in social situations or they may give themselves specific concrete labels as such I'm lazy I'm emotional I'm angry whatever those might be so that could be a different thing or you may hear lots of statements where there's lots of comparisons so maybe they talk about another child either within the home so it could be a sibling or a friend and the capabilities they often talk about this other child's capabilities quite often so maybe they'll say things you know like oh my goodness me Tom is so brilliant at football oh good I'm never going to be as good as Tom Tom's so good at football so you know you might say you talk about Tom a lot and how great a footballer he is and I'm not good at football I'm not good at football I'm not good at it is is football important to you possibly you might say that because you notice that they're really trying to do it or it seems football is Tom's passion whereas your passion is Lego if you know that they already have a passion or you can use language around the fact that you know seems football is Tom's passion and you're not yet to find your passion and we all find it at different times so it's looking at some of those things and then and then addressing those directly so the first one's the generalized negativity statements about who they are the second one is noticing these comparisons with the generalized negative statements and I know parents can find this one quite a difficult one to tackle because what will happen is our children will say I'm not good at or I'm I'm lazy or I'm emotional or I'm anxious whatever it might be and I know that parents will often find that when they try and address those statements head-on and we might say actually you're you may not be the best at x but you're brilliant at y that you often then get a bit a bit of resistance you'll either get the classic well you're bound to say that you're my parents or I'm not you know there'll be a definitive battling of that and certainly if you go back to some of my podcast episodes around confidence I deal with this in much more detail but I want to sort of touch on it in this particular episode is one of the things that we we have to remember is that when it comes to compliments when we're when it comes to good stuff and it's the same for us we're a little bit like non-stick pans they tend all of these you know us reminding our children or us being reminded of compliments they tend to kind of slide off oh no I'm not you you're looking fabulous oh this this old thing oh my goodness no I look awful I'm so tired those sorts of things tend to be the automatic and yet what tends to happen is all of the negative things that we see are always they're like mud they stick to the wall yep so we remember all of those and we notice those so sometimes when your child is doing a lot of these generalized negative statements it's sometimes better rather than well it's interesting that you say that you're really rubbish at maths and rather than trying to say but you're not which they're much less likely to to accept instead kind of ask them what's interesting that you think you're really rubbish at that what makes you think that and then you can probe a little bit around what that's interesting then you know what's your evidence for that where is that when has that happened so what you're trying to do is just begin that thought process and you're not going to go in down a big rabbit hole with this you're not going to be challenging them a lot but it's this whole idea of like we're just putting a small little thought there that isn't one that directly challenges them but has their brain beginning to think that there might be an alternative belief system out there and it's that just drip drip drip slow drip drip that that can be particularly helpful and there is a podcast episode on how we can do that effectively so that's a good way of dealing with the generalized negative statements the comparison is this you know i've noticed that you're doing that you that so you talk about so and so a lot is that also something that's really important to you or that seems to be so-and-so's passion your passion is x or if they haven't found a passion that so-and-so's passion you haven't found yours yet and do you know what it's okay you know we all find our passions at different times i found my passion at x your other parent found their passion at y your uncle or aunt or grandparents so it's trying to help them see that it comes in time the third thing that i think is is one that is really helpful to look out for because this is often one of the reasons why the narrative behind why children tend to be that little bit more reserved if your child is sort of tends to be a little bit more reserved to be on those sidelines is that there is a fear of judgment so you might hear them say things like i can't do that because people will laugh at me so you often have that you know i can't possibly wear that to school on dress down day because people will laugh at me or i can't say that i really enjoy x and that this is my passion because that's so nerdy and people will think i'm a complete nerd or a weirdo so it's really looking for some of the statements that they might have around this idea of fear of judgment what might happen if i talk about something that is really something that interests me and people don't want to be my friend what if i really voice my opinion about something and then i end up with no friends at all it's much better for me to say nothing so looking out for some of those statements because once we've if we've noticed those it's much easier for us to then understand that we want to also tackle some of these particular these particular narratives that our children have so we're creating the environment at home because that's a great place for them to practice and to learn and then we're looking for clues and if you're noticing any of the generalized negative talk the comparison or the fear of judgment then go to a podcast episode that i've done that is really drilled down on these so that you can get some more strategies around how you can do that alongside what we're covering today so the third thing now to be looking for is looking out for opportunities for your child to play out a different role in your family or a different belief system about their capabilities so if you have already decided that actually we've got some pretty headstrong opinionated people in this family and this child doesn't really often get an opportunity to lead or to voice their opinion because everyone else is jumping in far too quickly you might then create a family outing where this that child that is that that doesn't ordinarily get the opportunity is the one who organizes it so you're really allowing them and providing them this safe environment with the rules of engagement for the rest of the family and this is where family planning family meetings are are so helpful it's like we're going to go on we're going out on saturday we're going to for three hours between you know after lunch we're going to go out and jessica's going to be in charge of organizing what we're going to be doing now it's really important because Jessica is in charge that she gets to choose we just do what we're asked to we can't there's no option to say no there's no option to modify it because we will all get our chance to organise a Saturday afternoon activity at some point this is just that Jessica gets to go first and what we're going to do is we're all going to concentrate on getting back home and afterwards we're going to say three things that we liked about it something along those lines where you are making really clear what the ground rules are managing everyone's expectations and actively asking everyone to seek out a way of giving some feedback about the things that they enjoyed about it so that that then affirms the choices that Jessica has made that doesn't mean that you're not going to get a certain element of grumbling and whinging and whining from siblings that's fine that's fine to be expected that's part of a normal narrative but it's a safer environment a safer space for Jessica as well as providing her really valuable opportunities to be able to practice and she's much more likely to voice her opinion to assert herself with her siblings than she is going to be in the situations that she's being quiet so that's where we kind of build up that practice we build up a new set of connections within the brain and a new set of belief systems so she then has the courage and has built that at home she's much more likely to use that as and when in an environment where it matters more to her it's not that it doesn't matter at home but there's more you know the stakes are higher when they're in those ordinary social situations that involve other people for whom their opinion matters. So it's number three is looking for opportunities which then feeds into this providing them time to practice initially starting at home and then progressing to outside the home environment and what I would say here is that we we should be mindful of that it may take our child a little bit of time to warm up to it so for example if we've set them you know if we've been practicing using their voice and we've set them up to practice then we should be mindful of that it may take our child a little bit of time to warm up to it so for example if we've set them you know if we've been practicing using their voice at home and maybe the next step is that we want them to use their voice in a restaurant and maybe they they order they're going to order their own meal for example because we're doing that as a really great way of practicing using their voice with someone that they don't know because often their their nervousness is much more around new situations new people and so we've taken them to a restaurant that they're familiar with so at least we've reduced a bit of we've minimized a bit of that fear but the waiter waitress isn't someone that they've spoken to before so we've we want to be mindful of that warming up and so that warming up might be right before they come over let's practice you telling me what you're going to order for example you might do it that way and you might then afford them a little bit more time in terms of warm-up is would you like to be the first one to place your order because then you're not it depends on their narrative and what happens for them and then you're not overthinking it and you're not getting too caught and worried or would you rather be in the middle or at the end so we want to be mindful of that that you've heard other people and you've seen how warm this particular person is and then you're able to do it so we're really providing those opportunities and being mindful that they may take that little while to warm up and then the final one is always the case children are much more likely to do what they see than what we say is reflect on what you might be modeling particularly if you are well actually in both scenarios if you're someone who is quiet and more generally and tends to take a back seat tends not to use their voice to voice their opinions or their beliefs or what they think then consider how you might begin to show up and model this notion of being able to use your voice and express yourself in situations and then and have you know voice your opinions if you are someone who is very outgoing outspoken and much more gregarious and generally tends to offer an opinion and doesn't always listen then again be mindful of how you model that because that will be reinforcing the narrative and the fear that with your child that actually it's really difficult when i've got these people around me who are so capable and confident that it's actually easier for me just to stand on the sidelines so remember the five it's create the environment at home and use home as a real safe space to practice whilst also being aware of the dynamics within the house and how that might play out look for clues to see whether there are other skills that we need to be scaffolding here whether it's generalized negative statements whether it's comparison whether it's statements around fear of judgment we're looking for opportunities for our child to play out a different role within our family as well as looking for opportunities for them to address directly the situations which are new and often with people that they don't know where they're not necessarily able to use their voice in the same way and then create and maximize and optimize the opportunity so that your child can practice whilst being mindful that it may take them a bit of time to warm up and how might we address that directly with them so that they know there's no there's no urgency there's no time frame that you've got to do this we're here we're helping we're supporting you and we're helping you and then it's about reflecting on what we might be modeling so to grab the conversation starters do head over to my free resource library drmerryhand.com forward slash library and you'll get all of the details there to access that resource and all of the other resources and as ever if you have enjoyed this episode if you love listening if you automatically download or you have just found the how not to screw up your kids podcast i would be eternally grateful if you could spare a few moments to write a review and to rate the podcast and when you follow us it means that the podcast is already in your podcast library ready for you to listen to when you are ready so until next time
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