Every parent has their own style of raising children. Some are strict, others easygoing. There are those who set tight boundaries and those who go with the flow. We learn as we go, and ultimately we all have a common goal—to raise successful, happy young adults who will make a positive difference in this world. Whether we tend to be more of a helicopter parent or follow a more permissive parenting style, a common trait we share is that we want our kids to fit in, be accepted, and yes—perhaps even be popular.
Popularity has long been sought after by adolescents worldwide. Even as adults, we know who the popular moms and dads are within our school communities. Popular people seem to be people magnets and trendsetters. They always have someone to talk to at any social event, and even have people seemingly waiting in the wings to get their attention when they’re already engaged in conversation with another person. Loneliness does not appear to be a part of their repertoire and they make life look easy, breezy, and a constant joy ride.
In the 24 years I’ve been a mom, I’ve learned a lot more about popularity than I ever thought I would thanks to my eight kids. I’ll admit, several of them were very popular in school and still are in their young adult lives, but for others it didn’t come easy. Their individual personalities play a big part in their social interactions, but what has been fascinating for me as an involved parent, and one who considers herself pretty outgoing, is that my kids who aren’t necessarily popular at all are more happy and well-adjusted. If you have a child who isn’t exactly thriving in his or her social environments, Mighty Mommy shares a handful of ways you can be supportive and help them feel better among their peers.
5 Ways to Support an Unpopular Child
- Tip #1: Understand Your Child’s Social Status
- Tip #2: Offer Social Situations
- Tip #3: Teach Them to Improve Their Likability
- Tip #4: Strive for Friendships
- Tip #5: Help Your Child Grow Emotionally
Let's take a closer look at each.
Tip #1: Understand Your Child’s Social Status
We as parents know our kids better than anyone, so if your child is struggling to connect with other kids her age, or isn’t being invited to birthday parties and other social outings, do a little investigating to figure out what’s going on. If you have younger kids, observe their interactions at the community playground. Does your son know how to join in with the other kids on the play equipment or does he prefer to keep to himself on the other side of the park? When you pick your tween up after school, does your daughter walk out talking and giggling with her peers or is she often alone? Many times a child is just socially awkward and needs coaching and examples of social cues. When you leave the playground you could casually talk about the kids you saw playing on the jungle gym and offer a suggestion for next time. “Bobby, those little boys were having so much fun playing Ninja Warriors at the playground today. If we see them there tomorrow, I bet they’d love to have you join them.”
If your child has a hard time making friends, it may have nothing to do with his personality. Trouble with forming friendships can be the result of learning and attention issues which could require intervention from your child’s school or input from your child's pediatrician.
Eileen Kennedy-Moore, a clinical psychologist and co-author of Smart Parenting for Smart Kids, says children start to worry about friendship issues around the age of seven, when they enter an extremely judgmental phase of their cognitive development, but parental anxiety about a child’s social skills can kick in much earlier.
Kennedy-Moore has a great tip for parents to help their shy children open up a bit more. She says that parents should privately help kids practice making eye contact, smiling, speaking loudly, and using the other person’s name. “You have to work with a child’s personality, rather than against her personality,” she says. “Not everyone is born a bounding-into-the-room extrovert.”
This advice was exactly what we did with three of my kids who were all speech-delayed. Because they didn’t talk for well after a year of the projected milestone (most kids start verbally communicating by age two, and three of mine were delayed until almost age four), their father and I continually role played basic social interactions with them on a daily basis. This was awkward for all of us at first, but soon it became second nature and it really brought them out of their shell and to this day they are very comfortable in social settings and can hold their own with peers and adults.
Tip #2: Create Social Settings
Children need to be around other children. Begin in the toddler years to schedule plenty of play dates for your children. Being around others allows your child to learn valuable skills such as caring, empathy, sympathy, sharing, and bonding. By interacting with others from an early age, children learn to be social.
As a parent, you can offer to arrange playdates for your younger kids or be available to drive your tweens/teens to friend’s houses or the movies. Some kids just don’t have any way to logistically get to these destinations, which limits their ability to have a better social life.
We had an advantage in our family because our kids that happened to be popular would bring their friends to our home quite often. This gave my kids who struggled with social situations the opportunity to mingle a bit with the popular crowd. Just having a few minutes to chat with kids they normally wouldn’t hang out with boosted their confidence quite a bit.
Tip #3: Teach Them to Improve Their Likability
One of my kids is currently a junior in college and he was assigned to read Popular: The Power of Likability in a Status-Obsessed World by Mitch Prinstein. He enjoyed it and thought it had some great concepts about the topic that could be applied for both personal and business relationships. When I perused some articles written about the book, I found something I felt was a homerun—the author recommends focusing on improving your likability, not your popularity.
Prinstein writes that we should make "efforts to try and do things that are attentive to others' needs and to show people that we genuinely want to interact with them, not use them for our purposes. Because the more likable you are, the more advantage you have in every sphere. I mean, it's amazing how much we give the benefit of the doubt to likable people, and how much we are willing to do for them and how much we just naturally think good things about them."
Prinstein said likability is one of "the most valuable social commodities" in all aspects of society. "We should be investing in it as much as we invest in anything else that we hope will help our lives."
Focus on improving your likability, not your popularity.
Tip #4: Strive for Friendships
Help your child strive to enjoy friendships rather than be popular. Being unpopular does not mean you are unlikeable or unable to establish friendships.
In my episode on ways to help your child make friends and fit in, I referenced one of my five sons who was having difficulty connecting with any group at school because he wasn’t athletically inclined. His passion was (and still is) building things. He has an engineer’s brain and can construct nearly anything just by looking at the pieces and logically figuring out how it will work. His passion as a kid was Legos—the more complicated the set, the better.
I reached out to his teachers about his social struggles and they helped guide him towards kids that were likeminded. He then joined the Boy Scouts and now has a small, core group of friends that are getting ready to go to college next year, but will most likely be lifelong buddies.
Tip #5: Help Your Child Emotionally Grow
When kids understand their emotions and how to respond to others, they have an essential skill for life. This is known as emotional intelligence and indeed plays a big part in your child’s likability factor.
In my podcast on ways to raise a caring child, I shared several tips on how to teach children to be aware of how they treat others. My favorite tip was to teach empathy by example. We are our kids' biggest role models and teachers. They watch our every move and even if they don’t comment on what we are doing in front of them, they are quietly observing.
My example was dining out with my family in a very busy restaurant. The waitress brought out several wrong meals. After growing hungrier and waiting for an unusually long time to be served, receiving the wrong entrees added salt to our already open wounds. Instead of carping “What’s wrong with you—this isn’t what we ordered!,” you can model patience and understanding. Say, “Excuse me, my kids ordered chicken, not beef. Can you please take these back and exchange them for the right meals?” Then explain the situation to your kids and ask them to consider what it's like in someone else's shoes. "How do you think it would feel to be that busy at your job?”
When you use frustrating, real-life situations as teachable moments and model with empathy, your kids will follow suit.
How do you help your child have more positive social interactions? Share your thoughts in the comments section at http://ift.tt/1zMEe2L, post your ideas on the Mighty Mommy Facebook page. or email me at mommy@quickanddirtytips.com. Visit my family-friendly boards at http://ift.tt/1wyJKr5
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