 How can we help anxious children thrive in social situations? That's what we're going to be exploring in this week's episode of Pookey Ponders. Let's dive straight in. Okay, so to start off, let's have a little bit of a think about anxious feelings and begin to understand them a little bit. So anxiety, it's a common emotion, a common feeling, especially for children in social situations. It stands to reason. They're doing new things in new places with new people for the first time, sometimes that's scary for any of us. So we need to help to normalise that anxiety, help them to realise that it's okay, it's normal, it's healthy, in fact, that they have some of these feelings, whilst also they're focusing on building on that resilience, enabling them to feel the fear and do it anyway if that feels appropriate and it's something that they and we are motivated by. Understanding anxious feelings and exploring them a little bit, picking them apart, exploring them, seeing what they feel like and look like with our children and young people can help us and them to kind of empathise with those experiences and to see them through a positive kind of happier lens where we're curious and we're exploring what we might do differently and how we might be able to move forward towards shared goals without blame or shame or judgement or any of those things. So get curious about anxiety first of all, try to understand those anxious feelings whilst aiming to create an environment where those anxious feelings are validated rather than dismissed. So we're getting curious, we're putting the lens on them, we're looking at them, we're wondering what they feel like, what they look like, what's triggering them and what we can maybe be doing to overcome them without ever trying to place blame, shame, any kind of judgement on those feelings, we just notice them, get curious. Okay, so our first steps here in terms of enabling our children to thrive in social situations, we've understood anxiety a little bit, we've got curious about it. We're then going to want to think about creating a supportive environment. So creating safe, welcoming spaces for anxious children will help them begin to build their confidence. They need to do that with safe faces, faces they know in safe spaces and places that they perhaps feel a bit more familiar with. This is our starting point, our kind of baseline. If we can do it here, then we can think about beginning to make that world a little bit bigger. So creating that safe, welcoming space. We want to acknowledge their fears, we're going to notice them, we're going to name them so we can try and tame them, but again without judgement. This is crucial all the way through. We're going to notice the fear, we're going to notice the anxiety, the stress, the worries, the concerns, we're going to notice them, we're going to be curious about them but we're never going to judge, we're never going to enable that blame, that shame to creep into this. We should be looking to approach all of our interactions with the child with regards to trying to access these social situations that might feel so impossible with sensitivity and crucially patience. We're looking to create that atmosphere of trust between them and us. They need to know that we're on their team, we're not going to hurry them, we're not going to let them down, we're not going to trick them or cajole them, we're there by their side supporting them to do this at a pace that feels possible and safe, crucially safe for them. In order to help to build this rapport, build this trust, build those bridges, we can be practicing our active listening, making sure that child feels really heard in whichever way best works for you and the child. This is going to give the child the opportunity to express themselves, building on that curiosity about the anxiety, helping us to understand what are the barriers here to this child accessing this situation. Because social anxiety takes many different forms and there could be all sorts of different reasons why this child in this situation on this day is finding it hard. There is no one size fits all, we need to understand exactly what kind of monster we're trying to overcome today. Other things that we can do to create that supportive environment are offering choices within a controlled framework to empower our anxious children. They feel like they've got some control over the situation, but rather than giving them a completely free hand when their brain might be all woo and wah and all over the place when they're quite anxious, instead giving them a choice between A and B, C and D. They're still making choices, they're still feeling control, they feel empowered in the situation, but we've done that in a really controlled way and with a framework that we perhaps thought about ahead of time. We can also take steps to reduce any overwhelming stimuli in social settings. So this is going to depend on the child, but for example, if like many of my listeners, you're supporting neurodivergent children, we might be thinking about how we can reduce stimuli such as vocal auditory stimuli, using loops or ear defenders, for example, to dampen down those sounds, or we might be using dark glasses in bright settings to try and remove some of the visual stimuli. Just remembering that we're focusing here on the social aspect of things, and if there are other things that are going to be causing overwhelm, any steps we can take to reduce those stimuli to prevent that overwhelm is going to help us with our other aims here of engaging socially. Further things that can help here, as ever, my favourite routines. Routines and predictability will always ease anxiety. Things that feel familiar, that feel known, where we know what to expect, are less scary for us. So we need to take away as much guesswork as possible as we can from these newer situations that a child might be entering into. Think about if there are familiar routines or rituals that you can introduce here to perhaps make the unknown feel known. You can also think about looking ahead, looking at the place that you're going to go, thinking about the people that you're going to be with role playing, this kind of thing. We're just looking to make it feel less new. The familiar is less scary than the unfamiliar. How can you help your child to feel slightly more familiar with this new situation? As the adult, you can also think about role modelling, the skills that you're hoping to see in your child. So think about what you're looking to actually achieve in these new social situations. What are your hopes for the child that you're supporting? And how can you, as the adult, actually role model those behaviours, those actions, those attitudes that you're hoping to see? Now, if you find this hard, just take a step back for a moment and consider whether what you're asking and expecting of the child is reasonable and realistic. And also though, remember, it's okay if you find it hard, but you still have these hopes for the child and maybe the child has these hopes for themselves, then the thing that you can role model is your vulnerability and how you overcome these obstacles. These are really important lessons for your child too. So we've kind of got curious about the anxiety. We've thought about building a supportive environment in which we can begin to explore new things. Next, we want to build up those social skills gradually. So we can use things like graded exposure, where we gradually get more and more exposed to the scary thing over time, a very, very well accepted practice within treating and working with anxiety that can work really well with some children. If the thing that we're hoping to expose them to is actually safe, we need to be sure before we start any kind of graded exposure where we're trying to gradually increase a child's interaction in a certain environment, we need to make sure their needs are actually met, that they're actually going to feel safe when they're exposed. The idea about kind of graded exposure, gradual exposure, exposure ladders, however you want to think about it, where we basically increase how much we do a thing over time. The whole reason behind that is because we can only maintain anxiety at a certain point for a certain period of time. And if the anxiety is kind of irrational and we're actually safe, then gradually being more exposed to this actually safe situation, we kind of go through this exposure curve, anxiety curve, and our feelings, those anxious feelings, both physiologically and psychologically, will reduce over time. So we'll be exposed to the scary thing and we feel that big spike of anxiety, but with exposure and with a bit of time, things begin to calm because we're actually safe. And we can kind of do this and build up our tolerance and build up our exposure over time. And that's all good as long as we're actually safe. What happens if the situation, the thing that we're trying to do graded exposure with isn't actually safe, is that we then make things worse. Because instead of the child's brain and body going, oh, okay, okay, I'm feeling really anxious, but nothing terrible has actually happened. It's okay. Take away your fingers from the big red panic button brain. It's going to be all right. It's going to be all right and gradually calming. If instead the child is actually not safe, then that big red panic button is going to be pressed and we're just going to exacerbate things and they're going to be even more anxious next time. So grad gradual exposure, stepped exposure, this is good so long as the child is safe and motivated. You can't do this to a child. You need to do it with them. They need to be motivated to make this change. So if we accept that this is a good thing that we want to do with this child, that they are motivated, they want to learn to do this new thing and we think that their needs will be met and they will be safe, then we can break down social interactions into a series of manageable steps and exactly what those steps will look like should be negotiated between you and the child and each step should feel tiny enough that it can be taken confidently and it should feel sustainable. But things we might do when approaching a new social situation might include just first talking about it in the abstract, not being anywhere near it, just talking about what might happen, what it might be like, who's going to be there, what we might smell and see and so on. Next, we might watch that social situation. So be an observer from afar with no pressure at all to join in and then we might take a next step that would be like a low stakes try. So picking a right moment to join in a tiny, tiny bit perhaps, very much scaffolded and supported at that moment and we gradually build it up over time. So the key thing here is those tiny steps. Each step must feel tiny to the child, so tiny that they feel absolutely certain they can do it. We then sit with that step for a while until it feels really comfortable before we ever think about moving on. Sometimes we'll move back and forth between the steps. We may need to go backwards before we go forwards. It's a gradual thing. It will take time. We can get a little bit creative in terms of enabling our anxious children to practice social interactions, to practice these skills, to try them out, try and make it fun, try and think about what's going to motivate this child with these other children perhaps that they want to spend time with or in this place. So you can do anything here like get brainstorming with the child, think about what would be fun. Fun is a really good way into this. What do they want to be able to do? But things that often kind of come up in these situations would be things like adventure themed scavenger hunts or doing interactive table playing board games for small groups might be nice or exploring in nature or doing outdoor activities with friends if that's the kind of thing that floats this child's boat maybe quite literally. They might want to do like cooking or baking collaborations or get together with friends to create video content or put on a puppet show. It doesn't matter what the thing is. It's about finding something that this kid really wants to do that they think would be fun, that speaks to them and their passions and their skills and their interests so that they're motivated to want to try. And you can also notice what's working. So just noticing in day to day life and in any interactions that you do try to support, notice what's working well and then very, very slowly just start to build on this. One little note here is don't get too excited by the tiny moments at the beginning because you don't want to pile in and put all the pressure on. When your child does begin perhaps to interact for the first time you might want to whoop and cheer and jump around and tell them well done and that's amazing but if you do that at the wrong moment it can just pile on the pressure and suddenly everything falls apart. Instead just a little bit of quiet noticing later or a little note to them or an emoji or you know little tight like they need to know you noticed but if you make too big a deal of it with some children it can actually cause backward steps because it kind of heaps the pressure on for it to happen again. So notice quietly is often the way forwards. You all know your child that you're supporting better than I could so it might be different for the child you're supporting but for many socially anxious children big praise, big pressure on the great thing they've done isn't always going to be helpful so just be a little bit mindful there. Something else that we can do to support our anxious children overcoming their social anxiety is to promote positive friendships. So building positive friendships is a great starting point for easing social anxiety so even one friend for a child who they feel comfortable with can make a really big difference to their ability to begin to access social situations and to do the things that perhaps they're really keen to do. We're looking as ever for quality not quantity in these friendships so look for that one special friend or that tiny group which this child feels really safe with and think about how we can utilize this friendship these bonds in order to help this child to access the things that they're keen to do. It may be that for the child you have in mind there aren't those relationships yet but you're keen to build them so we can be looking to support this as a first step towards then later social interaction more widely by doing things like helping children to build meaningful friendships through interest-based clubs or activities finding the thing that they're actually passionate about that they would talk about all the day long and hooking them up with other kids in a group perhaps or even in a one-to-one to talk about that thing or to do that thing together. We can practice with our child conversation starters how to start conversations with another child and think about role-playing that out so that they could practice if they do kind of begin to make a friendship but aren't quite sure what to do next. We can do kind of play dates host little play dates if you're a parent or carer in small kind of controlled settings and you can also kind of enable this to happen at school as well kind of encourage children together who you think might get on well and create a good environment for play. Again at home you can do things like really take the pressure off by putting a film on and having like a cozy movie night with popcorn but where we don't have to have loads of social interaction the film can be doing the talking and we're just alongside but actually that can still just being in the presence of someone even in silence is actually bond building. There's really interesting research around this that I've been reading recently a very interesting research about adults it was who were walking alongside and whether they were encouraged to socially interact or not as in whether they verbally interacted whilst walking alongside or not made no difference to the increase in that bonding and relationship that they reported after going for a walk together. So walking in silence was as effective as walking whilst maintaining conversation so don't underestimate the potential power of just being alongside for a child and a potential new friend. You can also get kids collaborating on things like DIY or science based projects get them working together with a common goal great way to begin to build a friendship and then we could do things like initiate gaming or creative challenges so just trying to build those friendships recognizing that even one positive friendship may be a great gateway in for a socially anxious child to begin to be able to engage more with other children. Finally as we move towards the end of today's episode of Boogie Bonders I want to remind you just to love the child that you have. Some children are going to be more sociable than others and that's okay. If your child is alone and lonely if they have a yearning to join in with the things that other kids are doing then we take these steps and we throw ourselves into it we do the very best we can to help to support them but we never can underestimate how challenging this can feel for the child and we need to respect that our kids are all different. The child that you're supporting may never be a social butterfly they may never feel fully confident in social situations they need not to feel like a failure because of that they will have myriad other strengths and superpowers of their own and we need to find those and celebrate those we need to celebrate their strengths and find some joint motivation with the child for overcoming any challenges that they are facing and we should celebrate every little step along the way no matter how tiny but never ever losing sight of the perfectly imperfect wonderful beautiful great brilliant fantastic all the words little person that you have in front of you love the child that you have not the one that you feel you could should would have this child is brilliant in their own way find the ways that make them brilliant support them in the ways that they would like things to change. Okay as we wrap up this episode remember that by understanding anxious feelings creating supportive environments gradually building up those social skills and fostering positive relationships we can help children to thrive in social situations it won't be quick but it can happen it's all about empowering them with the tools that they need to navigate the world with confidence and resilience. I hope there were some ideas in here that will work for you if you liked what you heard today please subscribe and share my work you can support my work further by joining me over on patreon where you'll get early access to all of my resources and the chance to influence what I work on next or you can invite me to speak at your next event or in your setting either virtually or face to face thank you so much for listening and for everything that you are doing for the children and young people in your care this has been pookie ponders with me pookie knightsmith until next time stay curious stay compassionate and keep pondering over and out