Helping Your Shy Child

How shy kids can gain comfort and confidence in social situations.

Posted June 30, 2016 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

Do you know any children like this?

Heidi Gazelle, of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, presented this three-part description to almost 700 third graders so they could help her identify what developmental psychologists call “anxious, solitary children.” These children want to interact with their peers, but their shyness holds them back.

When they’re around other kids, shy children feel like outsiders looking in. Even among familiar faces, they often end up playing alone or just silently watching others having fun, without joining in.

The Vicious Cycle of Shyness

Many shy children get trapped in a vicious cycle that keeps them from connecting with other kids: Because they feel uncomfortable in social settings, they avoid interacting with their peers. This means they get less practice talking and playing with other kids, so they have less opportunity to develop social skills—including having conversations, resolving arguments, taking turns, or figuring out fun things to do together. Their relative lack of social skill further contributes to them feeling uncomfortable and wanting to avoid social situations.

Shy kids hold themselves apart because they’re focused on their own discomfort. For example, they spend recess time reading or silently staring at other kids from ten feet away. Unfortunately, the unintended message they send to their peers when they do this is that they don’t want to be friends.

Other kids often respond negatively to this standoffish behavior. Compared to kids who don’t withdraw from others, shy kids are more likely to be actively disliked by their peers. Shy boys tend to be judged more harshly than shy girls. (Note: The response to shyness may be culture-specific; there’s some evidence that shyness may be more socially acceptable in certain Asian cultures, according to a 2010 review by Rubin et al.)

Based on peer ratings and playground observations, Gazelle identified three important subgroups of shy kids, each with very different patterns of social relationships. All of these kids showed the shy behaviors mentioned earlier, but what they did in addition to acting shy was strongly related to how other kids treated them. (Note: Some shy kids didn’t fit any of these categories.)

Agreeable Shy Kids

Although these children didn’t initiate conversation or play, they responded warmly when a peer approached them. These children were generally accepted by peers and had about as many friends as more sociable kids. Other children viewed them as reasonably fun and smarter than average. Despite their tendency to hold back, their openness to other children’s overtures—and, perhaps, their positive family relationships—allowed them to develop good enough social skills to get along with their peers.

These children usually hung back in social situations, but when they tried to approach peers, they did so in ways that other kids found babyish or annoying. For example, Gazelle mentions a girl who, after getting “out” in a game of Twister, repeatedly interrupted the other kids by asking, “Can we play another game?”—even though they were still involved in playing that game.

Other children mostly ignore immature shy kids. They are more likely than agreeable shy kids to be disliked by their peers, because they vacillate between being withdrawn and calling attention to themselves in disruptive and irritating ways. They also had fewer than average friends.

Aggressive Shy Kids

It seems contradictory for children to be both aggressive and shy, but Gazelle identified a subgroup of shy kids who mostly kept to themselves, but when they did interact with peers, they often did so in angry or hostile ways. Compared to both more sociable kids and other shy kids, these children struggle the most with peer relationships. They are very likely to be rejected, excluded, or bullied by their peers—partly because their behavior is so unpleasant, and partly because they have very few friends to protect or defend them.

Helping Shy Kids Connect with Peers

Standard cognitive-behavioral treatment for anxiety involves helping people face feared situations, so they can build up their confidence that they can handle them. However, the subtypes of shy kids identified by Gazelle show clearly that we can’t just shove shy kids into social situations and hope things will work out. For both immature and aggressive shy kids, for instance, their anxiety about interacting with peers is well founded: their peers really do tend to respond negatively to them!

Exposure to (more) rejection won’t help children gain social confidence. Shy kids need specific guidance in how to connect with peers in positive ways, as well as practice doing so.

Working with Your Shy Child

Shy children don’t have to magically turn into life-of-the-party extroverts in order to fit in and have friends. There is certainly room in the world for a quieter style of relating! They do, however, need to find ways of interacting that fit who they are and that lead to positive reactions from others. Here are some ways you can help your shy child to learn to get along with peers.

Growing Friendships blog posts are for general educational purposes only. They may or may not be relevant for your particular situation. You’re welcome to link to this post, but please don’t reproduce it without written permission from the author.

Gazelle, H. (2008). Behavioral profiles of anxious solitary children and heterogeneity in peer relations. Developmental Psychology, 44 , 1604-1624.

Rubin, K. H., Wojslawowicz-Bowker, J. C. & Gazelle, H. (2010). Social withdrawal in childhood and adolescence: Peer relationships and social competence. In K. H. Rubin & R. Coplan (Eds.), The Development of Shyness and Social Withdrawal (pp. 131-156). Guilford.

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Eileen Kennedy-Moore, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, based in Princeton, NJ, and author of many books, including Kid Confidence (for parents) and Growing Friendships (for children).

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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.