Social anxiety: how does this look and feel in children?

Social anxiety can come into play in any situation where your child feels they're on trial – that someone or a group of people will judge them. 

Mostly this feels like an unsaid afterthought of “and find me lacking” but also it could seem like “and think I’m being too clever”.

This means that social anxiety can affect any child – those who feel worse than others or have poor self-esteem, and also those who find themselves brighter than their friends. It’s a bit of a curse either way because feeling OK in yourself is fundamental to growing up to be a well-balanced and secure adult.

Because other people’s so-called “judgement” is involved in the anxiety, social anxiety can include other aspects of anxiety such as performance anxiety and stranger anxiety.

I’ll refer to all these here.

Let's have an example!

Lao-Tze, the ancient Chinese philosopher and writer, said (apparently!):

“Watch your thoughts; they become words.

Watch your words; they become actions.

Watch your actions; they become habits.

Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”

Now, whether or not he really said it exactly like that, we can immediately recognise the truths here! Our example will show it all too clearly.

So let’s imagine a child who thinks they won’t have anyone to play with at the party.

That thought is eventually said in words to her parents when they press her to go: “No one will play with me!”

Forced to go, the words take on a life of their own, and her action is to stay hidden in the background, saying and doing nothing, so of course no one plays with her.

This "retiring/hiding" action gradually becomes her habit in public gatherings of any kind – right into adulthood.

She gradually becomes known as a withdrawn, shy character: “Oh, she won’t want to come out on the town, no point inviting her.”

And next? You guessed – her destiny is exclusion from not only the worst bits of social life we all hate, but also the fulfilling and exciting bits she might have loved.

If only her parents had helped her develop some skills and resilience to manage the anxiety before it became crippling.

So let's move on and look at how social anxiety – if left un-dealt with – affects a child at the age they are now, never mind in future: now – while parental help can make a big difference.

What are the likely effects of social anxiety in childhood?

• Not having as many friends as they might
• Refusing to speak in certain situations (selective mutism)
• Doing less well in school than they could
• Avoiding opportunities like taking part in school plays or choirs or sporting teams
• Adopting unhealthy self-calming methods: self-injury or poor eating habits
• Not doing things they would definitely enjoy
• Missing out on sleepovers and school trips

These things don’t really have an upside. They’re all things a child needs to be happy to do, even if they choose not to for completely other reasons. 

That’s why it’s important you notice the kind of symptom that shows up in social anxiety – in time to gently help your child move onto a more healthy trajectory.

A key message is that anxiety is normal in small doses but that the only way to send it into the naughty corner is by working out how to do the worrying things anyway.

A child with social or performance anxiety will find that they have something a bit like a panic attack at the thought of doing the activity they see as a problem.

This would include: 

• sweaty or clammy palms
• fast-beating heart
• blushing
• trembling legs and arms and
• nausea or vomiting. 

This is horrible enough to stop anyone attempting an activity that brings it on.

But the thing to note is that if you push through, the feelings subside. It’s an ancient feeling of threat sourced from deep inside the brain, and intended to keep us safe from woolly mammoths and the like. That’s why it’s good to have some anxiety, but not so much that it kicks us into touch.

Feelings always subside in the end. They are just feelings. 

And your child has the opportunity to learn from you, during childhood, sufficient techniques to control the feelings – and the thoughts that brought on the feelings. You can also be their model on how to do this!

In the process, they become resilient – and also gather proof that they can manage in situations they’d prefer to avoid! Don’t we all in the end? We have to.

Which situations bring on social anxiety, stranger anxiety and performance anxiety?

• Meeting someone new – maybe a new neighbour or teacher
• Being watched while doing something – eg reading out loud in class
• Trying something new – no one really likes experimenting in public
• Contributing to a conversation but trying not to sound too knowledgeable
• Being asked to answer a question – and feeling stupid they don’t know it
• Sitting a test – and wondering if they’ll be good enough to pass
• Feeling they’ve been noticed – eg when a visiting aunt suddenly says something to them 
• Going to a shop and having to meet strangers
• Going to a new childminder – always good to introduce them first

How to help your child through the social anxiety barrier

What does your child need for success in avoiding social anxiety?

1 Understanding of how thoughts and feelings work

2 Some extra skills – verbal and bodily ones

3 Self-confidence

Let’s have a look at these in turn.

1 Understanding of how thoughts and feelings work

This is the basis for understanding anxiety in general but also social anxiety in particular.

Anxiety stems from our thoughts about something. It affects out feelings. This forces change in our body: temperature, posture, strength, energy etc. And this dictates what we do (our behaviour).

An idea to help with understanding thoughts and feelings

Make a windmill. Use a sheet of thick paper to draw a windmill and cut the four sails from another sheet.

A younger child might like to colour your windmill in first. An older child might draw their own without sails, and you can make the sails to go with it. It’s really important it’s a joint task. Much more fun. And it validates the activity and gives your child your full attention. 

Label the sails: Thought, Feeling, Body, Behaviour. You can use a split pin to fix the two together.

How to use this windmill activity

Turn the Thought sail to the top. Young children don’t always name a thought, so always start with “I think”. “Let’s have a thought about the weather.” (Eg "I think it will rain today.")

Turn the Feeling sail to the top. “OK, so I think it’s going to rain today. What do I feel?” (Eg fed up, or sad, because we can’t go for a picnic)

Turn the Body sail to the top. “OK, so I’m sad… (Both pretend to feel sad and observe body language) … so what is my body doing?” (Eg slumped over, no energy)

Turn the Behaviour sail to the top. (This is really the Doing sail, in common terminology!) “So what do I do?”  (Eg slouch on the sofa or rant and rage about the weather.)

Turn the Thought sail back to the top. “So what am I now thinking?” (Eg I think today’s a write-off / rubbish / everything goes wrong)

Do you see how the first negative thought affected the whole cycle? Try it again with a more positive thought: eg “I think it will rain today so how about we xxx?” Follow it round and see how things look up.

Social anxiety stems from negative thoughts we tell ourselves. It's important to learn how to turn these thoughts round. So choose a relevant thought when your child is showing signs of social anxiety and do the windmill for that thought sequence.

2 Extra skills – verbal and bodily awareness ones

A child who is happy with strangers, social situations involving teachers, other adults and being in a “performance” situation, is going to need to be fluent in both words, ideas and social chit-chat and feel OK about their body movements, dressing and being seen. This will help keep social anxiety at bay.

Ideas to help with learning extra verbal and bodily skills

This is the really easy one of the three. Why? 

Because it can be practised every day from an early age. If you’ve missed out on “early age” for your child and they're showing signs of being shy and embarrassed in public, don’t worry. Their brains are malleable and open to learning all the time – especially if it’s fun.

Extra skills: 1 verbal small talk

We all need to be able to talk about trivial things easily. I know it can seem like saying the unnecessary – but isn’t it so much easier to get along with someone who has this skill?

So talk to your child and expect an answer! It’s easy to let them feel “spoken to” and so they don't need to reply. Have the television off and involve them in ideas and discussions from an early age. And answer what they say seriously. Then they’re used to being “in focus” with an adult without being judged.

Once they’re at school, I cannot recommend too highly The Socially Speaking Game by Alison Schroeder. Although it says ages 7–11, I’ve played it with five year olds. You need to start with the simplest rules anyway and expand to the other ones in due course.

Make your own answers fitting to the age your child is – and since you go round the board collecting things, don’t allow the same answer twice if anyone lands on the same square again! 

If you can bear to watch someone unbox it, here is a link to YouTube. (I advise upping the playback speed to 1.5x – you’ll see why!) 

Extra skills: 2 questioning games involving “debate”

Learning to debate and argue their case can help with social anxiety because your child will feel they can manage the situation better without clamming up.

Make a set of cards with questions on them (I’ll suggest a few in a moment) and have a family time when each of you throws open one of the questions and you all have a discussion.

The tricks to making this work are: 1) Don’t let the adults be the know-alls – listen respectfully and answer curiously; never mock or deride. This will kill off their social skills in an instant. 2) Don’t insist on an outcome that is socially acceptable and “your view”. On the other hand, as children get older, challenge them to back up their ideas!

Here are some questions to give you the idea. Invent whatever suits your child’s age and the family members.

Extra skills: 3 body awareness skills

As a family, it’s good to start early with “throwing the body around” – in poses, pretending, dressing up, playing dramatic games and even putting on a little play.

If you only have one child, it’s still possible to practise this with just two or three people in the family. 

The point is to get comfortable pretending to be different people or in a different bodily mood. Or just “being seen” doing things deliberately. Then, when you're with strangers, or at a party or performing in a concert, it’s really just an extension of things you’ve already done. Nerves, yes, but not the outright panic or embarrassment that social anxiety brings.

Try these for size:

• A game where, in turn, you stand up and mime a simple action for the others to watch eg picking flowers and putting them in a vase. The others have to guess what the action is. Be sure the watchers validate the acting, even if no one guesses right. Acting improves with time via watching others do it “better”, rather than being compared and found wanting! You can help older children not to criticise younger ones.

• A simple story like Red Riding Hood can be turned into a play by sharing out the parts, doing two parts each if necessary and ad-libbing them. Recap the story first if necessary, but don’t start writing plays. A couple of props is all that’s needed to pretend to “be” the person. Again it’s about “performance” and being “in focus” that helps a child to escape becoming socially anxious later.

3 Self-confidence – and growing it

Self-confidence is a good antidote to feeling judged and lacking, which is often what’s at the bottom of social anxiety.

A child needs to grow up knowing they're OK in themselves, with all their abilities, disabilities, areas of skill and areas they find harder. This builds their confidence that they can make mistakes, admit them, try harder, accept that others can be better – without it damaging their self-esteem or worth as a person.

So how to grow it?

As a parent, my first recommendation would be to let your child do as many (appropriate) things as possible as early as possible. For me that’s the number one thing. 

We don’t want arrogant, daredevil, show-off children. But a child who “can” is good to go in life, and will feel able to tackle something new, even when it's anxiety provoking.

So, show them a skill first, help them slowly, feed back kindly if it goes pear-shaped, allow for failure without getting impatient – that sort of help sets them free to try and to learn, and to prosper socially.

Children can: 

• Learn to use knives safely
• Help construct flat-pack furniture
• Plant flowers
• Grow lettuce for food in pots
• Push the vacuum cleaner at an early-ish age (but keep the plug business till later)
• Wash some pots in the sink (even if you have a dishwasher)
• Turn the microwave to the right number – even put something in if they can reach safely

And what can you do?

• Encourage practice: 10,000 hours to be a maestro at the piano!
• Praise the effort, not the result (or your child will start to fear failure because they’d lose that praise)
• Model your own persistence with a problem and failures and teach them this mantra!
• Encourage an area of expertise, a hobby, a special interest they can get good at
• Let them figure out problems for a while themselves. Tell them the story of the 18th camel…

A story to grow in confidence with problem solving: the 18th camel

Gather the family round on cushions like round a campfire, and take on the role of storyteller:

Let me remind you of The case of the 18th camel. 

A guy is tramping with his camel past a desert settlement when he meets a lad who asks for his help. 

“Dad said our 17 camels must be divided between us – half to my older brother, a third to the middle one, and a ninth to me,” the lad says. “But that would mean killing the camels, and they’re more use to us alive.” 

Our wise traveller invites himself to the family tent, listens carefully, and with a great streak of wisdom says, “Here, have my camel – that makes 18. So you, the oldest son, get nine; you, the middle one, get a third, which is six, and you,” – he turns to the lad – “a ninth, which is two.” 

“But that’s only 17,” says the puzzled lad. 

“Well, luckily the camel that’s left is mine,” says the traveller, “so if you’ll kindly give him back, I’ll be on my way.” 

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Your middle-juniors who have learnt to do division sums can have fun putting out counters and understanding what went on there – let them try, don’t intervene immediately, play curious yourself!

But the message is this: we all sometimes have to do something imaginative when trying to solve a problem. That's when the magic happens.

When your child understands that there are imaginative solutions to all sorts of problems in life, they will grow in confidence. As confidence increases, the chances of social anxiety recede.

Maybe type this story out? Leave space round the edges for your child to illustrate the border however they like: patterns, camels, travellers, tents, flowers – it doesn’t matter. It’s going on the wall for you all to remember!

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And remember, there are lots of activities that will help with all the things we’ve mentioned here in my Strategies section, and there will be more included within the monthly newsletters if you sign up.

But if your child is already suffering badly from social anxiety, please do go to my Help page where I show you how to find a good children's counsellor for safe therapeutic help.

QUICK CHECK: SOCIAL ANXIETY

• Understand (yourself) what social anxiety really is
• Don’t force your child to socialise before they’re ready
• Help your child prepare for social events
• Encourage positive social interactions – and model them yourself
• Help build your child’s self-confidence
• Teach your child coping mechanisms
• Praise their achievements in managing – positive reinforcement

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ALWAYS:

Trust your instincts,
use your judgement, protect the spirit
of your child