How To Help Kids Navigate Social Challenges
Caleb, 5, is at the playground trying to enter a game of tag with some of the neighborhood kids. He is randomly tagging people, not following the rules. The kids are getting annoyed. They keep telling him to stop. Caleb ignores their pleas and gets sillier. He starts to make fun of their names, calling Isaac, "Pisak" and Max, "Sax." At this point, the kids tell him to go away. Caleb runs to his mom, Mira, who has been sitting on a bench observing. He is angry and crying because the kids are being mean to him and not letting him play.
Mira: "What do you expect, Caleb? Why would they want to play with you when you're not playing by the rules and are making fun of their names? And you don't stop when they ask you to. They don't like it so they don't want to play with you."
Caleb: "They're mean. You don't understand! You never listen to me! You are always on their side." He demands to go home, which they do.
Mira feels awful. It is so clear to her that the way Caleb is acting with his peers is resulting in rejection, which is having a very negative affect on him and is painful for Mira to witness. She feels so sad for Caleb. At the same time, she is frustrated and at a loss as to how to help him see how his behavior is causing the problem, and that the solution is in his hands; that if he played more appropriately, he would have more positive social interactions and feel better about himself. But the second she tries to talk to him about it, he gets defensive. He acts like he is the victim and projects all the blame onto the other kids. She is despairing about how to help him.
This is a very common story, and conundrum, that many families I work with face with their children. It is so distressing for them to see their kids behave in ways that they know will not bode well for them.
The deep love we have for our children, and the concomitant fear that comes with this territory, propels us into reactive-mode, which often takes the form of schooling them (as Mira did), hoping that this will convince them to change their ways: “Why would your friends want to play if you won't share?" "We just can't do playdates if you are going to boss your friends around. They don't like it." We think that if we can just get our important (brilliant! insightful!) points across, they will change their behavior and all will be right with the world.
While you mean to be helpful, these kinds of responses are experienced as criticism, and thus shaming, by children, and launches them into defensive, self-protection, closed-brain mode. This prevents any possibility for reflection and behavior change—the ultimate goal.