Shy Children

[titchy]

does anyone have any suggestions for activities to encourage shy children to socialise and make friends with the other children.

[Guest]

start small and work up, if possible have a game that involves sharing/speaking and if you can seperate the shy child with one other child who is more sociable (but not too much as this can be overbearing for the shy child) and play a game just with these children that involves passing things to each other or asking another child for something in the game. We have a shopping game that has lists and food items and the children have a pile of food each in a basket and if an item is not on their list they have to ask the other child if they can have that item from their basket.

another suggestion is puppets, some children find real children very daunting so start with a puppet who is also shy and needs help to speak, ask the shy child if they would like to teach the puppet how to speak to them etc.

We have had great success doing small circle times with shy children, who will speak to the bear being passed round when it is their turn, in this way they gain in confidence to speak out to others.

In most cases spending a lot of one to one time with the child can help build their security and trust to speak to you and then you can introduce other children slowly into this.