Approaching a child will be different than approaching adults, as children have less of an attention span. So the way to meet new kids is easy, but the steps are important.
Start off with your child introducing himself. In fact, have him practice this several times a week as he will be doing it almost every day in his adult life. It goes like this:
“Hi, I’m Johnny.”
It’s that simple! Immediately after the introduction is the opening physical gesture. It will be different depending on the person.
Always make sure he is practicing:
(Especially the first ten seconds in meeting someone these things are crucial.)
Another thing to keep in mind is to make sure that this isn’t rushed. In fact, there should be a slight pause between “Hi,” and, “I’m Johnny.”
Now that your child has properly introduced himself, it is necessary to make an escalation in the relationship between him and his new friend. An escalation has anything to do with strengthening the connection with your kid and the other person. For this example, you’re at an indoor birthday party, so it is safe to have him go somewhere with his new friend. A great way to escalate is to invite the other person along with you somewhere.
“Would you like to come play cars with me?”
This is also the next commitment asked of the other person, as well as the leading frame continuing for your child. Your child is learning how to lead an interaction where he wants it to go. This is a trait held by confident people, and when taught at a young age, can be powerful. Make sure to watch how much your child is leading though, as it can turn into being overbearing, bullying, and bossy. This is not the goal, and people can easily mistake an insecure bully for being confident, as the two personality types have similar qualities from a distance, but up close it is obvious they are black and white.
The reason to encourage your child to lead interactions is because most people have no idea what they want, or they are simply scared of stepping on another person’s toes. This is a waste of time and will deter from the enjoyment of an interaction. Nobody wants an indecisive person, they want someone who will lead, but who is still democratic. Think president, not dictator.
Take ordering food, for example. Even adults order their lunches by asking the waiter if they “can order” something. In the 90s, they taught me to replace “can” with “may,” as if that made it better. I think it just made me sound like a sissy boy. No way would I say, “May I,”. The proper way to order food is either to make a command or a personal statement. Both get the job done and build your child’s confidence while remaining respectful towards the other person. Compare the two following sentences:
“Can I please have the burger without fries?”
OR
“I’d like the burger without fries, please.”
Which sentence sounds more confident? It’s obvious, the second one. The reason being because he is presuming this restaurant is able to remove the fries for him. This is more respectful than thinking they cannot. Say for instance that your track & field coach told you to run five laps around the track. That would be a normal command. Now, how would you feel if your coach asked, “Can you run five laps around the field?” How respectful towards you does that sound? He is unsure if you are capable of this task, presuming you are low value. At the same time, it also makes him seem timid and unsure of his surroundings. People feel significant around you when you expect highly of them. Give them a chance to live up to your expectations. Let’s take a look at another example:
You: Take me to Borders on 5th Ave, please.
Cabby: Right away, sir!
This is a command towards another person. But you see, it is not disrespectful to make a command of someone being paid to do things for you. They are at your service. As stated before, it would be disrespectful towards the cabby to assume that he is not able to bring you to Borders, or even know where Borders is. When saying, “Can you take me to Borders?” you are asking a professional driver if he is capable to drive you somewhere. How respectful is that? Notice how I insert the word “please” into each statement or command. This is an important point that I will discuss with you in the another post.
Hey parents! Recently there was a blog post made on PBS.org called Kids and Bullies, to which I replied in a comment. I am putting up the post and my response here.
He was nervous about it a few weeks ago but I didn’t think too much about it.
“Mom, we are moving seats, and I have to sit by this girl, I’m a little worried. She can be kinda mean.”
I went into a kindness opportunity speech, I was hopeful because Josiah is really good at making almost any friendship/ relationship work. I should have known it could be hard if he was concerned. We didn’t talk about it much after that until yesterday.
I was waiting in the car pool line when the door flung open and both boys climbed in, Jack was chatty but Josiah seemed a little quiet. We got home and he sat down next to me on the couch. I knew something was wrong.
“Mom, I’m kind of having a hard time.” he said.
He went on to explain how the girl was being unkind, making fun of his drawings, telling how everything was wrong with him, part by part, day by day. He looked defeated and was starting to take these lies into his heart.
“I tried to tell her I don’t care….but…” he burst into tears.
“But you do care right?” I said. He nodded his head through his tears.
“Everyone cares Josiah, trust me.” I replied as he released long sobs in my arms.
“Do you think there is something wrong with you?” I asked, he shook his head but cried a little harder.
There are times when you just can’t protect your child and someone else’s pain will hurt them. I wanted to cry myself, but I didn’t and we just sat for a moment together.
I told him I thought maybe he was dealing with a bully and suggested we find out some more information so we could make a plan to help him. So we spent some time researching and found out why this might be happening to him and what we could do.
Bullying is either about power or passing on some form of mistreatment. We wondered together if that might be the cause for this girl being unkind. We talked about how sometimes when you hear negative messages repeatedly you can start to believe them.
It was time for truth to do her magic I told him, because truth is the only thing that can set you free. If he was starting to question himself, maybe his bully can’t remember the truth at all.
We came up with a strategy to deal with all the problems we could come up with.
1. Try to ignore any mean or unkind words, completely. No response at all.
2. We sent an e-mail to the teacher explaining what had been going on.
3. I wrote tiny cards of truths/affirmations about him to keep in his backpack at school so he could read them if things got hard.
4. Made a plan to check-in in 2 days to see if our strategy was working.
“Do you think this will work?” I asked.
“Yeah, I feel better mom.” he said.
I gathered my parenting strength and sent him off to school the next day. I realized this is probably just the beginning of various big kid problems but I think we can find our way.
Have your kids ever dealt with a bully? What did you do?
“Sarah, you should be concerning yourself more with your own work rather than mine. I appreciate your opinion, but if it’s not said nicely then I want you to stop it. If not, I’m going to talk to the teacher.”
Total Read Time: 4.2 minutes
Laugh-O-Meter: 5/10 Giggles
Meaningfulness: 10/10 Aha! Moments
Our goal is getting somebody to open up to us, and make them feel comfortable being themselves in the process. The best way to accomplish this is by treating the person you’re talking to like a friend that you’ve known your entire life. I don’t feel uncomfortable being myself around true friends, they are accepting of my every trait: my weaknesses and my strengths, my fears and insecurities. They love all of me. Teach your children to treat others the same way. But there’s one thing that best friends hardly ever do when speaking to each other, and that’s ask questions. The next time you are in a great conversation with your best pal, take a moment to observe how many questions are being asked. Likely one or two to get the conversational gears moving, but after that, they disappear. What quickly replaces them is the most personable tool available in a great conversationalists arsenal: personal statements.
It gives you the option to not answer at all, and that is what’s so special about it. A person feels most compelled to speak when they are actually tricked into talking by use of relatable comments that inspire the mind of the person that is listening. How many times have you watched a kid squirm after asking them questions about themselves?
You: So how’ve you been, Josh? What are you up to lately?
Josh: Nothinnnnggg.
The last thing they want to do is have to think about how they have been, and what they are up to in order to make you happy. People still ask me these questions, and I still squirm to find something interesting to say. Think about how kids feel! But do you really want to know “what they’ve been up to?” or are you just interested in getting the person to open up and connect? People have a problem coming up with things to talk about when they aren’t feeling inspired. Our minds go blank when we’re put on the spot. We feel like we have to say something of great value, and on top of it are scared of being judged wrongly if we don’t impress that person. But replacing questions with personal statements takes care of that.
You both take turns with the paintbrush, turning the blank canvas into something unique and special to that interaction – just as no two paintings are ever the same, so are conversations. Like a creative work of art, conversations will start off rickety and awkward. But with each stroke of the brush, you are opening up a unique side of yourself towards that other person, which inspires (excites) and sparks a reciprocal expression of emotion from their side of the interaction. This is how a connection grows, it starts off as a small spark of commitment from one person, and as the other person is able to relate and expand on each emotion, the connection between each other builds into a strong bond that turns into what we call a friendship.
I want to give that conversation with Josh another try:
You: My favorite color is blue because Thomas the Train is blue and I like that.
This makes it too easy for Josh, and that’s exactly what we want! There is absolutely no way he will not reciprocate with a comment about his favorite color. Why? Because he’s just been inspired by the personal statement you made.
Josh: I like Thomas too! But Percy is my favorite.
See how easily that works? Think about how you can apply this small concept to your own personal or business life. No more boring chitchat; no more, “So how’ve you been?” All you have to do is make personal statements and allow the other person the option to respond, or not.
When I say “personal statements”, I choose my words carefully. A mere statement may or may not be personal, but most usually it is boring. This is the next flawed conversational tactic people use, generally as a way to protect themselves from being judged by others. Making ourselves vulnerable is a tough thing to do, especially for males. We mask our feelings and opinions with bland and logistical statements as if we were robots transferring information to each other.
Robot 1: Skiing is fun.
Robot 2: Skiing is great.
Robot 1: I usually go skiing in December.
Robot 2: Me too. Where do you ski?
Robot 1: I ski at Vale, it’s beautiful over there.
Robot 2: I’ve heard that it is beautiful.
It seems like a harmless conversation, the two robots are talking about skiing, they both say skiing is fun, and they talk about when and where they ski.
A personal statement necessitates emotions, and robots don’t have emotions, they can only state facts. If you are communicating with another person, and you aren’t including any emotion in what you are saying, you just might be a robot. Just kidding, you’re not a robot. But you might be boring the heck out of people and not even know it. This “robot talk” transcends down to your children, and this is where they learn to speak in facts. Too many times children will come up to me and say:
Arthur: Mr. Anthony, I’m going to the park today, then we’re going to buy food at the grocery!
Arthur is speaking in logistics. It’s not his fault, he is simply mirroring what his mother told him. There’s no unique perspective, just plain cold hard facts. I call this “assuming emotional context” which is what adults do as a form of shorthand when speaking to each other. Adults feel as though they are always in a rush, and have no time to explain how they feel about things, so they assume the other person gets the gist of it. But these are kids, they haven’t been living long enough to understand this sub-context that their parents use with them, so they speak like robots to each other and the emotional context is lost. But there’s a way to fix this. The best way to get your child expressing him/herself is by speaking to them with the use of personal statements as much as possible. Statements that are personal go light years further in effectiveness than stating generalities. Think about this the next time you talk to someone. See ya!