If Your Kid Needs To Turn Down Another Classmate, They Need To Be Assertive
You’ve comforted your kid after puppy love gone wrong and helped them get over rejection from the cool kids, but do they know what to do when the roles are reversed?
There are plenty of situations where a child might need to decline someone’s social offer. Peers may develop crushes that aren’t reciprocated. Someone on their sports team could want to be BFFs, but your kid would rather stick to acquaintance status.
If your little one’s been blessed with natural charisma, dashing good looks (inherited from you, obviously), or a too-cool-for-school attitude, they might turn more heads in their classes than they can handle. That’s right, parents of popular kids have problems, too!
While unwanted romantic and friendly advances from classmates come to mind first, there are times when they may need to reject adults, too: kids may need to decline a relative’s demand to have a playdate with their cousin or an aunt’s unreasonable request to get a bear-hug every time they see her.
Compassionate rejection is also a good lesson to take into their growing pains, as teens start pushing their parents away to challenge authority.
So if you’re not keen on raising a heartbreaker, here’s how to help your kids keep rejection respectful and compassionate:
Question their motives
It’s one thing to reject a friendship because you have nothing in common. It’s another thing if the decision is made out of worry.
Karen Hamill is a Vancouver-based psychotherapist who specializes in child and teen mental health. Hamill says that an anxious kid may refuse to play with another kid because they’re shy or afraid of others. Before teaching them how to decline, it might be worth nudging them to take a chance on a new bond.
Watch: what’s it like being an anxious kid. Story continues below.
“It’s likely in the child’s best interest for them to engage. Often times, they anticipate the worst will happen [on a playdate with someone new],” Hamill told HuffPost Canada....
