How to Help Passive Children Become Assertive

Passive children sometimes feel as though they are being agreeable, by avoiding fights or arguments they help the situation stay peaceful. However, passivity is a way of telling others that their desires and feelings are more important than your own. This is a dangerous and self-defeating habit to allow to cultivate in childhood, one that will be hard to shake as the child enters adulthood. Passive children need to learn that aggressiveness is not the goal, where their desires or feelings are more important than others, but that the goal is assertive behavior: viewing their feelings and the feelings of others as equal.

Things You'll Need

• Cafe, diner or kid's restaurant
• Pen
• Paper
• Pencil

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Instructions

• 1

  Take the child to a cafe, diner or restaurant. Order the child a treat to make this experience fun as well as educational. Invite the child to observe the people nearby: the waiters, cashiers, busboys, patrons and how they carry themselves; how they walk, how they speak to other people, how they carry objects. Ask the child to label what they see as aggressive, passive or assertive.

• 2

  Talk about situations at school or outside of school that the child finds difficult. Make it clear to the child that while it is impossible to change the past, they can learn from it. Make a list together of situations where they were too passive and wish they had done something differently. Discuss and write down what the child could have done in those situations.

• 3

  Practice role play with the child. For example, take the child's pencil and act out with the child what he or she could do if someone stole the pencil. Don't make things easy for the child. As a bully, say forcefully that you need this pencil, that you lost yours, that you don't feel like returning it. This safe but difficult situation will help the child practice asserting his or her needs.