Value your quiet girls

This brought to you by local INTOPS and an ex-Guide of mine who got rejected for being too quiet.

INTOPS is International Opportunities. I don’t know much about how it works but I gather trips abroad are planned and then girls are put forward, by unit or district or county or whatever, depending on the scale of the event, and then selected to go or to not go.

That’s one type of international trip. The one my ex-Guides took part in (including the girl in question, actually), back in 2019, was a county one open to anyone who got the form and deposit back in time. They’re expensive but they’re planned and paid way in advance and both fundraising and grants are a thing. In this case, the first email went out in April 2018, deposit to be in by May 2018, balance to be paid in two or three chunks by about June 2019 for the trip in late August 2019.

When she was a Guide, this girl was enthusiastic and she did everything and she was a delight to have in the unit. Now I hear she’s about sixteen and thriving at Rangers but hasn’t been selected for INTOPS “because she’s too quiet” and that kind of breaks my heart.

I don’t know what the intended trip is. I think it’s a county thing and there’s no info at the moment. Sometimes they’re just a holiday. Sometimes they’re a community project or social project in which case I guess they’re looking for someone outgoing who can lead a team or play an active part in a team. But quiet people can do both these things! I should know!

I’m quite loud now but as a child and as a teenager, I was verging on selective mutism. As a Guide, even as a Young Leader, you’d hardly have got a word out of me. I still marvel at myself when I notice I’m leading a campfire for 80-100 people. Imagine telling sixteen-year-old you that this is in her future! My teachers went out of their way to almost bribe me to speak to them, set homework that could only be completed by going and asking them (Mr Wyatt and eutrophication), put me on a stage to present to an entire year group’s worth of parents – anything to pride me out of my shell. I wish some of them could come to Brownies now.

But I always wanted to do things. Four of us wanted three spaces on a Brownie pack holiday which got offered to our lot. Brown Owl picked from a hat and I was the one who didn’t get it. I went on the Russia school trip even though I didn’t take history. The Paris trips, fair enough. I took French all the way to A Level and then beyond – I now have a (very rusty with disuse) degree in French. I was quiet to the point of silence but I was outgoing in my way. This girl is exactly like me, only a lot less quiet. I don’t know if I’d have even described her as quiet when she was with me. I’d probably have described her as “the non-disruptive one who’s friends with the disruptive ones”.

Last, a child recently turned nineteen who was one of my seven-year-old first Brownies ever. She was shy. The first words she said to me were “My brother’s autistic”. Not “my name’s Annie”. Here was a child whose life revolved around being second to her brother. She had a best friend in the pack and she was like her shadow. She didn’t go anywhere without Betty. She didn’t do anything without Betty. Betty was a gregarious child, meanwhile, who liked Annie a lot but had other friends she wanted to be around sometimes and even at Brownie age, you could see them drifting apart.

When Annie was nine or ten, we made her a Sixer. We tended to do that by age or by Brownie longevity rather than on leadership potential – to make it fair. Fair, I think, to Brown Owl’s daughter who didn’t really have much leadership potential at that age. Annie certainly wasn’t obvious Sixer material. Separated from Betty, supposed to be in charge of her little group… and she flourished! It astonishes me, even now, some ten years later. This shy awkward child suddenly became the mother of the pack, hauling around and looking after the new girls, sitting with them in her lap, making sure they knew what they were doing. Making her Sixer remains one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. The silent kid suddenly demonstrates all the leadership skills I’d never imagined were lurking inside her. Even better, I heard through the grapevine that she became a relatively difficult teenager, no longer content to be the meek forgotten child in the family.

So, quiet kids can thrive given the right circumstances. Or they can remain shy and quiet and they’re just as valuable as their louder peers. Nothing feels better than the shy kid giving you a peek at who’s under the shell – it shows they trust you and are comfortable with you and it’s just as easy to be characterful and quiet as characterful and loud.

Girlguiding’s Five Essentials include Care for the Individual. Take time with your quiet girls. Talk to them or just be near them – if you’re doing a craft, sit by them and drop praise and encouragement casually but plentifully. You don’t need to draw attention to them but quiet kids are often insightful and will recognise what you’re doing. Don’t try to monopolise them, especially not to the detriment of the rest of the girls, but just make sure they don’t feel like they’re getting overlooked and ignored just because they’re quiet.

And don’t assume that the quiet ones can’t do things just as well as the loud ones – often they do it better!