Does someone need more space? — print pack

Why this doesn't hand over a rule

A gesture is not proof. Arms pulled in can mean a squashy spot on the mat, a cold morning, a jumper on a lap, or nothing anybody could name — and the same arms on the same child mean something different on a Monday and a Friday. Everything a child reads in this topic is written as might, could and maybe, because from the outside that is honestly as far as anybody gets.

The same clue reads differently on different people. One child leans in when she is happy and another goes very still; one steps back to think and another steps back because the hall is loud. A child handed a lookup table will use it confidently on the person it does not fit, and that is worse than having no table at all.

So the skill practised here is not decoding — it is asking. “Would you like a bit more room?” takes two seconds and comes back with an actual answer, and it goes on working with people no chart covers. That is also why a whole set of these situations runs the other way, on saying what you need yourself: a child who can only read other people has been given half a skill.

This topic deliberately does not teach eye contact, still bodies or quiet hands. Those are about how a child appears to somebody watching, not about whether anybody's room was respected. An autistic child can look at the floor, rock, and talk with their hands the whole time and still be careful with the people around them, and a child sitting perfectly still can crowd somebody all afternoon. We practise the thing that actually protects people, and leave your child's body alone.

What not to push

• Eye contact. Not while listening, not while apologising, not while asking for room. Looking away costs nobody anything, and a child working hard on a face has less attention left for the actual conversation.
• Smiling, or arranging a face at all. A flat face is not a message, and a child asked to add one has been asked to perform rather than to notice.
• Stillness. Rocking, fidgeting, pacing and hands that move are not clues about anybody's room, and nothing in this topic treats them as something to fix.
• Hugs, tickles, a hand on the shoulder, a kiss goodbye. Theirs to decline every time, relatives included, and a no does not need a swap offered in its place — no wave owed, no high five, no hug next time to make up for this one. The no only lands if you back it out loud, in the room, while everybody is still standing there.
• A reason. “No thank you” is finished. A child asked to explain a no has been taught that a good enough reason would have changed the answer.

Trying it together

• Say your own room out loud. “I need a bit of space while I'm carrying this.” Children pick a sentence up from hearing it far faster than from being told it.
• Play “still comfy?” on the couch: sit down, shuffle a little closer, ask, and keep going until somebody says stop. It makes an invisible thing visible in about a minute.
• Ask before a hug at home for a week — “hug?” — and take the no without a face. Home is where they find out whether you meant it.
• In a queue at the shops, ask afterwards what they noticed about the gaps between people. “I didn't notice anything” is a fine answer.
• When somebody in a film moves away from somebody else, pause it and ask what else that could have meant.

The three things to remember

• One clue is an idea, not an answer.
• Two clues together are a better guess.
• You can always just ask.