Solitary Peers

Social anxiety in children is associated with poor previous interactions with their peers. Many times there are children who will remain solitary despite availability of their peers as playmates (Gazelle &Ladd, 2003). This takes place in schools, neighborhoods, or childcare programs. Solitary behavior being the word for this phenomenon may be explained by external sources, which in this case would be peer exclusion or being left out of peer activities. In this sense solitary children exist because they do not actively choose to engage with peers or their peers do not actively engage with them communicatively. This solitude often drives feelings of anxiety in children so they are referred to as ‘anxious solitary.’ Anxious solitude is not a clinical disorder like social anxiety but children who are anxious solitary have higher rates of social anxiety disorder (Gazelle, 2010). Both of these are related to the interaction of individuals with their peers. Using the ecological model this relationship is classified as part of the microsystem due that fact peers are part of the immediate

The way in which an anxious solitary child will face social situations is impacted by former poor interactions with peers. It has been found that when peers continually excluded anxious solitary children, they seemed to less capable of regulating their emotions, physiology, and behaviors in a manner that allows adaptive responses to future challenges by peers (Gazelle & Druhen, 2009). As a result past social experiences with peers can influence the child by structuring anxious solitary children’s personal emotion and physiological reactions, which then controls their future social behavior in a way that inhibits the formation and deepening of relationships. If an anxious solitary child is prevented from forming such relations this will further push them into social