What My Shy Kid Learned From Being A Bee Club Chapter Lead: Practical Tips For Parents
The crumb of Lila’s half-eaten cheese stick stuck to my steering wheel as we sat in the community center parking lot last April, waiting for her first youth bee club meeting as chapter lead. Twelve months earlier, she’d stood behind my leg at the ice cream counter and refused to tell the cashier she wanted sprinkles on her cone. Now she was supposed to lead 17 other kids ages 8 to 14 through planning a year of hive builds and pollinator garden plantings. I’d already typed “how to help a shy kid lead a group” into my search bar the night before, deleted it, and retyped it twice.
No one had volunteered for the lead role that year, so the club coordinator had asked Lila on a whim after seeing her talk to a group of cub scouts about mason bees at the county fair. I’d held my breath waiting for her to say no, and she’d shrugged and said okay. I still don’t know why she said yes, but she did.
I brought a load of socks to fold that first meeting, planning to sit in the back and stay out of the way. Ten minutes in, I watched her pat all her bag pockets, turn red, and mutter to the kid next to her. She’d forgotten the printed sign-in sheets. My hand already reached for my purse where I kept extra notebook paper, and then I stopped. She didn’t look my way. Instead, she asked the 8-year-old who’d arrived early, the one who always brought her sparkly marker set, if she’d write everyone’s names on a piece of construction paper from the craft bin. Two minutes later, they had a sign-in sheet. It was lopsided and covered in glitter, but it worked.
When it came time to vote on the year’s service project, half the kids wanted a bee house sale to raise money, and half wanted to plant a pollinator garden at the local elementary. Lila didn’t give a big speech about why one was better. She just said “Okay, raise your hand for the garden.” Counted, said that won, and asked who wanted to help email the principal. I sat there folding socks and realized I’d been expecting her to fail, not because she couldn’t do it, but because I’d bought into the idea that only outgoing, loud kids make good leaders.
A month later, she came home from a meeting, threw her bee-themed backpack on the kitchen floor, and said she quit. Two 14-year-old boys who’d joined that spring wouldn’t stop fooling around, refused to sign up for weed pulling at the garden site, and kept distracting the younger kids during meetings. She said they didn’t listen to her, and it wasn’t any fun.
I didn’t give her a pep talk about “sticking with it” or tell her to just be more assertive. I pushed the bowl of spaghetti I’d made toward her and asked, “What do those two boys actually like doing? You said they bring their drone to all the outings, right?” She nodded, said they only care about taking photos of bees. I said, “Why don’t you make them the official publicity team for the garden? They can do all the photos, write the blurb for the local paper, and they just have to show up to work days for an hour to help. That way they get to do what they want, and you don’t have to argue with them every meeting.”
She tried it. The boys loved it. A month later, their blurb ran in the town newspaper, and the local garden center donated all the mulch and native wildflower plants for free. That’s when I started writing down the small things that worked, because I see so many parents and teachers holding shy kids back from leadership, or pushing them to be someone they’re not, when it doesn’t have to be that way.
The first thing that worked was staying out of small messes. If I’d jumped up with extra paper when she forgot the sign-in sheet, she never would have figured out that the glittery construction paper solution works just fine. I only step in now if she asks me for help, not when I think she needs it. The second thing is skipping the vague pep talks and asking one specific question. “What do the people you’re having trouble with actually enjoy?” works way better than “just be confident.” Third, let your kid redefine what leadership means for them. Lila still hates giving big speeches. She never makes people do things they don’t want to do. Her version of leading is remembering that the 8-year-old loves to paint, so she asked her to paint the garden sign. She remembered the kid who uses a wheelchair can’t pull weeds, so she asked him to label all the plants, which he loves. No one says you have to be the boss to be a leader.
Last week, we drove home from a garden work day, both covered in dirt, Lila eating a cherry popsicle that dripped down her wrist. She complained that half the kids didn’t show up again, and she had to pay her little brother five dollars to help carry mulch. Then she pulled out her phone and showed me a photo a first grader took that day, of a bumblebee on a milkweed plant. She said the first grader had never seen a bee that close before, and she kept saying it was the coolest thing ever.
She hasn’t decided if she’ll be chapter lead again next year. I don’t ask her, and I don’t pressure her to stick with it just to have it on her high school resume. I used to worry that if she didn’t take these kinds of opportunities when she was young, she’d never be comfortable putting herself out there later. Now I see that it’s not about checking a box. It’s about messing up sometimes, figuring out what works for you, and choosing to show up when you want to. Some weeks it’s frustrating, some weeks it’s cool. Right now, that’s enough.
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