Always The Quiet Ones
Does my daughter’s shyness need to be fixed?
by Camille Sweeney
November 9, 2009
Like a lot of babies, when my daughter Roxie was still in her first year she had a certain reticence around strangers. At the time, we chalked it up to separation anxiety otherwise known as "please don't pass me to Granny or Grandpa or I'll scream my head off."
We smiled. We made excuses. But it persisted.
Now, at three and a half, Roxie is certainly stimulated by novel experiences, people and situations. But put her in a peer group setting like, say, preschool circle time, and she goes all Chauncey Gardiner — more content to watch than join in.
Or, so it would seem.
As many of her fellow preschoolers merrily belt out "Little Bunny Foo Foo" animated with hand movements, Roxie, who knows all the words and gestures (and performs them with relish at home in front of the mirror), remains silent, hands in her lap. In a free art class offered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, other kids streak by her through the halls of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the ancient New World on the hunt for the fon elephant from the Republic of Benin. Instead, Roxie lags behind with me and the other parents and caregivers required to be there. It's not that she doesn't know where the elephant is (she does) or even that she doesn't enjoy the hunt (she says "it's fun").
What Can You Do?
Clinical psychologists and shyness specialists recommend:
• Do not label your child as "shy," which can erode a child's confidence and make him or her feel more inhibited
• Role-play anxious situations with your child
• Think aloud with your child about strategies to lessen anxieties over trigger situations
• Set up play-dates
• Discuss the issue with your childcare helpers, teachers and activity leaders and make them aware of how they can help
But rather than let go and join the others, or even let on she's enjoying it, she walks quietly until she reaches the spot where the bright silver statue stands encased in glass, then remains outside the throng of kids and merely points. There, she says in a whisper.
Is she shy? Slow to warm up? Highly sensitive with a dread of social evaluation? What leads her to hold back in these situations? Is it genetic, environmental? A temporary stage of development? A life-long condition?
In our Got Talent culture we have come to expect even our youngest children to be high achievers — feisty swimmers, masterful drawers, gregarious preschool socialites. A shy or reticent temperament can dampen our hopes and evokes our own peculiar brand of parental angst. But is it that our child may miss out on some extroverts-only experiences that worries us or is something more primal, more prideful at work? The fear, perhaps, that our child will never shine?
According to a recent major study, 42 percent of American children exhibit shyness and the percentage only increases with age. "Thirty or forty years ago, being shy didn't used to be as negatively stereotyped as it is today," said Lynne Henderson, a former faculty member at Stanford University and director of the Shyness Institute.
In recent years, psychologists have battled as to whether or not shyness is genetic, a reaction to environment, or some combination. Jerome Kagan, a prominent Harvard research psychologist, was the first to identify traits in infancy that predict shyness. He believes temperament is destiny, or at least, shyness is a priori, a point he set out to prove when he began a major longitudinal study in 1986, researching 500 sixteen-week olds. Tracking data including how the babies reacted when given a new toy, he and colleagues determined that the most highly reactive sixteen-week olds, those with the most visible signs of distress and alarm when handed a new toy, proved to be the shyest children when they were interviewed as eleven-year-olds.
But, even if a child is hardwired to be highly sensitive or shy, many experts argue, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a behavioral marker for life on the sidelines.
"Many children will outgrow their strong reticence and reactions," said Dr. Henderson of the Shyness Institute. "About 93 percent of shy children never become problematically shy."
But, early detection of social awkwardness and intervention can make a significant difference later on she said.
©2009 Camille Sweeney and Babble
About the Author
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Camille Sweeney is a journalist and frequent contributor to the New York Times. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter. |
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