Amanda loved to sit at the “crazy table,” even though she was also
friends with the girls at the “more relaxed and chill table.”
Isabel felt
torn. Where should she sit?
Joyce’s first thought was that the “crazy table” sounded like more fun.
But she asked Isabel what
she
preferred. Isabel thought for a minute and
said, “Maybe every now and then I’ll sit with Amanda, but I do like
being quieter and taking a break at lunch from everything.”
Why would you want to do that?
thought Joyce. But she caught herself
before she said it out loud. “Sounds good to me,” she told Isabel. “And
Amanda still loves you. She just really likes that other table. But it
doesn’t mean she doesn’t like you. And you should get yourself the
peaceful time you need.”
Understanding introversion,
says Joyce, has changed the way she
parents—and she can’t believe it took her so long. “When I see Isabel
being her wonderful self, I value it even if the world may tell her she
should want to be at that other table. In fact,
looking at that table
through her eyes, it helps me reflect on how I might be perceived by
others and how I need to be aware and manage my extroverted ‘default’
so as not to miss the company of others like my sweet daughter.”
Joyce has also come to appreciate Isabel’s sensitive ways. “Isabel is an
old soul,” she says. “You forget that she’s only a child. When I talk to
her, I’m not tempted to use that special tone of voice that people reserve
for children, and I don’t adapt my vocabulary. I talk to her the way I
would to any adult. She’s very sensitive, very caring. She worries about
other people’s well-being. She can be easily overwhelmed, but all these
things go together and I love this about my daughter.”
Joyce is as caring a mother as I’ve seen,
but she had a steep learning
curve as parent to her daughter because of their difference in
temperaments. Would she have enjoyed a more natural parent-child fit if
she’d been an introvert herself? Not necessarily. Introverted parents can
face challenges of their own. Sometimes painful childhood memories can
get in the way.
Emily Miller, a clinical social worker in Ann Arbor, Michigan, told me
about a little girl she treated, Ava, whose shyness was so extreme that it
prevented her from making friends or from concentrating in class.
Recently she sobbed when asked to join a group singing in front of the
classroom, and her mother, Sarah, decided to seek Miller’s help. When
Miller asked Sarah, a successful business journalist, to act as a partner in
Ava’s treatment, Sarah burst into tears. She’d been a shy child, too, and
felt guilty that she’d passed on to Ava her terrible burden.
“I hide it better now, but I’m
still just like my daughter,” she
explained. “I can approach anyone, but only as long as I’m behind a
journalist’s notebook.”
Sarah’s reaction is not unusual for the pseudo-extrovert parent of a shy
child, says Miller. Not only is Sarah
reliving her own childhood, but
she’s projecting onto Ava the worst of her own memories. But Sarah
needs to understand that she and Ava are not the same person, even if
they do seem to have inherited similar temperaments. For one thing, Ava
is influenced by her father, too, and by
any number of environmental
factors, so her temperament is bound to have a different expression.
Sarah’s own distress need not be her daughter’s, and it does Ava a great
disservice to assume that it will be. With the right guidance, Ava may
get to the point where her shyness is nothing more than a small and
infrequent annoyance.
But even parents who still have work to do on their own self-esteem
can be enormously helpful to their kids, according to Miller. Advice from
a parent who appreciates how a child feels is inherently validating. If
your son is nervous on the first day of school, it helps to tell him that
you felt the same way when you started school and still do sometimes at
work, but that it gets easier with time. Even if he doesn’t believe you,
you’ll signal that you understand and accept him.
You can also use your empathy to help you judge when to encourage
him to face his fears, and when this would be too overwhelming. For
example, Sarah might know that singing in front of the classroom really
is too big a step to ask Ava to take all at once. But she might also sense
that singing
in private with a small and
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