Emotional

From time to time I take The Boy out into the world. He's learning how to interact with folks, and since he started daycare a year and a half ago, is getting pretty good at it. He was a very uninteractive baby, at least with strangers. He was very keen on mom and dad, and cautiously keen on grandparents and others, but strangers -- forget it. There was a lady we saw regularly at the nearby greengrocer, and she would always try to coax a smile -- or any response at all -- from him. He would just watch her. After months of this she actually asked me if there was something wrong with him.

Since those days he's become much more friendly with strangers. We're teaching him the words, the cultural norms of small talk, the "hello", "how are you?" and the "I'm fine thanks!" He's becoming more and more proficient.

But he's not as engaging as many babies. He never has been. My sister's older son would engage with anyone and everyone, even a baby. At nine months he would flirt shamelessly with waitresses in cafes; at a similar age, I couldn't leave The Boy with his trusted grandmother long enough to take a shower. 

Sometimes, when he doesn't feel like interacting, he will bury his head on my shoulder and say "I'm shy. I'm too shy." I don't know where he picked up that word; being a shy person myself I never push him to interact with people if he doesn't want to. It's ok to be shy in my world. But I wonder about the fact that he can say and identify that feeling before he has openly acknowledged that he is sad, happy, angry, or excited. I am sure he has felt this way. But he will himself identify the shyness, and speak of it. He doesn't tend to do the same with other emotions.

Why does this bother me? (Because obviously it does, when I'm writing about it!) Especially when I wrote, pointedly, above, that "it's ok to be shy in my world?" I think in many ways while we hope that our children inherit our strengths, it's harder to watch a child inherit traits that have both positive and negative effects. My shyness has caused some amount of social awkwardness, of social isolation, of accusations of snobbery from some less understanding high school acquaintances. I want The Boy to have all those things that I think have made my life easier -- my intelligence, my capacity for empathy, my stubborn tenacity, my love of learning, my delight in travel. I don't mind my shyness; it's not a problem for me anymore. It's so much a part of me that I identify with it. 

But oh, would I wish that I could save my child from playground awkwardness; from fear of rejection. I wish that he could see as I do that he is so amazing that he need not fear any rejection at all, that shyness could be eradicated because it has no purpose for him. He will go through life being who he is and there will be enough love and support for him, just because of who he is.

In the end, there is so much that I want to say to him that really, would probably be better spent on the three year old version of me. Because he is less shy than I was; he is learning those social skills better than I ever did, because he has great teachers. Not me; he gets to learn from daycare those social skills in an environment where the children aren't yet mean and dismissive. He'll be fine precisely because he can label his emotion as shy, and yet can still smile at the saleslady. He knows it's ok to be shy; he knows it's a part of him that he doesn't have to be ashamed of. Of course that's partly my influence -- my mother didn't do that for me. Which is why, in the end, this is only and ever my problem, my concern. I am afraid for him because it wasn't ok for me. But by making it ok for him, the shyness may never be a problem for him the way it was for me. 

Now if I could just invent that time machine and reassure my toddler self of this, everything would be ok.