Forty years ago in America, it was chic to have a psychiatrist. Anybody who was anybody (or who thought they were) decorated their conversation with, “Well, my shrink said…”
They often ended complaints with, “It was all my parents’ fault.”
Whether or not psychologists actually did accuse parents, that was the common cop-out for any shortcomings. (And people paid a lot of time and money for this excuse.)
But was it really your parents’ “fault” that you became shy? Again, the revered and reliable researchers who have dedicated their lives to explore the roots and results of shyness came up with the right answer: “For some it was, for some it wasn’t.”
Children who have been overprotected by their parents do, however, run a much higher risk of being shy. A study called “The Development of Anxiety: The Role of Control in the Early Environment” found that:
Parents who exert maximal control over a child’s activities and decisions can negatively influence the child’s sense of being able to control his or her own environment.66
—PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN
I wish two of two of my longtime friends had known this. Steve and Lydia are a wonderful couple who have only one son. After he was born, Lydia wasn’t able to have more children, so little Lenny became obsessively precious to them. If three-month-old Lenny started crying while I was visiting, Lydia would hop to her feet before my next sentence and sprint to the nursery. Sounds of her baby talk wafted into the living room. “Ooh, did some big black bear come to bite my widddle baby? Awww, Mommy’s here now. Everything is going to be all wight.”
Frankly, I found it nauseating. That doesn’t mean that if I had a kid, I’d lock him in the nursery and let him scream like a sick coyote. But I certainly wouldn’t come running every time he hiccoughed.
We had dinner together at a restaurant several times when Lenny was not so “widdle” any more, about eight years old. Unfortunately, adult conversation was futile. Whenever the little prince burped, there was an anxious duet of “Oh, Lenny. Are you OK?” “Did the nasty Coca Cola make you burp?”
One night Lydia told him, “We’ll order you an orange juice.”
Lenny crossed his arms and announced, “I hate orange juice. I hate orange juice. I hate orange juice.”
I was about to gag. “Don’t you think Lenny would enjoy eating at home next time?” I asked. “I know a wonderful babysitter who cooks, too. My treat.”
“I hate babysitters!” whined the little bugger. (Can you sense I was getting a tad emotional about this?)
Lydia leaned over and whispered, “Lenny doesn’t like babysitters.”
“I sort of picked that up,” I said.
“What other drinks can I have?” Lenny interrupted.
This was war. I looked right at him and said, “Lenny, why don’t you ask the waitress?”
Lydia and Steve just laughed and called the waitress over. Lenny looked at his mother and loudly declared, “I want a root beer.” Lydia then turned to the waitress. “He’d like a root beer.”
“The waitress isn’t hard of hearing,” I mumbled.
I didn’t see my friends for ten years because they moved to Michigan. But recently I was giving a speech in Detroit and called them. When they arrived at the restaurant, for the first time, there was no Lenny!
When I asked about him, Steve and Lydia looked at each other painfully. Lydia said, “He didn’t want to come.”
Hallelujah! “Oh, that’s too bad,” I said.
Steve and Lydia spent the next hour lamenting that he was “uncomfortable around people.” He had no friends. He wouldn’t go to parties. At eighteen, he’d never had a date. He was shy and felt the other kids didn’t like him. “So we home-schooled him.”
I had to bite my tongue. It was obvious. By doing everything for Lenny and indulging his every whim, he never developed the social skills or the courage to do things on his own.
Obviously, parents, you aren’t going to tell your kids that. Do, however, progressively give them increasingly more complicated challenges. Suppose that you and your six-year-old daughter are at a restaurant, and she is served a baked potato with sour cream and butter on it. But little Petunia doesn’t like sour cream on her potato.
She complains, “Mommy, I want just butter. Tell her to take it back.” Mom, your ideal response would be, “Petunia, why don’t you tell her yourself? I’ll call her over for you, but you must ask her to take the sour cream away.” Little by little, give your kids increasingly bigger challenges appropriate to their age.
My mother and I were very close, maybe because my father died when I was two and I am an only child. I don’t know when it began, but by the time I got to grade school, I realized that my mother was much more protective of me than the other kids’ mothers. I wasn’t even allowed to cross the street alone to play with the other kids. It didn’t bother me that much because she would take me to the movies a lot and we would go away together on every vacation. I liked that because I didn’t have to be around other kids who would tease me. I think they thought I was a snob because I didn’t play with them.
I was so shy in high school, especially around boys, that my mother put me in a small private tutoring school where we had only five or six people to a class. I’m thirty-four now and still live with my mother. I’ve hardly ever dated because I get so nervous around men that the few times I have been asked out, I’ve said no. I realize I have to change but it’s hard to break old patterns and thought habits.
—Linda G., Carrollton, Ohio
Congratulations, Dads. Yes, generally you are actually a better influence on your child’s shyness than your wife. Why? Because if another kid bullies your son and comes home with a scratched knee, you are more apt to say, “Get out there, kid, and tell him he can’t treat you like that.” Mommy is more likely to croon sympathetically and kiss the booboo.
In one study, fathers were so brusque in pushing their kids to stick up for themselves that even the researchers were shocked. But they had to admit, it worked.
By pushing the child to change, thus appearing insensitive and intrusive, fathers may have influenced their sons to become less inhibited.67
—JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
That definitely does not mean to ignore them. Parents who have a strong bond with their children (including love, open communication, dependability) and exert low control (in other words, encouraging them to do things on their own) are the most likely to have confident children.