'Comment Mania!' Contest: Sabrina's Shyness
Rated by 8 members
My daughter Sabrina has been known for her shyness since infancy. When we would go out in public, strangers would try to play with her and make her smile, but she would always turn away. A great-aunt once remarked that Sabrina was "a sober baby." When Sabrina was a toddler, my best friend skeptically listened to me describe for weeks how much Sabrina could talk -- until we were chatting on the phone one day and she heard Sabrina babbling in the background.
"Is that Sabrina?" she asked. When I told her it was, she said, "I have to confess. You've been telling me how much she's been talking lately, but I thought you were exaggerating. She never says anything when she's at my house!" True to form, Sabrina saved her smiles, giggles, and chatter-boxing for home, where she felt comfortable.
My husband's career in the Navy didn't help Sabrina's shyness much, either. Kindergarten, first grade and second, Sabrina attended three different schools and never really had the chance to get settled. In fourth grade, though, we moved to a new duty station where we knew we would be staying for three whole years. Sabrina met a group of particularly outgoing girls who quickly befriended her. She was invited to parties, group play-dates, and was included in all the recess games. They weren't the kinds of kids Sabrina usually played with, but they seemed nice enough, and Sabrina was happy.
Then one day as a group, these gregarious girls decided they didn't like "the new kid" after all. In a day, Sabrina went from having friends to a situation where no one she knew would even talk to her at school. She was devastated. My heart broke when she told me she tried to cope by making herself invisible. She cried and said, "But Mom, people can't really be invisible." Eventually, Sabrina made new friends, but the experience shook her already shaky confidence.
Three years later, my husband retired from the Navy, and Sabrina prepared to start seventh grade at yet another new school -- this time, middle school. I worried my way through the entire summer, certain that middle school would be a shark tank and Sabrina, bait. The first few months of school, I barraged Sabrina with questions: Did you make any friends today? Why don't you invite someone over? Did you ask for that girl's phone number yet? Did you talk to anyone today?
As the weeks went by and Sabrina's social calendar remained empty, I worried that Sabrina's fourth grade experience had scarred her for life, and I was convinced she was defeating herself with shyness.
Then, when Sabrina was ready -- and not a moment before -- everything changed. The phone started ringing. Girls started coming over. Sabrina started going over to other girls' houses. As she told me about her budding friendships, I realized that Sabrina had been taking her time to observe the kids she went to school with and carefully deciding who she wanted to be friends with. She had fallen in with the wrong crowd once before, and she wasn't about to let it happen again.
What I feared was a debilitating shyness was actually Sabrina's quiet strength. From her bad experience with the social bullies in her fourth grade class, Sabrina had learned to choose her own friends instead of waiting passively to be chosen. Watching Sabrina navigate a complex middle school social scene, I learned to worry less and trust my growing daughter's judgment more.
0 |
