The Problem of the Shy Child

Among the prominent problems that face a large class of parents, here as in the other countries of the world, is the problem of shy children. They meet with abundant difficulties in freeing their children from that shyness and bashfulness, and they fear these will end by affecting their natural growth as the young men and young women of the future. So you see them resorting to all manner of methods and devices to stop the galling shyness at its limit — and very often the methods they have turned to are mistaken, so that they harm their children where they intended benefit.

Upon children's doctors and psychologists, and upon the magazines that specialize in such studies, there stream numerous letters from anxious fathers and mothers; and in their scope they do not go beyond: "How, do you think, can we manage to bring our boy to mix with his companions? In his infancy his health was poor and he was highly sensitive, so we kept him at home most of the time. Now shyness has taken hold of him; he will not play with children his age, and gladness does not take possession of his heart unless he buries his nose in a book or one of us undertakes to amuse him." Or beyond: "Our daughter is sensitive to an unbearable degree; she imagines that her movements and her conduct are awkward and invite ridicule, and that people mock her the moment she turns her back to them. We undertook to enroll her in a dancing class, hoping this would be a help toward giving her confidence in herself, but the result was the opposite of what we expected. We were compelled to take her out of the class. And every time we try to make her mingle with her companions, her sensitivity and her nervousness increase. What can we do to help her rid herself of all this?"

On this pattern run most of the questions and cases. As for the experts on the subject, their first and fundamental advice to parents who wish to do away with shyness in their children is this: that they try to divert the child's chief interest from his own self to another direction outside his own sphere. They hold that the child's interest in certain hobbies, especially those connected with handwork, has a good effect on the child; and that any work in which imagination and the hands join together will lead in the end to restoring the child to his natural state.

Nor is it difficult for parents to hit upon a hobby that will occupy their children and distract them from themselves. The child needs a hobby from the time he begins his first primitive thinking. Only, the parents must choose for them such hobbies as they feel suit their natures and inclinations. In the kindergarten years it is well to train them in drawing and in picture-making with color and with modeling paste. If they master that to some degree, and it appears that their gift runs along that

direction, one can advance in the treatment and settle on other hobbies and occupations for them. Among these are carpentry and decoration, or the building of models of houses and cabins and gardens and airplanes and ships. These projects can be graded step by step, so that when the child has mastered them he passes on to other works, representing historical or military or industrial events or the like.

Say the same of an interest in gardens and flowers and plantings. Even the small child loves to dig in the garden and set out plants and pick blossoms or pieces of fruit and greenery. And if it becomes clear to the parents that the child's gift lies in gardens and in nature, it is possible to lead him by degrees to other work of the same kind — such as tending the fish in the pond, or the small animals, or the poultry — and to make him give his attention to them and not to himself.

The experts, however, insist at the same time on an important point: that parents must direct their children to the hobby which they feel that they — the children — love, not to what pleases them — the parents; for the matter concerns the children and not their elders. If the parents persist in imposing the hobby they want upon their children, they create resentment in them and drive them to shrink into themselves, and the result in the end is exactly the opposite of what they intended.

A well-known American surgeon has told this story. He said: When I was a child of six, I was shy to a great degree. One day my father called me and began showing me the beauty of finely bound books and the methods of binding and ornamentation. Very soon the desire to imitate appeared in me, and I began working at bookbinding. This required acquaintance with a variety of operations calling for knowledge and precision, and I came to spend long hours upon them — and during that time my work kept me from thinking of myself. Before very long I had gained two important things: the first, my mastery of binding; the second, my liberation from shyness. And the surgeon added that his skill in binding, and the precision in small matters it demands, had a great share in his skill as a surgeon!

The experts close their counsels by insisting on patience: parents must take things with deliberateness and strive without weariness, and not lose heart if their children are not cured of shyness within a matter of days — for the result is certain if they persevere in the treatment.