My son was very shy. Inordinately shy. In fact so shy that we thought we would have to do surgery on him when he was a little boy just to remove him from the back of my legs. He stuck to me. Literally
I may or may not have been a little neurotic given his very hard start in life but it may have just been in the way that I parent. I kept Little Pencil close to me, I pandered to all his needs and I never ever let him cry . I don’t regret that at all. Never have and doubt that I ever will. In fact as I look back at the gazillion or so photos that I have of Little Pencil growing up I remember his childhood with happiness and every picture I see encapsulates that joy.
But Little Pencil was shy, wary of the world and loved me to be around him. All. The. Time. I worried about this when he was at pre-school and his “insecurity” was at its peak. In fact I briefly thought that maybe I had been a bit over the top in the neurosis stakes. But it was a brief thought and I consoled myself that some children are just shy and well, he was a shy child.
Every day I would pick him up from pre-school and look at the teacher beseechingly “was he naughty today?” I would ask. I wanted them to answer yes, because I just wanted him to be confident and happy enough to be naughty in class. Without fail they looked at me like I was inquiring about the wrong child. Little Pencil at pre-school was never naughty.
When I made the decision to move him from his pre-school that was associated with a primary school to a new school completely my decision was questioned. In fact I was told by the staff at the pre school that it was the wrong decision, that Little Pencil would not cope with the change and that he would have difficulty making new friends. He was shy, quiet, introspective, not good at handling change or indeed big groups of people. I was told that he was a child that would flourish only in one on one interactions and he should stay with the group of children that he was familiar with
Cue to last week – Parent’s evening for the Year 4 parents.
Academically nothing much has changed for my boy. He is smart and interested in his environment, keen to learn and literally aceing it in his classes. But that is not what concerns me, what I always want to know is “is he happy? Is he shy? is he naughty?
When I ask those questions all these years later the teachers still look at me a little bewildered. How do they answer this lunatic woman who asks after a child that no longer exists? The child they know talks constantly, incessantly, sometimes even disruptively. He is social, he extrovert, he is confident and loud.
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Little Pencil is not shy. In fact he may be a little over confident. And naughty? If chatty is naughty he is scoring pretty close on 100%
I should be getting used to that now, the change happened when he first made the move to all those years ago in Year K.
Little Pencil blossomed at his new school. He had the chance at only 5 years old to reinvent himself, to be the person he wanted to be without the shackles of his past. Ridiculous to think you can wear the shackles of your past at 5 years of age but scarily true.
At only 5 his peer group and his teachers, even his parents had determined that he was shy. We never let him be anything else than the shy kid who had been scared to attend pre-school on day one.
A fresh start at a new school that embraced him and welcomed him as an individual allowed him to be himself, and it turns out that that self wasn’t that shy.
I am thrilled that his teachers think I am odd when I ask if he is shy, I am less thrilled that he never shuts up for a second. But I would not have it any other way.
