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| The following article was written for Spesialpedagogikk; the special education journal of the Education Academy of Norway. Editorial supervision was provided by Kirsten Flaten and Dr. Arne Ostli. Further assistance provided by Suzan Lifschitz. This article was written from January to June, 2006, and published October, 2006 (Nr. 08. 2006). |
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by Arthur Anderson with special thanks to Suzan Lifschitz Shyness is a common and natural aspect of childhood. Few people considered that my own shyness might become a serious problem. However, my childhood would gradually begin to exhibit some troublesome signs. With only one brief exception, I was unable to form friendships with classmates for about five years. I became an unusually frequent target for verbal and physical abuse. I would even threaten to harm myself to avoid school. Somehow, my childhood shyness had become more problematic than anyone anticipated. Since the origins of my excessive shyness are not clearly known, the following description of my childhood and shyness can be interpreted in a variety of ways. I was my parents' first child and was considered a colicky baby. Shortly after I was born, my mother experienced a period of severe anxiety attacks. Whether her anxiety attacks had an appreciable effect on our mother-infant relationship is difficult to say. Nonetheless, my parents always loved me very much and were very devoted to me. Like many new parents, however, they did make some mistakes. Perhaps their biggest mistake was that they apparently expected me to develop and mature at an ambitious rate. Such expectations may have caused me to experience an early sense of performance anxiety associated with social acceptance. At age 5, I expressed some insecurity over the birth of my first brother. With concern, I asked my parents if my new brother was a replacement for me? They lovingly reassured me that they would never replace me. So far, my childhood did not seem terribly traumatic or uncommon. |
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| The year following my brother's birth may have been important in the development of my shyness. At age 5, being a shy child is very normal. What seems abnormal is that my shyness was not diminishing and may have been slowly growing worse. At this time, my parents began to have some serious disagreements which created a lot of tension in their marriage. They tried to insulate my brother and I from their disagreements, yet their lack of closeness may have influenced my early perception of relationships. As they tried to resolve their differences, we changed homes three times within a year. Consequently, my first year of grade school was broken into brief experiences at three different schools. This frequent change of environment meant that I was repeatedly loosing friendships and trying to establish new friendships. Frequently, I would be an outsider trying to form friendships among unfamiliar children with established social bonds. The overall lack of stable relationships that year was likely a source of insecurity and a setback in my social development. Still, children often recover from much worse experiences if their circumstances improve. |
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My family eventually settled down in a newly developed suburban community. There, I would attend the same grade school from second grade to sixth grade. I did become good friends with a neighboring child. However, the social environment of school was more complex and competitive than I was prepared for. My attempts to make friends among classmates were very stressful, confusing and often led to misunderstandings. I was anxious about approaching my classmates and my anxiety seemed to make my classmates uncomfortable with me. My shyness proved excessive enough that forming friendships at school was almost impossible for me. The classroom would become so uncomfortable that I even threatened to throw myself through a glass door to avoid school. I only once became friends with another shy classmate, but he died of an illness shortly after. As an unpopular child I became a very popular target for verbal and physical abuse. My shyness not only seemed to encourage abuse, but I believe that my shyness also made me more sensitive to abuse as well. For five years, the stability of this hostile school environment seemed to reinforce my shyness and adversely affect my social development. A mysterious episode of collapse is probably worth mention. My initial symptoms involved increasing nausea and feeling uncomfortably warm. On route to the school nurse, I lost my ability to stand and ended up crawling along a hallway. Reaching the nurse's office, I was quickly helped to a couch where my symptoms gradually faded. I never lost consciousness. A later checkup with a doctor could find nothing wrong with me. The incident was assumed an attack of hypoglycemia. I did not experience another similar episode until about five years later. Since the episode resembled a severe panic attack, its relationship to my childhood shyness and related social stress remains an open question. |
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My parents finally separated during my last year of grade school. Naturally, the separation was a source of stress for me. The last thing I needed was further chaos and complications regarding social matters. Suddenly, my family was falling apart. I was being taken away from my home and neighborhood best friend. I was uncertain over where I would be living and over what periods of time. I did not know how this might affect my long held hope of a better life after grade school. My parents' separation certainly aggravated the social insecurities I had developed over the years. At age 12, I was too young to understand that the separation was better than maintaining a bad marriage. I only appreciated how events were affecting myself at the time and I was not happy about what was happening. I angrily protested and was soon allowed to return home and live with my father.
My life did improve over the following years. High school was not as friendly as I had hoped, but its larger and more diverse environment was less harsh than grade school. I gradually met a number of wonderful friends and, somewhat clumsily, began dating. Later still, I seemed almost popular during my university years. However, I never completely overcame my shyness and the psychological scars of grade school. As an adult, social interaction is still somewhat stressful for me. Shared academic or professional interests help to divert my social stress, but not entirely. I have left some very good and promising romantic relationships simply because elevated social activity became uncomfortable for me. At times, my social discomfort is misinterpreted as arrogance, disinterest or rejection. |
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| There are certainly cases of childhood shyness much worse than my own. Still, cases like mine raise some important questions. When should shyness be considered excessive? When should the natural social lessons of the classroom be considered too abusive? The difficulties of childhood teach us many valuable lessons. Parents and teachers understand the value of these difficult lessons. Yet, such perspectives sometimes blind us to situations that may actually be traumatic to children and may have long term consequences for adult behavior. | |
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This article is Dedicated to the Memory of my young friend Arthur D.
Special thanks to Photographs by my Father. |