How children are affected by their families

2:48:18

2023-10-21

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It is easy to see how a shy individual points to his family as the main reason behind his shyness, as children learn their social skills from family members such as: parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandfathers and grandmothers, who are their first friends and constitute their first social environment. The family teaches each child - whether he is shy or not - social and life skills that will affect his general self-esteem and his view of himself as a social being.

Naomi, a housewife and mother of a two-year-old boy named Maxwell, explained that her child, like most shy children, changes when he is in an environment to which he is not accustomed. Naomi says: “When Maxwell is with me or my husband, he is fine, but when we are with older people he does not know, he does not feel comfortable and gets very close to me, clinging to my feet, or burying his head between my shoulders.”

"Maxwell is not the type of child who ever gets close to his peers. He likes to stay away from them, and this happens even with family members whom he has known since his birth but does not see often."

Naomi says that she was sure that he would be shy at a very young age. “I noticed that he might have been shy for the first time when he was six or nine months old. At that age, he could recognize the person holding him, and when he realized that the person holding him was not me.” Nor was my husband really uncomfortable. This became more evident as he grew older. When he is with people he does not know well, he withdraws.”

Although little Maxwell was born into a large, close-knit family, he spent much of his short life alone with his mother. Naomi says: We had one car in our family for a long time, so when my husband was at work I couldn't go out much during the day, and I spent a lot of time with my son alone together, especially throughout the long winter months here in Minneapolis. We could not get him to join a group of children to play with, and he did not spend long times with other children.”

When Naomi goes out with Maxwell, she tends to gauge how agitated he is so as not to burden her slow-warming baby with more than he can bear. Naomi says: “If he wants me to hold him, I do so, but I try to continue my work and not make him the focus of my attention so as not to make him feel that I am a refuge and refuge. When he feels more comfortable, he stops clinging to me.”

I do not force him to separate from me, nor do I focus on him. Because I was a shy child, I know that focusing more on his behavior makes things worse, and the situation is painful enough without others commenting on it.”

I asked her: Do you think that Maxwell inherited shyness from you? She said: “I think we acquire the personality traits of our fathers, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he imitated me in many things. I’m not loud and I don’t like a lot of noise, so he wasn’t exposed to a lot of that.” But my husband ...He is definitely not shy, and when it's just the three of us at home, Maxwell is happy and social, and behaves like...