My son is almost two and very shy. I can only think of one time he really played and pursued another child to continue the play. We had some kids (the youngest being five, so they were a bit older) at our home this weekend and Riley wanted to observe them (with me there, holding onto my leg) but not get actively involved. He is an only child, by the way. I take him to story hour for his age group at the library twice a week and there its the same thing, he just wants to hang out with me and sort of observe.
I'm sure its normal, but his dad is now suggesting that we think about putting him in daycare once a week to develop his social skills. I don't really want to do this. Any advice or thoughts?

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he's only/not yet two. kids at that age usually observe more interact less.

Helping Your Child Understand and Overcome Shyness: Shy, or Just a Stage?

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Yesterday was history
Tomorrow is a mystery
Today is a gift - that's why it's called the present
- Babatunde Olatunji (and Kung Fu Panda)

Thanks.
I really have to stop taking unsolicitied advice. If my family has their way with all the unsolicitied suggestions and concerns, I'll be in a straitjacket and they will be raising Riley.
I have to stop doubting my instincts about what is normal.

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Lend me ten pounds and I'll buy you a drink.

my niece was really shy and didn't speak much at all until she was about five. it was to the point where we seriously thought something was wrong with her.

now we can't shut her up and she loves everybody! it's like a completely different child.

it might have had something to do with the fact that she has three older sisters and a baby brother, so she couldn't get a word in if she tried, or that kids just develop differently. who knows.

ok i really meant to be more help than that.

no, that is totally helpful. its an example of a child who came out of their shyness. i totally want to hear my stories like that.
i do have to keep in mind that he only almost two and like cala said, right now hes all about observing.

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Lend me ten pounds and I'll buy you a drink.

ive been freaked about this too. seth is a sensitive child, and shy most definitely it takes him a while to warm up to people, but im ok if thats his nature.

when he was younger i worried even as recent as two months ago i worried. but he has blossomed while going to preschool. hes moving out of parallel play and into imaginative play where he wants interaction with other kids. he's 3.5

parallel play is totally normal for toddlers.

__________________
the cave mouth shines
by pure force of will
i look down on the world
from the top of this lonesome hill
and you can run, and run some more
from here all the way to singapore
but i will carry you home in my teeth
-mountain goats

The shyness sounds normal to me. My little girl is 3 (3years and 2 months) old and she is so UN-shy that I worry about THAT. I know that I wouldn't put a kid in daycare just to socialize them, but I would take them to the park or other places where they can play with kids or just be around kids watching as much as possible.

I have honestly never seen a little kid be less shy than my daughter and it bothers me for several reasons, although I don't do anything to try to influence her any other way, I have to constantly pull her away from strangers in stores and people who don't really want her *rightthere* in their face babbling away, and I have to watch her carefully with other kids or she will pester them to death and she tends to try to take over and boss, or the other kid obviously doesn't want her to be right up on them and she won't back off etc.

I;m not trying to make her sound abnormal because I think my daughter is behaving just as normally as the kids who are extremely shy, I do want to be able to guide her out of it, I just don't know what to do without making her feel bad, you know? She's still very young but if you saw this behavior in an older kid you;d think they had a boundary issue.

Here are some examples....it really does bother me! We are in the grocery store and she's walking around waving at everyone. Someone doesn't even have to make eye contact with her, they canjust walk past and she will yell out "Hey! My mommy has tomatoes, I like tomatoes!" and if the person is browsing and pauses within earshot, my daughter will continue to talk to them even if they don't show any interest. When I am pushing her and trying to grab something off a shelf, someone WILL make eye contact with her and say "Hey cutie" or something and she will start talkind a mile a minute to them about anything "I have a horse at home named Sweetie Pie, and I am going to eat macaroni and on birthdays you get birthday cake and I like cars!" etc on and on. I have to just wheel the cart away and she will keep talking. She also *approaches* strangers ALL the time in parking lots and anywhere and it freaks me out. Most of them are nice enough people, some talk back, others just smile and wave and go on but in every case my daughter tries to follow them or get them to stay and talk to her. I watch her closely but don't trust other people to watch her --when my mother was with us in a store she thought it was cute the way my daughter was doing and she wasn'ty watching her too close and was letting people talk to my daughter while she did her shopping, and wasn't standing right there with her. My mother seems to think that these other people are helping her to watch my daughter so she can shop for a minute. I hate the way my daughter just doesn't know a stranger and wants to talk to **everyone***, I have tried like crazy to make her stop this. I explain that she just can't talk to *everyone*, and also she can't expect everyone to talk to her or stand there for 15 minutes while she talks. Ack. I am so terrified of how easy a target she would be for a predator!

Also, thing like this bother me and I wish she WAS a little bit more shy. At the park the other day a lady was there playing with her two daughters on one little piece of play area. Her daughters were older and they were pretending to play ice cream store, and the lady was ordering ice cream and her girls were fixing it for her. My daughter went right up and got in the middle of them, in between the lady and her daughters and just butted in, talking loud. I was embarassed- the lady talked to her and didn't seem annoyed and tried to include her in their play, but my daughter then was taking over and would not let the lady's daughters play! I kept trying to get her out of there. I have never seen another kid just get right up in the middle of things like that and just take over, most kids are shy and you would have to coax them to join in. The lady handled it well- she didn't ignore my daughter, she was responding to her while also focusing on her own daughters too but I kept trying to get my daughter to stop trying to take over and eventually had to just coax her out of there by getting her excited to go swing. It's great that my daughter isn't shy and joins in but she needs to learn not to just, you know, butt in and dominate and talk over everyone else. I felt truly bad, and told my husband it seems like my daughter has no boundaries, when we teach her to share, take turns, not to interrupt people, etc. I sort of feel like this is because until the baby comes she is still an only child and never been in daycare so she acts like she is starving for other people's interactions. But the truth is she gets plenty of attention and we take her to the park and other places to play a lot.

I know a lot of people worry about their kids for being shy....I worry just as much about my daughter being the opposite and I hope she grows out of it to a good extent. Does this sound odd?

I'm really worried sometimes that my daughter will start school "behind" since she will not have been in any preschool or daycare situation. I am so afraid she is going to have problems with restraint, with discipline of staying in her seat and staying in line, etc. Im am starting to really worry that I made a mistake by staying home with her!

ummm you just said you would never send your child to preschool to socialize them and now youre whining about how your child may be behind?

i take offense to your high and mighty SAHM attitude and i take double offense to your pointing out my post, highlighting my preschool experience and then whining.

seth has stayed at home with me until this summer. im the breadwinner, but im lucky enough to only have to work two days a week and make a wage good enough to support a family and a mortgage. i put seth in daycare exactly for socialization. his experiences with playgrounds as you so pointed out you would do instead of preschool did not work. consistent kids and caregivers have helped him immeasurably in a way that sporadic inconsistent playground friends never did. even the playgroups we joined didnt provide the consistency he obviously needed. he goes two days a week for five hours at a time and loves it.

__________________
the cave mouth shines
by pure force of will
i look down on the world
from the top of this lonesome hill
and you can run, and run some more
from here all the way to singapore
but i will carry you home in my teeth
-mountain goats

nick isent shy at all, but we are starting to have a problem with him wanting to hug and kiss every little girl we see, today at bibleschool as soon as this gril about nick age walked in he ran up to her and huged and kissed her, she huged back the first time but then after like the 20th time she was annoyed
but aneyways i was very very very shy intill i was about 15 or so, i really just prefered not to talk to aneyone ever, not every child is ment to be outgoing, some are suposto be shy, im sure he will find his way

Yeah I agree, i've been reading a book called 'the highly sensitive person' and it just brought back my whole childhood. Often kids can be sensitive but fully know how social situations work, they just might prefer their own company and take longer to check out situations before they delve into them. And as someone else said, often once they get older then engage more fully and 'come out of their shell'.

Its a interesting read, as it says often sensitive children can just be a bit overwhelmed by loud noisy situations and prefer to stay with a adult or have playtime on their own.

I'm truly sorry if I said something offensive to you- I absolutely didn't mean it that way, nor did I intend to point out any post of yours personally. Please don't think I have a high and might SAHM attitude- the 2 statements I made were commenting on how I am second-guessing my own mothering decisions. I was truly thrilled to have the choice to stay home with my daughter and I always thought that was the best thing for us- been second guessing that recently, as I see that many of the kids who are in preschool, or who have been in daycare, seem like they will be much more settled and advanced than my daughter and some other kids I know who have stayed home and aren't used to the setting of being in an environment with other kids. I was always happy with my decision, and did not think it was better than the kids who were in daycare, it was just something I enjoyed, being home with her.But like I said, now I do worry that if she's never in any kind of an official preschool setting, she'll be behind in kindergarten, when a lot of the other kids are already used to being in that kind of a setting. I don't think people have to put their kids in preschool to socialize them but in my daughter's case, we don't know many other kids her age, so she's also not in a lot of playgroups or non-preschool social things frequently.

It's not something I'm whining about, it's something I feel nervous that maybe she would have been better off. I'll probably always wonder if I should have done better, or done something differently. I agree with what you've said about playgroups vs. daycare for preschool for socialization. I guess what I didn't say in the proper way is I always told myself kids can get plenty of socialization to get ready for school without daycare, but I worry that my daughter isn't getting it and it's because, maybe, I haven't worked hard enough for her to. We don't know many kids her age, and I haven't made much effort to meet more parents with kids her age etc.

Anyway, I truly apologize if I said something in such a way to be offensive or to be taken personally toward you, not my intention at all. I'm questioning my own self, and no one else.

I do want to mention that most stay at home moms *don't* have any attitude about it, no one feels that it's a grand sacrifice to stay at home for a kid, or anything like that. I don't feel at all as though it's superior to daycare- most kids in daycare seem to learn earlier, to me.(counting, saying the alphabet, and more). A mother who chooses to put her kid in daycare for ANY reason, is no different from me at the end of the day. Had my personal situation been a little different I would easily have put my daughter in daycare without a second thought, though I am glad I did stay home with her.

I notice some moms who do have kids in daycare sometimes say they wish they stayed home, and almost all of the moms I know who are at home with their kids, worry that our kids will somehow be behind or struggle more during their first year of school.

Just wanted to make another short post, apologizing to dirtplotte- never intended for my post to come across that way to her or anyone in particular and it bothers me it offended. I'm sorry.

kissing, im sorry that you felt you had to apologize twelve times to me! i came across harsh because i constantly doubt every decision i make. as soon as i make it.

i mean, what if i had tried harder at being a SAHM during the week and went to every playgroup consistently, what if i never ever had yelled at him or what if i hadnt let him pick his own sugared cereal and now he whines for it constantly, what if i smothered him too much what if i havent given enough of myself? what if he should be in his own bed, have i made him too sensisitve? and if he were sleeping in his own bed, i would be terrified that he would grow up a loner, more so than he already is.

is she your first child? bc seth is mine and i think the first kids have it the worst bc the mommas are so worried that what they are doing isnt good enough.

so thats where my snarky came from. im sensitive. as are you.

<3

__________________
the cave mouth shines
by pure force of will
i look down on the world
from the top of this lonesome hill
and you can run, and run some more
from here all the way to singapore
but i will carry you home in my teeth
-mountain goats

im going to comment on this. have ya been to mothering.com? are you part of an attachment parenting organization in your town?

the most judgemental pieces of work, always looking to see what you feed your kid, how you talk to your kids, how much you work if you work and are you neglecting? did you breastfeed long enough? do you use sposies?

GOOD LORD.

im personally judgemental about breastfeeding. i want women to try their damndest to nurse before they go to formula. i know how hard it is to get a baby to nurse. i had a worst care scenario. preemie who got used to the rubber nipple in hospital AND they feed him fucking formula and discouraged me from breastfeeding because "he is too little"

fuckers.

but i got him to breastfeed after six weeks when i was tearing my hair out and crying multiple times a day. it was really really hard. but worth every bit of pain and hopelessness. because it worked.

i dont expect everyone to try as hard as me, but could ya try at least?

so im judgemental as well.

__________________
the cave mouth shines
by pure force of will
i look down on the world
from the top of this lonesome hill
and you can run, and run some more
from here all the way to singapore
but i will carry you home in my teeth
-mountain goats

Shyness is nice.

kissingwench your daughter sounds JUST LIKE ME. i was sooo like that as a child. school will be a steep learning curve but she'll pick up some discipline/boundaries and learn about personal space. she just might not always respect them

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