21 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Challenging Inhibited Behavior in Children
But with the right balance, parents can modify even the most difficult side of their children's temperaments. As an example, consider those 15 percent or so of toddlers who are very inhibited—kids like Andrew, whose right frontal lobe explodes with anxiety whenever he's confronted by new people or a new environment. While many of these children don't change, about 40 percent do lose their extreme timidity by kindergarten. Researchers have observed that these are the youngsters whose parents...
1 It is important to encourage inhibited children to challenge their fears and adventure into the world.
19 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Mother's Hormones Impact a Child's Propensity for Shyness
As we learn more about maternal hormones and their influence on the developing brain, scientists are beginning to propose actual biological mechanisms for the kind of folk prophecies that have been around for ages. One recent study, for instance, suggests that a child's shyness is determined, in part, by maternal hormone fluctuations during gestation. Researchers who interviewed several thousand preschoolers in both the United States and New Zealand noted a significant relationship between th... 1 
notes
notesThere appears to be a correlation between the amount of sunlight to which a mother is exposed mid-pregnancy and how shy her children are later on.
27 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Sitters and Rovers
Once you know about sitters and rovers, you see them everywhere, especially among young children. Drop in on your local Mommy and Me music class: there are the sitters, intently watching the action from their mothers’ laps, while the rovers march around the room banging their drums and shaking their maracas.
Relaxed and exploratory, the rovers have fun, make friends and will take risks, both rewarding and dangerous ones, as they grow. According to Daniel Nettle, a Newcastle University ev... 1 notes
notesShy people bring much to the cultural table. If everyone were outgoing, society would miss out on the crucial benefits of introspection.
27 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Social Norms and Psychological Disorders
Before 1980, this would have seemed a strange question. Social anxiety disorder did not officially exist until it appeared in that year’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM-III, the psychiatrist’s bible of mental disorders, under the name “social phobia.” It was not widely known until the 1990s, when pharmaceutical companies received F.D.A. approval to treat social anxiety with S.S.R.I.’s and poured tens of millions of dollars into advertising its existence. The current v...
1 Shyness becomes "Social Anxiety Disorder" because we live in a society that values outgoing people over people who are introspective.
