Mark Twain once told a story about a man who scoured the planet looking for the greatest general who ever lived. When the man was informed that the person he sought had already died and gone to heaven, he made a trip to the Pearly Gates to look for him. Saint Peter pointed at a regular-looking Joe.

"That isn't the greatest of all generals," protested the man. "I knew that person when he lived on Earth, and he was only a cobbler."

"I know that," said Saint Peter, "but if he had been a general, he would have been the greatest of them all."

We should all look out for cobblers who might have been great generals. Which means focusing on introverted children, whose talents are too often stifled, whether at home, at school, or on the playground.

Consider this cautionary tale, told to me by Dr. Jerry Miller, a child psychologist and the director of the Center for the Child and the Family at the University of Michigan. Dr. Miller had a patient named Ethan, whose parents brought him for treatment on four separate occasions. Each time, the parents voiced the same fears that something was wrong with their child. Each time, Dr. Miller a.s.sured them that Ethan was perfectly fine.

The reason for their initial concern was simple enough. Ethan was seven, and his four-year-old brother had beaten him up several times. Ethan didn't fight back. His parents-both of them outgoing, take-charge types with high-powered corporate jobs and a pa.s.sion for compet.i.tive golf and tennis-were OK with their younger son's aggression, but worried that Ethan's pa.s.sivity was "going to be the story of his life."

As Ethan grew older, his parents tried in vain to instill "fighting spirit" in him. They sent him onto the baseball diamond and the soccer field, but Ethan just wanted to go home and read. He wasn't even compet.i.tive at school. Though very bright, he was a B student. He could have done better, but preferred to focus on his hobbies, especially building model cars. He had a few close friends, but was never in the thick of cla.s.sroom social life. Unable to account for his puzzling behavior, Ethan's parents thought he might be depressed.

But Ethan's problem, says Dr. Miller, was not depression but a cla.s.sic case of poor "parent-child fit." Ethan was tall, skinny, and unathletic; he looked like a stereotypical nerd. His parents were sociable, a.s.sertive people, who were "always smiling, always talking to people while dragging Ethan along behind them."

Compare their worries about Ethan to Dr. Miller's a.s.sessment: "He was like the cla.s.sic Harry Potter kid-he was always reading," says Dr. Miller enthusiastically. "He enjoyed any form of imaginative play. He loved to build things. He had so many things he wanted to tell you about. He had more acceptance of his parents than they had of him. He didn't define them as pathological, just as different from himself. That same kid in a different home would be a model child."

But Ethan's own parents never found a way to see him in that light. The last thing Dr. Miller heard was that his parents finally consulted with another psychologist who agreed to "treat" their son. And now Dr. Miller is the one who's worried about Ethan.

"This is a clear case of an 'iatrogenic' problem,' " he says. "That's when the treatment makes you sick. The cla.s.sic example is when you use treatment to try to make a gay child into a straight one. I worry for that kid. These parents are very caring and well-meaning people. They feel that without treatment, they're not preparing their son for society. That he needs more fire in him. Maybe there's truth to that last part; I don't know. But whether there is or not, I firmly believe that it's impossible to change that kid. I worry that they're taking a perfectly healthy boy and damaging his sense of self."

Of course, it doesn't have to be a bad fit when extroverted parents have an introverted child. With a little mindfulness and understanding, any parent can have a good fit with any kind of child, says Dr. Miller. But parents need to step back from their own preferences and see what the world looks like to their quiet children.

Take the case of Joyce and her seven-year-old daughter, Isabel. Isabel is an elfin second grader who likes to wear glittery sandals and colorful rubber bracelets snaking up her skinny arms. She has several best friends with whom she exchanges confidences, and she gets along with most of the kids in her cla.s.s. She's the type to throw her arms around a cla.s.smate who's had a bad day; she even gives her birthday presents away to charity. That's why her mother, Joyce, an attractive, good-natured woman with a wisecracking sense of humor and a bring-it-on demeanor, was so confused by Isabel's problems at school.

In first grade, Isabel often came home consumed with worry over the cla.s.s bully, who hurled mean comments at anyone sensitive enough to feel bruised by them. Even though the bully usually picked on other kids, Isabel spent hours dissecting the meaning of the bully's words, what her true intentions had been, even what the bully might be suffering at home that could possibly motivate her to behave so dreadfully at school.

By second grade, Isabel started asking her mother not to arrange play dates without checking with her first. Usually she preferred to stay home. When Joyce picked up Isabel from school, she often found the other girls gathered into groups and Isabel off on the playground, shooting baskets by herself. "She just wasn't in the mix. I had to stop doing pickups for a while," recalls Joyce. "It was just too upsetting for me to watch." Joyce couldn't understand why her sweet, loving daughter wanted to spend so much time alone. She worried that something was wrong with Isabel. Despite what she'd always thought about her daughter's empathetic nature, might Isabel lack the ability to relate with others?

It was only when I suggested that Joyce's daughter might be an introvert, and explained what that was, that Joyce started thinking differently about Isabel's experiences at school. And from Isabel's perspective, things didn't sound alarming at all. "I need a break after school," she told me later. "School is hard because a lot of people are in the room, so you get tired. I freak out if my mom plans a play date without telling me, because I don't want to hurt my friends' feelings. But I'd rather stay home. At a friend's house you have to do the things other people want to do. I like hanging out with my mom after school because I can learn from her. She's been alive longer than me. We have thoughtful conversations. I like having thoughtful conversations because they make people happy."*

Isabel is telling us, in all her second-grade wisdom, that introverts relate to other people. Of course they do. They just do it in their own way.

Now that Joyce understands Isabel's needs, mother and daughter brainstorm happily, figuring out strategies to help Isabel navigate her school day. "Before, I would have had Isabel going out and seeing people all the time, packing her time after school full of activities," says Joyce. "Now I understand that it's very stressful for her to be in school, so we figure out together how much socializing makes sense and when it should happen." Joyce doesn't mind when Isabel wants to hang out alone in her room after school or leave a birthday party a little earlier than the other kids. She also understands that since Isabel doesn't see any of this as a problem, there's no reason that she should.

Joyce has also gained insight into how to help her daughter manage playground politics. Once, Isabel was worried about how to divide her time among three friends who didn't get along with each other. "My initial instinct," says Joyce, "would be to say, Don't worry about it! Just play with them all! But now I understand that Isabel's a different kind of person. She has trouble strategizing about how to handle all these people simultaneously on the playground. So we talk about who she's going to play with and when, and we rehea.r.s.e things she can tell her friends to smooth the situation over."

Another time, when Isabel was a little older, she felt upset because her friends sat at two different tables in the lunch room. One table was populated with her quieter friends, the other with the cla.s.s extroverts. Isabel described the second group as "loud, talking all the time, sitting on top of each other-ugh!" But she was sad because her best friend Amanda loved to sit at the "crazy table," even though she was also friends with the girls at the "more relaxed and chill table." Isabel felt torn. Where should she sit?

Joyce's first thought was that the "crazy table" sounded like more fun. But she asked Isabel what she preferred. Isabel thought for a minute and said, "Maybe every now and then I'll sit with Amanda, but I do like being quieter and taking a break at lunch from everything."

Why would you want to do that? thought Joyce. But she caught herself before she said it out loud. "Sounds good to me," she told Isabel. "And Amanda still loves you. She just really likes that other table. But it doesn't mean she doesn't like you. And you should get yourself the peaceful time you need."

Understanding introversion, says Joyce, has changed the way she parents-and she can't believe it took her so long. "When I see Isabel being her wonderful self, I value it even if the world may tell her she should want to be at that other table. In fact, looking at that table through her eyes, it helps me reflect on how I might be perceived by others and how I need to be aware and manage my extroverted 'default' so as not to miss the company of others like my sweet daughter."

Joyce has also come to appreciate Isabel's sensitive ways. "Isabel is an old soul," she says. "You forget that she's only a child. When I talk to her, I'm not tempted to use that special tone of voice that people reserve for children, and I don't adapt my vocabulary. I talk to her the way I would to any adult. She's very sensitive, very caring. She worries about other people's well-being. She can be easily overwhelmed, but all these things go together and I love this about my daughter."

Joyce is as caring a mother as I've seen, but she had a steep learning curve as parent to her daughter because of their difference in temperaments. Would she have enjoyed a more natural parent-child fit if she'd been an introvert herself? Not necessarily. Introverted parents can face challenges of their own. Sometimes painful childhood memories can get in the way.

Emily Miller, a clinical social worker in Ann Arbor, Michigan, told me about a little girl she treated, Ava, whose shyness was so extreme that it prevented her from making friends or from concentrating in cla.s.s. Recently she sobbed when asked to join a group singing in front of the cla.s.sroom, and her mother, Sarah, decided to seek Miller's help. When Miller asked Sarah, a successful business journalist, to act as a partner in Ava's treatment, Sarah burst into tears. She'd been a shy child, too, and felt guilty that she'd pa.s.sed on to Ava her terrible burden.

"I hide it better now, but I'm still just like my daughter," she explained. "I can approach anyone, but only as long as I'm behind a journalist's notebook."

Sarah's reaction is not unusual for the pseudo-extrovert parent of a shy child, says Miller. Not only is Sarah reliving her own childhood, but she's projecting onto Ava the worst of her own memories. But Sarah needs to understand that she and Ava are not the same person, even if they do seem to have inherited similar temperaments. For one thing, Ava is influenced by her father, too, and by any number of environmental factors, so her temperament is bound to have a different expression. Sarah's own distress need not be her daughter's, and it does Ava a great disservice to a.s.sume that it will be. With the right guidance, Ava may get to the point where her shyness is nothing more than a small and infrequent annoyance.

But even parents who still have work to do on their own self-esteem can be enormously helpful to their kids, according to Miller. Advice from a parent who appreciates how a child feels is inherently validating. If your son is nervous on the first day of school, it helps to tell him that you felt the same way when you started school and still do sometimes at work, but that it gets easier with time. Even if he doesn't believe you, you'll signal that you understand and accept him.

You can also use your empathy to help you judge when to encourage him to face his fears, and when this would be too overwhelming. For example, Sarah might know that singing in front of the cla.s.sroom really is too big a step to ask Ava to take all at once. But she might also sense that singing in private with a small and simpatico group, or with one trusted friend, is a manageable first step, even if Ava protests at first. She can, in other words, sense when to push Ava, and how much.

The psychologist Elaine Aron, whose work on sensitivity I described in chapter 6, offers insight into these questions when she writes about Jim, one of the best fathers she knows. Jim is a carefree extrovert with two young daughters. The first daughter, Betsy, is just like him, but the second daughter, Lily, is more sensitive-a keen but anxious observer of her world. Jim is a friend of Aron's, so he knew all about sensitivity and introversion. He embraced Lily's way of being, but at the same time he didn't want her to grow up shy.

So, writes Aron, he "became determined to introduce her to every potentially pleasurable opportunity in life, from ocean waves, tree climbing, and new foods to family reunions, soccer, and varying her clothes rather than wearing one comfortable uniform. In almost every instance, Lily initially thought these novel experiences were not such good ideas, and Jim always respected her opinion. He never forced her, although he could be very persuasive. He simply shared his view of a situation with her-the safety and pleasures involved, the similarities to things she already liked. He would wait for that little gleam in her eye that said she wanted to join in with the others, even if she couldn't yet.

"Jim always a.s.sessed these situations carefully to ensure that she would not ultimately be frightened, but rather be able to experience pleasure and success. Sometimes he held her back until she was overly ready. Above all, he kept it an internal conflict, not a conflict between him and her.... And if she or anyone else comments on her quietness or hesitancy, Jim's prompt reply is, 'That's just your style. Other people have different styles. But this is yours. You like to take your time and be sure.' Jim also knows that part of her style is befriending anyone whom others tease, doing careful work, noticing everything going on in the family, and being the best soccer strategist in her league."

One of the best things you can do for an introverted child is to work with him on his reaction to novelty. Remember that introverts react not only to new people, but also to new places and events. So don't mistake your child's caution in new situations for an inability to relate to others. He's recoiling from novelty or overstimulation, not from human contact. As we saw in the last chapter, introversion-extroversion levels are not correlated with either agreeableness or the enjoyment of intimacy. Introverts are just as likely as the next kid to seek others' company, though often in smaller doses.

The key is to expose your child gradually to new situations and people-taking care to respect his limits, even when they seem extreme. This produces more-confident kids than either overprotection or pushing too hard. Let him know that his feelings are normal and natural, but also that there's nothing to be afraid of: "I know it can feel funny to play with someone you've never met, but I bet that boy would love to play trucks with you if you asked him." Go at your child's pace; don't rush him. If he's young, make the initial introductions with the other little boy if you have to. And stick around in the background-or, when he's really little, with a gentle, supportive hand on his back-for as long as he seems to benefit from your presence. When he takes social risks, let him know you admire his efforts: "I saw you go up to those new kids yesterday. I know that can be difficult, and I'm proud of you."

The same goes for new situations. Imagine a child who's more afraid of the ocean than are other kids the same age. Thoughtful parents recognize that this fear is natural and even wise; the ocean is indeed dangerous. But they don't allow her to spend the summer on the safety of the dunes, and neither do they drop her in the water and expect her to swim. Instead they signal that they understand her unease, while urging her to take small steps. Maybe they play in the sand for a few days with the ocean waves crashing at a safe distance. Then one day they approach the water's edge, perhaps with the child riding on a parent's shoulders. They wait for calm weather, or low tide, to immerse a toe, then a foot, then a knee. They don't rush; every small step is a giant stride in a child's world. When ultimately she learns to swim like a fish, she has reached a crucial turning point in her relationship not only with water but also with fear.

Slowly your child will see that it's worth punching through her wall of discomfort to get to the fun on the other side. She'll learn how to do the punching by herself. As Dr. Kenneth Rubin, the director of the Center for Children, Relationships and Culture at the University of Maryland, writes, "If you're consistent in helping your young child learn to regulate his or her emotions and behaviors in soothing and supportive ways, something rather magical will begin to happen: in time, you might watch your daughter seem to be silently rea.s.suring herself: 'Those kids are having fun, I can go over there.' He or she is learning to self-regulate fearfulness and wariness."

If you want your child to learn these skills, don't let her hear you call her "shy": she'll believe the label and experience her nervousness as a fixed trait rather than an emotion she can control. She also knows full well that "shy" is a negative word in our society. Above all, do not shame her for her shyness.

If you can, it's best to teach your child self-coaxing skills while he's still very young, when there's less stigma a.s.sociated with social hesitancy. Be a role model by greeting strangers in a calm and friendly way, and by getting together with your own friends. Similarly, invite some of his cla.s.smates to your house. Let him know gently that when you're together with others, it's not OK to whisper or tug at your pants leg to communicate his needs; he needs to speak up. Make sure that his social encounters are pleasant by selecting kids who aren't overly aggressive and playgroups that have a friendly feel to them. Have your child play with younger kids if this gives him confidence, older kids if they inspire him.

If he's not clicking with a particular child, don't force it; you want most of his early social experiences to be positive. Arrange for him to enter new social situations as gradually as possible. When you're going to a birthday party, for example, talk in advance about what the party will be like and how the child might greet her peers ("First I'll say 'Happy birthday, Joey,' and then I'll say 'Hi, Sabrina.'). And make sure to get there early. It's much easier to be one of the earlier guests, so your child feels as if other people are joining him in a s.p.a.ce that he "owns," rather than having to break into a preexisting group.

Similarly, if your child is nervous before school starts for the year, bring him to see his cla.s.sroom and, ideally, to meet the teacher one-on-one, as well as other friendly-looking adults, such as princ.i.p.als and guidance counselors, janitors and cafeteria workers. You can be subtle about this: "I've never seen your new cla.s.sroom, why don't we drive by and take a look?" Figure out together where the bathroom is, what the policy is for going there, the route from the cla.s.sroom to the cafeteria, and where the school bus will pick him up at day's end. Arrange playdates during the summer with compatible kids from his cla.s.s.

You can also teach your child simple social strategies to get him through uncomfortable moments. Encourage him to look confident even if he's not feeling it. Three simple reminders go a long way: smile, stand up straight, and make eye contact. Teach him to look for friendly faces in a crowd. Bobby, a three-year-old, didn't like going to his city preschool because at recess the cla.s.s left the safe confines of the cla.s.sroom and played on the roof with the bigger kids in the older cla.s.ses. He felt so intimidated that he wanted to go to school only on rainy days when there was no roof time. His parents helped him figure out which kids he felt comfortable playing with, and to understand that a noisy group of older boys didn't have to spoil his fun.

If you think that you're not up to all this, or that your child could use extra practice, ask a pediatrician for help locating a social skills workshop in your area. These workshops teach kids how to enter groups, introduce themselves to new peers, and read body language and facial expressions. And they can help your child navigate what for many introverted kids is the trickiest part of their social lives: the school day.