My not too sociable little girl.

A few weeks ago I had bloged about Alysha having a great vocabulary, is very loving, considerate and a polite girl. However, the thing that I worry about sometimes is her social skills. She has wonderful social skills with her family and friends (a few other kids). But when it comes to others i.e. my friends, cousins, aunts, etc. she just does not socialize. No matter how hard they or I try to get her to even say her name or to greet them or to say thanks, she will not budge. She just will not speak to them. But otherwise she is the chattiest kid I know.

I always felt like I failed in some way here. Maybe I was too protective as a mom when she was younger. Maybe I should have has many more people around when she was younger.

Today I read a post that makes me feel so much better. Don’t know if it’s true but if it is, it explains a lot for her behavior.

I have been reading http://daycaredaze.blogspot.com/ for a while now. She is a nanny who has years of experience looking after kids of all breeds and ages. I absolutely this post.

Take a kid chock-full of extroverted genes, throw her in with a bunch of new faces every day, and you get a kid who rises to the stimulation, giggling and interacting, smiling and playing. She thrives on it.

“A-ha!” say proud parents. “Our strategy is working! Look at our outgoing, socially competent child!” They believe it’s their manipulation of her environment, their training, which has produced this social prodigy.

Not convinced? Picture the other side of the coin. Take a kid chock-full of introverted genes, throw her in with a bunch of new faces every day, and do you get a socially skilled kid who thrives on lots of interaction? No, you get a kid who is overwhelmed, nervous, clingy, unhappy, even terrified. The constant barrage of social stimulation is too much for her. Why? Because she’s not an extrovert.

This is not to disparage the significance of parents. For those first years, you are the single most important relationship in your child's life. Even as they gain independence and autonomy, parents are still very important to their children. But we're not omnipotent. There is a limit to parental impact, influence, significance.You can give children skills, and you can hope they learn to apply them, but those skills are always superimposed upon their base character. Bottom line: no matter what your parenting skills, you can’t you cannot turn a child into something they’re not.”

My mom is an introvert. She does not have many friends and is usually the quiet one in a crowd and so is my dad. I am like that too to some extent and maybe that’s just why Alysha is the way she is.

I’d like to think that its nothing that I have done or not done that has resulted in her not being such a sociable person. And if Inarah turns out to be any different it’s all because of my husband’s genes.