Quiet and Shy



Teddy honking at the neighbors in Daddy's
not so quiet and shy supped up Subaru



This week I had the first (of many to come) parent teacher conferences at Teddy's preschool.  Needless to say, I was nervous because I had no idea what they were going to tell me but I was sure it would include the words "wild" and "loud."  (Sidenote, anyone who knows me will tell you that I am the worst about reviews of any sort.  I literally freak out about them, imagine scenarios where I am getting fired, etc but then they usually turn out okay.  I call this my pessimistic optimism because if I prepare myself for the worst then anything seems better.  Weird, I know.)  So I was settled in with his teacher and imagine my surprise when she told me that Teddy was generally a (and I quote) "quiet child"---seriously.  I literally had to ask her to repeat that because the Teddy we know is anything but quiet.  As we were running down a list of things, most were accurate of him: Does he run? Yes. Does he climb the walls? Umm, Yes. Does he draw? Yes.  Then we got to language and there were some No's.  Miss Lizette told me that they had not ever really heard Teddy use more than a couple of vocabulary words at school but that he says "Please" a lot. (Well, I have to sort of be proud of that, I mean at least he is polite.)  I was shocked and I began to rattle off the words he used in the car with me that morning and then I asked if he sings the songs, etc. Apparently, he gestures a lot and says "please" to get what he wants but does not use the words he knows to ask for them.  She also told me that is likes projects, particularly art projects, and is always the first at the table for art project time (which as I told you last week explains why we have so many pieces of art).  Are you a quiet brooding artist here Teddy?  Because at home you are a rock and roll hotel crashing kind of musician--quite the juxtaposition!

Now, I am probably too smart for my own good in some ways, because every time I tell my mother something, she says not to worry about it.  I take it that this is common amongst others experiences with their baby boomer parents because I literally worry about everything and have to explain to my mom why things they did are no longer accepted practices (e.g. infants on their backs, blankets, etc).  And darn that Google for being so easy to access information because I no more than got to work on Wednesday than I was looking up everything I could on Teddy being so "quiet" at school.  I bet you know this story, you read too much, freak yourself out even more, then you really start to panic.  So I did what I think every parent often does: I called the pediatrician.  We are really fortunate that they have a Developmental Specialist who called me back and gave me the second piece of shocking news:  Teddy is just "Shy."  Again, I could not have been more shocked than if she had told me that he was a girl instead of a boy.  (There is some sort of phenomenon, possibly related to his reflux issues, where some children are generally non-verbal in large social settings but are engaged/learning and having a good time.  The example she gave me was that 30 kids go to a playground but only 29 play but all 30 sets of parents report that their child told them they had a good time at the playground.)  So he has this shyness/self-consciousness that he only expresses himself in small groups or at home, which explains why his teachers thought he did not have an extensive vocabulary and why we are amazed at just how many words he has (and that would be 57 at the moment, because yes folks, I made a chart of every word that we could think of that he knows and says on his own).  The specialist told me he will grow out of it and that to those who have not heard him speak it will seem as though he suddenly started talking with a huge vocabulary (the whole, once the spigot is on it will be on phenomenon) but that we will probably not notice a huge difference. 

So thank you Teddy Azer for continually surprising us with your mysteries.  Quiet and shy are not words that I would have used to describe you but it seems you may have more than one side to your personality.  We are amazed by all the words you know and I bet Miss Lizette will be too once you finally share them with her.  One day when you are just babbling on and on driving me nuts (because I hear that the "why" phase will come soon enough) I am going to come back to this post and reminisce about my quiet and shy child.