Janet responds to three parents who are worried that their kids seem overly anxious and sensitive in social situations. Each parent has tried to be patient and trusting, but they wonder if their child’s temperament may be abnormal, especially when compared to their peers. Aside from frustration and concern, one parent says: “I’m so lost… Sometimes I feel shame — not about him — but because I want to do fun things with him, but he always pulls away and leaves.” Janet offers advice and a lot of encouragement.
Transcript of “My Boy Seems Anxious, Sensitive, Easily Overwhelmed… Is This Normal?”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
Today, what I hope I’m going to be doing is encouraging you. Especially if you have a child who seems extra anxious maybe, they’re sensitive, they get overwhelmed. Maybe it seems like they’re different from their peers or other kids that you see, and we worry. So that’s why I thought it might be helpful to share that several people have written to me about this topic recently. While maybe this is a less common temperament, or it seems to be, a lot of children have it. I relate to it, where maybe we’re a little awkward socially. Maybe it could be referred to as reserved, introverted, slow to warm, shy, I guess, although I never love that term. Maybe because it was used about me by my parent in a disapproving way, like telling people when I wouldn’t say hello right away, “She’s shy,” and I could tell that that wasn’t a welcome way to be.
But is this a deficiency? Is this an issue? Is this something that we should be embarrassed of? No, not at all, first as far as my opinion goes, and then as far as my own experience goes. Because children that have this, they can do just fine when they’re one-on-one with a friend, socialising in small doses or in ways where they feel like they have some control over the situation, but when it’s kind of unmanageable and coming at them, it’s unsettling and exhausting. Like I said, I relate to this kind of temperament.
And what I would like to help these parents do is, well, they’ve all asked if they need to do something to help their child. What should they be doing differently? They’re getting a little frustrated, they’re obviously concerned. One of them had this subject line: “Encouragement Needed.” So that’s why I said right from the beginning I just want to encourage these parents to trust their children, accept their children, and therefore support their children to be who they are. Is this a problem? Shall we be ashamed of this? No not a bit of it, to begin with, as far as I think, and secondly, as far as I know.
I will just plunge in. Here’s the first note:
I’m a long-time listener and this is my first time ever writing in to anything, but I’m paranoid that I’m ruining my child. My son is three years old and very independent. He’s always been very comfortable playing by himself, or so it seems. Even with friends he enjoys he will eventually get gets tired of playing with them and walks away and does his own thing, even though they may be in our house and the reason he wanted the friend with him was.
He does not actually appear to take things on lightly. During his own birthday, everyone shouted “Happy birthday!” and he buried his face in my shoulder and bit me hard. I had to ask the kids to sing to him quietly. He will swim with his dad or I individually, but if someone else shows up, he no longer wants to stay in the pool. When kids invite him to join in dancing or play, he will join if it is one kid. But if another kid comes, even if it is one that he knows and likes, he will not join. He will just hover around the group. I try to ask him privately if he wants to join, and I offer to hold his hand while he asks if he can play.
But there are some times where we’re all having fun and he will try to do it with us and then will suddenly stop or leave and do his own thing. Do I go after him or let him do his own thing? I’m so lost. I’m not going to lie, sometimes I feel shame. Not about him, but because I want to do fun things with him. He never makes any advancement. He also enjoys that I sing and will sing with me but when I sing or dance out of the house I make him so overwhelmed.
How am I in favour of him? My husband agrees that he cannot make us stop and not play music, to not sing on every moment, and he is correct doing a normal behaviour when he leaves and does his own thing when he does not agree with it. However, I want to demonstrate to him that it is okay to feel overwhelmed and possibly in the future how to self regulate himself when he is overcome with the feeling. I don’t know.
Thank you for any advice you have.
Yes, so this child is showing all the signs. He’s independent. I mean, it is a good thing, but when it comes to navigating with people it is a little bit harder on his part. He overwhelms very quickly. It appears that he is doing rather good job taking care of himself. He is coping, not losing his temper on his friends or something that is not right; he walks away. He sounds pretty competent around taking care of himself and his needs in these situations, and he’s only three years old.
“He gets tired of playing with them and he walks away and does his own thing, even if they’re at our house because he wanted a friend over.” Yes, so he wanted the friend over, but it just got too much for him, too exhausting, and he needed to move away. That seems reasonable and understandable to me.
Then she said about the birthday that everyone was shouting happy birthday, and he buried his face in her shoulder and bit her. Well, obviously we don’t want him to bite her, but that is a sign that he’s overwhelmed and doing this very impulsive behaviour that children do when they’re just trying to deal with feeling overwhelmed. So that wasn’t okay, but it just got too much for him. And I think it was great that the mom asked the kids to sing more quietly.
And then in terms of somebody else coming when he’s in the pool and he doesn’t want that, that makes sense. I mean, especially in a pool, it’s something to navigate in itself, being in the water. Then he’s got his one parent there, and when other people come, it’s too much.
So all of this to me seems very, very reasonable, including that he can sing and dance with us at home, but if we’re singing and dancing out in public, that’s uncomfortable. I mean, you could ask my children about me singing and dancing in public and how unwelcome that was maybe until just recently. Oh, even now, as adults, they would probably be mortified. It would be too much for them. But anyway, I’m not laughing at this parent’s concern.
And she says she’s paranoid that she’s ruining her child. So I don’t see anything she’s doing as ruining her child. And when she says that she wants him to know it’s okay to feel overwhelmed, that’s actually the message that he’s going to get when she allows him to take care of himself in the ways that he’s choosing to. The appropriate ones, not biting her, but the other ones like moving away, getting out of the pool if he’s not comfortable with the vibe there. That is teaching him that it’s okay to be overwhelmed.
I think what she might be worried about here is if she’s supposed to teach him to get over being overwhelmed, that that shouldn’t be getting in his way or he shouldn’t be handling it the way that he’s handling it. And while that makes sense, and he may grow out of some of this, that’s actually going to give him the opposite message: that it’s not okay for him to be overwhelmed, that she wants him to feel better when he’s overwhelmed and just manage it and continue with whatever he was doing.
I just want to encourage this parent to see this as typical behaviour, that she doesn’t have to do something to fix this. Maybe just work on accepting more and having reasonable boundaries so that she’s not trying to accommodate him. So when she says that she tried to help by asking his friends to sing more quietly, I wouldn’t consider that that she’s accommodating by helping him to feel less overwhelmed. Because I think that that’s very reasonable, if kids are yelling it really loudly and you know that you have a child or you see that you have a child who’s not comfortable with that, that you ask the friends lightly, “Let’s sing a little quieter, because this is a lot for him.” So she’s helping him to manage that situation a little bit better, but she’s not trying to rescue him from it, move him away or get him out of there, tell all the kids to leave or something. That would be more accommodating the behaviour, which does tend to feed into it.
I have some more comments about this note that I’m going to share in reference to all three of the notes. For now, I’m going to move on to the next one. This was the “encouragement needed” note:
I’m an avid follower and, as a first-time mom, I’m very thankful for the immense help that your work has provided me for the last five years since my son was born. I didn’t think I would come to this point where I would write to you. Today it feels like I lost it.
A quick background on my son: his temperament has always been on the reserved side. He was born in the pandemic and it was just us with my husband in the house. In the rare occasions that we see relatives, he would cry so hard when they try to cuddle or even just give the slightest attention to him. I would give him space by telling them he’s not ready and we just keep a distance that is comfortable to him.
At four years old, we send him to a playgroup to sort of prepare him, and us, for kindergarten. His socialisation improved a lot, but still we can see him cry sometimes, even after a year in the same school. During his moving up pictorial, his pictures were either in tears or sad looking [and she put a sad face]. My observation is that he’s extremely anxious around social situations involving interaction or performance with new people.
While for the past four years plus I’ve tried my best to trust him and not force anything on him, today I felt really exhausted. We enrolled him for football class, which he has enjoyed with his dad since a couple of weeks back. However, he’s extremely clingy during the class and won’t stay in the group without us.
Even the younger ones, who would lose focus or get shy for a time, don’t cry and just go back to the group after some time. Admittedly, this made me more frustrated. He is tired because it is his nap time, but he has acted better in similar no-nap cases before, but without a crowd.
Other than this, he’s a bright, sweet, calm, and caring kid.
This child also, she refers to him as reserved. He’s sensitive, he’s easily overwhelmed. He’s not a big-group kind of kid, at least not at this point in his life. And he’s emotional about it, which is a positive thing because sharing the feelings helps him to move through the feelings.
