Miss Priss Update

I read a great article by a psychologist who had a shy child himself. It talked about what behaviors his daughter and other shy children exhibit, and then what he and his wife did to help her. If you’re curious, you can read the article here.

While reading through it, I kept nodding my head in agreement with the things he observed in his daughter, and when reading the suggestions, I realized some things I could do to try and help Miss Priss. I really liked that he gave good suggestions and examples of ways to do what as adults we would consider behavior modification therapy. I’ve learned a lot through my own battles with anxiety, but needed a way to impart some of that knowledge to Miss Priss.

This will, of course, require me to come out of my shell a little bit. I’ve looked up Saturday activities where we can get out of the house for a few hours and go to different events in the area. I’ve found some nice (free!) activities that will get us out and about. I’m hoping to get her more comfortable being around people and strangers even though this means I have to face my own discomfort at the same situation. I’ve decided I can just be honest with her and tell her that it makes me nervous too, but we can handle it. That way she understands that it’s okay to be nervous and (I know it sounds backwards) she might relax a little bit knowing that even mommies get nervous sometimes.

The guy who wrote the article gives his contact information at the end of the article. I’d love to be able to email him a year from now and tell him my story. Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but I think Miss Priss has an outgoing streak to her personality sometimes. Which, of course, triggers the “bad mommy” response in my head that I’ve just been such a horrible example for her socially that she isn’t sure what to do when we’re out and about.

So, I guess we’ll see how it goes. And I’ll leave you with a funny from our trip a couple of weeks ago.

We were in the car driving near the water, and Hubby looks off to the left and says, “Man, that’s a big ass ship.”

I looked over at this huge oil tanker (have you ever seen one? They’re enormous!) and say, “That is a big ass ship.”

To which Miss Priss from the back seat calmly says, “Where’s a big ass ship?”

Um, yeah, I’ll take my prize as bad mommy of the year.