Why I'm Not Urging My Quiet Child to Speak Up

When you’re raising a quiet child, you may often hear questions and comments from other adults in your child’s life about how it’s just a phase or they’d like to get to know your child more if she’d just speak up. What they (and you) might not realize is being a quiet child may set your little one up for future success. Read on to learn how a Brooklyn mom figured this out, and how she’s supporting her quiet child at home and in school.

I braced myself for our third-grade parent-teacher interview. By this time, I had come to expect the usual comments from teachers and other adults who came into contact with my daughter. “We wish she would speak up more,” or the slightly accusatory, “We’re wondering if there’s a reason she’s so quiet?” or the cheerier, “We want to get to know your daughter better!” Sometimes well-meaning people try to connect with her, (and use the word I’ve come to strongly dislike), “I was shy like you too, when I was young.”

Since my daughter has been very little, I’ve been perplexed by the assessment made by many of the (again, well-intentioned) adults she encounters. Though in my gut I’ve always known she was fine just the way she is, there was something about her entering school—her first large group setting—that started making me second-guess everything.

My 3am spiral went something like this: Would she actually “grow” out of this? (There was usually an implication that she would, that she should, mature beyond this, that it was at worst some sort of inadequacy, and at best just a phase of growing up.) Maybe she wasn’t comfortable at her current school? Maybe she should be in another environment where the classes were smaller and she received more individual attention, which in turn would make her feel more at ease, which in turn would make her speak out more, which in turn would make her more accepted by her teachers and peers, which in turn would make her life easier? Obviously, this got me nowhere.