It may seem that your role as a parent to a shy student diminishes as your child grows and coaches, teachers, and peers take center stage. Therefore, your influence as a parent changes from a direct influence to an indirect influence that is characterized by support and support. Instead of making decisions on behalf of your child, you give him opportunities and choices. Guidance and direction when asked to do so, in addition to methods for success and awareness of reality.

Although you will not be able to stay next to your child during the school day, you can provide great assistance to him by helping to strengthen the love of learning and achieving new goals by strengthening the “achievement drive.” Over time, this will help him expand his comfort zone and focus his attention on the tasks required of him, and not on his shyness and self-doubt. Here are some ways to do that:

Create a safe base at home: If your child knows that you love him unconditionally, he will not be afraid to take risks and make mistakes.

Encourage independence: It is advisable to intervene sometimes and help your child if he asks for help, but let him handle his tasks on his own.

Set reasonable and appropriate high standards: Children may or may not reach the level they are expected to reach, so try to get the best out of your child.

Praise your child for success without punishing him for failure: Make sure that your reactions are fair and consistent, and if your child makes progress, even if it is slow, show him that you notice that progress.

Strengthen social skills: Continue to expose your child to new social environments and people, and prepare him if he seems unsure about how to behave.

Build a stimulating home environment: A home filled with toys, puzzles, art tools and plenty of books helps develop your child's natural curiosity and enthusiasm for problem solving.

Build Skills: If your child has the skills necessary to do well in school, fleeting school anxiety will not make him withdraw or doubt himself.

Do not overprotect your child: Children need to be exposed to challenges, so expose him to some challenges that are unusually difficult.

Be a good role model for your child: If you want your child to do well in school, read books to him yourself, show him how you use mathematics in everyday situations at the store or while paying bills, and take him with you to the library when you have a question and want to search for the answer.

Form a team, you and your child: Involve your child in making decisions and talk about how to reach the right decision. It is better to have some limited options than to have no options at all.

In general, you will need to strike a balance between helping your child take risks and respecting his or her slowly expanding comfort zone. For example, if your child is worried about what to take with him to school in order to show his classmates and talk to them about it, do not excuse him and make him abandon the idea or make the decision on his behalf. Rather, gather ideas with him in order to come up with many options, and discuss together the advantages and disadvantages of each choice and leave Your child's final decision, then practice at home so your child knows what to say. With adequate preparation and training, your child will overcome what worries him at home, and thus what worries him in the classroom will dissipate, and your child will be proud of his performance, because he worked hard to achieve that level of performance and did not achieve it easily.

Identity formation

In addition to mastery, identity formation complements the goals of the public image of the classroom, and as we discussed previously, a large part of an individual’s identity is shaped by mastery and academic excellence. If Stacey did well in her essays, you would think she was a “good writer,” but how exactly did she do that? One way is to look at her grades. If she gets high grades, she will know that she will be at the top of the class, but she can also look at the performance of the other children to evaluate herself accordingly. Despite everything, children in our society learn in an open and very social environment - the classroom - and there are no secrets.

When Stacey evaluates herself compared to others, she uses a psychological process known as social comparison. If Stacey knows that Tom is skilled at long division and she is not, this will make her think that Tom is somewhat better than her.

The intensity of social comparison may increase in certain environments, especially during times of doubt when we feel sensitive to criticism and are not sure what we should do. Since shy children feel overly sensitive for fear of being criticized in class, they use social comparison a lot and believe that others are focusing on them as well. . According to a high school student, the feeling of sensitivity to criticism and social comparison follows her everywhere: “When I walk down the hallway at school sometimes I feel like people are watching me and I start to wonder what is on their mind.”

This intense focus on oneself is usually dangerous and creates more doubt, tension, and reluctance.

There are other factors that cause social comparison as well. If the class has too much competition, children will overuse social comparison, as they make comparisons between themselves and their peers to know their place in the class. If the teacher is too harsh, children will make comparisons because they expect the teacher to judge them. Once again, I say that social comparison is normal, but its intensity increases due to shyness.