by Susan Cain
Explore real-life scenarios: for example, Maya’s parents could sit down with her and figure out how she might have handled the executive-group exercise differently. Try role-playing, in situations that are as specific as possible. Maya could rehearse in her own words what it’s like to say “I’ll be the note-taker!” or “What if we make a rule that anyone who throws wrappers on the floor has to spend the last ten minutes of lunch picking up litter?”
The catch is that this depends on getting Maya to open up and tell you what happened during her school day. Even if they’re generally forthcoming, many kids won’t share experiences that made them feel ashamed. The younger your child is, the more likely she is to open up, so you should start this process as early in her school career as possible. Ask your child for information in a gentle, nonjudgmental way, with specific, clear questions. Instead of “How was your day?” try “What did you do in math class today?” Instead of “Do you like your teacher?” ask “What do you like about your teacher?” Or “What do you not like so much?” Let her take her time to answer. Try to avoid asking, in the overly bright voice of parents everywhere, “Did you have fun in school today?!” She’ll sense how important it is that the answer be yes.
If she still doesn’t want to talk, wait for her. Sometimes she’ll need to decompress for hours before she’s ready. You may find that she’ll open up only during cozy, relaxed moments, like bathtime or bedtime. If that’s the case, make sure to build these situations into the day. And if she’ll talk to others, like a trusted babysitter, aunt, or older sibling, but not to you, swallow your pride and enlist help.
Finally, try not to worry if all signs suggest that your introverted child is not the most popular kid at school. It’s critically important for his emotional and social development that he have one or two solid friendships, child development experts tell us, but being popular isn’t necessary. Many introverted kids grow up to have excellent social skills, although they tend to join groups in their own way—waiting a while before they plunge in, or participating only for short periods. That’s OK. Your child needs to acquire social skills and make friends, not turn into the most gregarious student in school. This doesn’t mean that popularity isn’t a lot of fun. You’ll probably wish it for him, just as you might wish that he have good looks, a quick wit, or athletic talent. But make sure you’re not imposing your own longings, and remember that there are many paths to a satisfying life.
Many of those paths will be found in passions outside the classroom. While extroverts are more likely to skate from one hobby or activity to another, introverts often stick with their enthusiasms. This gives them a major advantage as they grow, because true self-esteem comes from competence, not the other way around. Researchers have found that intense engagement in and commitment to an activity is a proven route to happiness and well-being. Well-developed talents and interests can be a great source of confidence for your child, no matter how different he might feel from his peers.
For example, Maya, the girl who was such a quiet member of the “executive branch,” loves to go home every day after school and read. But she also loves softball, with all of its social and performance pressures. She still recalls the day she made the team after participating in tryouts. Maya was scared stiff, but she also felt strong—capable of hitting the ball with a good, powerful whack. “I guess all those drills finally paid off,” she reflected later. “I just kept smiling. I was so excited and proud—and that feeling never went away.”
For parents, however, it’s not always easy to orchestrate situations where these deep feelings of satisfaction arise. You might feel, for example, that you should encourage your introverted child to play whichever sport is the ticket to friendship and esteem in your town. And that’s fine, if he enjoys that sport and is good at it, as Maya is with softball. Team sports can be a great boon for anyone, especially for kids who otherwise feel uncomfortable joining groups. But let your child take the lead in picking the activities he likes best. He may not like any team sports, and that’s OK. Help him look for activities where he’ll meet other kids, but also have plenty of his own space. Cultivate the strengths of his disposition. If his passions seem too solitary for your taste, remember that even solo activities like painting, engineering, or creative writing can lead to communities of fellow enthusiasts.
“I have known children who found others,” says Dr. Miller, “by sharing important interests: chess, elaborate role-playing games, even discussing deep interests like math or history.” Rebecca Wallace-Segall, who teaches creative-writing workshops for kids and teens as director of Writopia Lab in New York City, says that the students who sign up for her classes “are often not the kids who are willing to talk for hours about fashion and celebrity. Those kids are less likely to come, perhaps because they’re less inclined to analyze and dig deep—that’s not their comfort zone. The so-called shy kids are often hungry to brainstorm ideas, deconstruct them, and act on them, and, paradoxically, when they’re allowed to interact this way, they’re not shy at all. They’re connecting with each other, but in a deeper zone, in a place that’s considered boring or tiresome by some of their peers.” And these kids do “come out” when they’re ready; most of the Writopia kids read their works at local bookstores, and a staggering number win prestigious national writing competitions.
If your child is prone to overstimulation, then it’s also a good idea for her to pick activities like art or long-distance running, that depend less on performing under pressure. If she’s drawn to activities that require performance, though, you can help her thrive.
When I was a kid, I loved figure skating. I could spend hours on the rink, tracing figure eights, spinning happily, or flying through the air. But on the day of my competitions, I was a wreck. I hadn’t slept the night before and would often fall during moves that I had sailed through in practice. At first I believed what people told me—that I had the jitters, just like everybody else. But then I saw a TV interview with the Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt. She said that pre-competition nerves gave her the adrenaline she needed to win the gold.
I knew then that Katarina and I were utterly different creatures, but it took me decades to figure out why. Her nerves were so mild that they simply energized her, while mine were constricting enough to make me choke. At the time, my very supportive mother quizzed the other skating moms about how their own daughters handled pre-competition anxiety, and came back with insights that she hoped would make me feel better. Kristen’s nervous too, she reported. Renée’s mom says she’s scared the night before a competition. But I knew Kristen and Renée well, and I was certain that they weren’t as frightened as I was.
I think it might have helped if I’d understood myself better back then. If you’re the parent of a would-be figure skater, help her to accept that she has heavy-duty jitters without giving her the idea that they’re fatal to success. What she’s most afraid of is failing publicly. She needs to desensitize herself to this fear by getting used to competing, and even to failing. Encourage her to enter low-stakes competitions far away from home, where she feels anonymous and no one will know if she falls. Make sure she has rehearsed thoroughly. If she’s planning to compete on an unfamiliar rink, try to have her practice there a few times first. Talk about what might go wrong and how to handle it: OK, so what if you do fall and come in last place, will life still go on? And help her visualize what it will feel like to perform her moves smoothly.
Unleashing a passion can transform a life, not just for the space of time that your child’s in elementary or middle or high school, but way beyond. Consider the story of David Weiss, a drummer and music journalist. David is a good example of someone who grew up feeling like Charlie Brown and went on to build a life of creativity, productivity, and meaning. He loves his wife and baby son. He relishes his work. He has a wide and interesting circle of friends, and lives in New York City, which he considers the most vibrant place in the world for a music enthusiast. If you measure a life by the
classic barometers of love and work, then David is a blazing success.
But it wasn’t always clear, at least not to David, that his life would unfold as well as it did. As a kid, he was shy and awkward. The things that interested him, music and writing, held no value for the people who mattered most back then: his peers. “People would always tell me, ‘These are the best years of your life,’ ” he recalls. “And I would think to myself, I hope not! I hated school. I remember thinking, I’ve gotta get out of here. I was in sixth grade when Revenge of the Nerds came out, and I looked like I stepped out of the cast. I knew I was intelligent, but I grew up in suburban Detroit, which is like ninety-nine percent of the rest of the country: if you’re a good-looking person and an athlete, you’re not gonna get hassled. But if you seem too smart, that’s not something that kids respect you for. They’re more likely to try and beat you down for it. It was my best attribute, and I definitely enjoyed using it, but it was something you also had to try and keep in check.”
So how did he get from there to here? The key for David was playing the drums. “At one point,” David says, “I totally overcame all my childhood stuff. And I know exactly how: I started playing the drums. Drums are my muse. They’re my Yoda. When I was in middle school, the high school jazz band came and performed for us, and I thought that the coolest one by a long shot was the kid playing the drum set. To me, drummers were kind of like athletes, but musical athletes, and I loved music.”
At first, for David, drumming was mostly about social validation; he stopped getting kicked out of parties by jocks twice his size. But soon it became something much deeper: “I suddenly realized this was a form of creative expression, and it totally blew my mind. I was fifteen. That’s when I became committed to sticking with it. My entire life changed because of my drums, and it hasn’t stopped, to this day.”
David still remembers acutely what it was like to be his nine-year-old self. “I feel like I’m in touch with that person today,” he says. “Whenever I’m doing something that I think is cool, like if I’m in New York City in a room full of people, interviewing Alicia Keys or something, I send a message back to that person and let him know that everything turned out OK. I feel like when I was nine, I was receiving that signal from the future, which is one of the things that gave me the strength to hang in there. I was able to create this loop between who I am now and who I was then.”
The other thing that gave David strength was his parents. They focused less on developing his confidence than on making sure that he found ways to be productive. It didn’t matter what he was interested in, so long as he pursued it and enjoyed himself. His father was an avid football fan, David recalls, but “the last person to say, ‘How come you’re not out on the football field?’ ” For a while David took up piano, then cello. When he announced that he wanted to switch to drumming, his parents were surprised, but never wavered. They embraced his new passion. It was their way of embracing their son.
If David Weiss’s tale of transformation resonates for you, there’s a good reason. It’s a perfect example of what the psychologist Dan McAdams calls a redemptive life story—and a sign of mental health and well-being.
At the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University, McAdams studies the stories that people tell about themselves. We all write our life stories as if we were novelists, McAdams believes, with beginnings, conflicts, turning points, and endings. And the way we characterize our past setbacks profoundly influences how satisfied we are with our current lives. Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing (“I was never the same again after my wife left me”), while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise (“The divorce was the most painful thing that ever happened to me, but I’m so much happier with my new wife”). Those who live the most fully realized lives—giving back to their families, societies, and ultimately themselves—tend to find meaning in their obstacles. In a sense, McAdams has breathed new life into one of the great insights of Western mythology: that where we stumble is where our treasure lies.
For many introverts like David, adolescence is the great stumbling place, the dark and tangled thicket of low self-esteem and social unease. In middle and high school, the main currency is vivacity and gregariousness; attributes like depth and sensitivity don’t count for much. But many introverts succeed in composing life stories much like David’s: our Charlie Brown moments are the price we have to pay to bang our drums happily through the decades.
* Some who read this book before publication commented that the quote from Isabel couldn’t possibly be accurate—“no second grader talks that way!” But this is what she said.
CONCLUSION
Wonderland
Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center. So we lost our center and have to find it again.
—ANAÏS NIN
Whether you’re an introvert yourself or an extrovert who loves or works with one, I hope you’ll benefit personally from the insights in this book. Here is a blueprint to take with you:
Love is essential; gregariousness is optional. Cherish your nearest and dearest. Work with colleagues you like and respect. Scan new acquaintances for those who might fall into the former categories or whose company you enjoy for its own sake. And don’t worry about socializing with everyone else. Relationships make everyone happier, introverts included, but think quality over quantity.
The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some it’s a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers—of persistence, concentration, insight, and sensitivity—to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems, make art, think deeply.
Figure out what you are meant to contribute to the world and make sure you contribute it. If this requires public speaking or networking or other activities that make you uncomfortable, do them anyway. But accept that they’re difficult, get the training you need to make them easier, and reward yourself when you’re done.
Quit your job as a TV anchor and get a degree in library science. But if TV anchoring is what you love, then create an extroverted persona to get yourself through the day. Here’s a rule of thumb for networking events: one new honest-to-goodness relationship is worth ten fistfuls of business cards. Rush home afterward and kick back on your sofa. Carve out restorative niches.
Respect your loved ones’ need for socializing and your own for solitude (and vice versa if you’re an extrovert).
Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you’re supposed to. Stay home on New Year’s Eve if that’s what makes you happy. Skip the committee meeting. Cross the street to avoid making aimless chitchat with random acquaintances. Read. Cook. Run. Write a story. Make a deal with yourself that you’ll attend a set number of social events in exchange for not feeling guilty when you beg off.
If your children are quiet, help them make peace with new situations and new people, but otherwise let them be themselves. Delight in the originality of their minds. Take pride in the strength of their consciences and the loyalty of their friendships. Don’t expect them to follow the gang. Encourage them to follow their passions instead. Throw confetti when they claim the fruits of those passions, whether it’s on the drummer’s throne, on the softball field, or on the page.
If you’re a teacher, enjoy your gregarious and participatory students. But don’t forget to cultivate the shy, the gentle, the autonomous, the ones with single-minded enthusiasms for chemistry sets or parrot taxonomy or nineteenth-century art. They are the artists, engineers, and thinkers of tomorrow.
If you’re a manager, remember that one third to one half of your workforce is probably introverted, whether they appear that way or not. Think twice about how you design your organization’s office space. Don’t expect introverts to get jazzed up about open office plans or, for that matter, lunchtime birthday parties or team-building retreats. Make the most of intro
verts’ strengths—these are the people who can help you think deeply, strategize, solve complex problems, and spot canaries in your coal mine.
Also, remember the dangers of the New Groupthink. If it’s creativity you’re after, ask your employees to solve problems alone before sharing their ideas. If you want the wisdom of the crowd, gather it electronically, or in writing, and make sure people can’t see each other’s ideas until everyone’s had a chance to contribute. Face-to-face contact is important because it builds trust, but group dynamics contain unavoidable impediments to creative thinking. Arrange for people to interact one-on-one and in small, casual groups. Don’t mistake assertiveness or eloquence for good ideas. If you have a proactive work force (and I hope you do), remember that they may perform better under an introverted leader than under an extroverted or charismatic one.
Whoever you are, bear in mind that appearance is not reality. Some people act like extroverts, but the effort costs them in energy, authenticity, and even physical health. Others seem aloof or self-contained, but their inner landscapes are rich and full of drama. So the next time you see a person with a composed face and a soft voice, remember that inside her mind she might be solving an equation, composing a sonnet, designing a hat. She might, that is, be deploying the powers of quiet.
We know from myths and fairy tales that there are many different kinds of powers in this world. One child is given a light saber, another a wizard’s education. The trick is not to amass all the different kinds of available power, but to use well the kind you’ve been granted. Introverts are offered keys to private gardens full of riches. To possess such a key is to tumble like Alice down her rabbit hole. She didn’t choose to go to Wonderland—but she made of it an adventure that was fresh and fantastic and very much her own.