Browsing: Social Life

Click through for a lovely comic by Luchie, titled “Introversion“.

Joe Moran explores why shyness is a fundamental part of humanity:

“How did your mother teach you to dream, and how do you hope to teach your children to dream?” For Mother’s Day, Whitney Johnson, a venture capitalist and popular Harvard Business Review blogger (pictured at left), challenged me to answer these questions. With her new book, Dare, Dream, Do, she’s out to inspire women of all ages to […]

This news comes via Christopher Lane, author of the incredibly well-reported book Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness. According to Lane (who heard it from Britain’s Daily Telegraph), the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V), due to be released in 2013, will include a definition of social anxiety […]

“Are Extroverts Ruining Psychologists’ Surveys?” So read the LiveScience headline, in an article describing research findings that extroverts answer survey questions with more extreme responses than introverts do. It doesn’t matter what type of question it is. Whether asked to rate how much they liked a photo of a nature scene, or how disgusted they’d […]

Here’s an excerpt from a wonderful piece in Feministing by intellectual powerhouse Courtney Martin, questioning whether contemporary feminism makes room for shy or introverted girls. Courtney articulates something I’ve worried about for years – in our efforts to instill confidence in young women, are we promoting an ideal of sassy outspokenness that’s just as confining […]

Hi everyone. Here’s a must-read for the weekend: “My Mother’s Lover,” by David Dobbs. It’s the true story of a World War II love affair that Dobbs’ mother kept secret, until she left her kids a puzzle on her deathbed. This is a short e-book/long story, and you have to buy it via Kindle or […]

One of the luckiest things that ever happened to me was being born into a family that elevated reading to a religious activity. The weekly trip to the library was a form of Sabbath observance in our house. Then there was the yearly pilgrimage to London, which we visited with an empty suitcase reserved for […]

Did you catch the recent news story about Natalie Munro, the high school English teacher from Pennsylvania who blogged her true feelings about her students? Apparently failing to comprehend the public nature of the Internet, she mused about the nasty things she wished she could write on her students’ report cards. It was an abuse of […]

Two little boys played at a lakeside beach. The water was cold and reached their waists, in some places their chests.

One boy plunged right in. He didn’t know how to swim, but that didn’t stop him.

The second boy stuck by the shore. He didn’t know how to swim, so he built elaborate sand piles from the safety of the shallows…

I’m quickly becoming a fan of social media in the classroom, especially for shy or introverted kids. Here’s a CNN video of a high school teacher using Twitter to reach his students, especially the shy ones. There is of course a danger that shy kids will become too reliant on these technologies to do the […]

1. Don’t just accept your child for who she is; treasure her for who she is. Introverted children are often kind, thoughtful, focused, and very interesting company, as long as they’re in settings that work for them. 2. Introverted kids usually have the capacity to develop great passions. Cultivate these enthusiasms. Intense engagement in an […]

Are you the parent of an introverted child? If so, you might be interested in a guest post I wrote for Adam McHugh’s thoughtful and often funny blog, Introverted Church. Here are a couple of the tips I posted there: 1. If your child is shy, don’t let her hear you call her by that […]

Adam McHugh, author of the book Introverts in the Church, is running a wonderful series on his blog called “Introverted Parenting Week.” Check it out here. Many of the posts have covered the challenges of being an introverted parent. I’ll be guest-posting tomorrow, offering ten tips for parenting introverted children. (And I’ll be posting here […]

This honest and funny guest post was written by Jane London, co-host of the Dom and Jane Show on Mix 100 in Denver — www.mix100.com. Jane also writes  a blog, Present Tense: www.janelondon.wordpress.com: I am an introvert.  According to Myers-Briggs testing, an INTJ.  I’ve also been a morning radio host for over 25 years.  In […]

That’s the headline of a fascinating article in the New York Times. The article reports that “social media, once kept outside the school door, can entice students who rarely raise a hand to express themselves via a medium they find as natural as breathing. ‘When we have class discussions, I don’t really feel the need […]

OK, this is some of the most interesting research I’ve come across in a long time, reported in Medical News Today. A brand new study out of USC and Duke University suggests that Botox impairs our ability to read other people’s emotions. According to the lead authors, “one way we read the feelings of others […]

Here are this Friday’s suggestions for weekend reading, all of them from writers I have long admired: 1. Sympathy for the Tiger Moms: If you think you’ve already gotten enough of the Tiger Mom debate, you haven’t read Sandra Tsing Loh, a writer for The Atlantic magazine. Plus, this is a great excuse to get […]

Lately, I’ve been flooded with e-mails from readers asking me questions they’d like to see answered on this blog. So last week I introduced a popular new feature, the Question of the Week, in which I post the questions I see most frequently, and ask you to answer and discuss them via your comments. Last […]

Last week, I fervently recommended this groundbreaking Atlantic magazine article, in which author David Dobbs explains a bold new theory of genetics — that “most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and […]

Lately, I’ve been flooded with e-mails from readers asking me questions they’d like to see answered on this blog. So I’m hereby introducing a new feature, the Question of the Week, in which I’ll post the questions I see most frequently, and ask you to answer and discuss them via your comments. There’s such a […]

I often wish that I could live in what I like to call “Wardrobe Time.” In C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” four schoolchildren disappear through a wardrobe into the magical land of Narnia…for decades. They grow into adults there, ascend to Narnian thrones, and reign for many years. But when they […]

This past Saturday morning, my son’s nursery school — which is probably the most progressive, thoughtfully-run institution on earth — held a “pajama hop” fundraiser.  It was a family affair.  At ten in the morning, we parents and offspring crowded into the gym, decked out in our PJs, while a local band performed children’s music […]

You’re standing at the checkout line at the grocery store, pondering tomorrow’s to-do list. The cashier greets you with a grin.  You’re not in the mood to chit-chat, but out of politeness you do anyway – and feel curiously happy afterwards.  A big smile plays across your face as you leave the store. What just […]