‘The lockdown made my child shy, but this was the solution’

Life is finally starting again. And that means that our diaries are filled with birthdays, dinners and drinks. Everything starts up again for children. And that takes some getting used to. Because how does such a face-to-face conversation go? When Rachel’s five-year-old daughter is invited to play outside with a friend from daycare, she is thrilled. “She bounced happily in her car seat, but once in the park she froze.”

shy daughter

Rachel’s normally extroverted daughter didn’t know how to handle the situation—a group of children and adults in a park. “She seemed scared and held my hand. I asked if she wanted to say hello to her boyfriends, but she refused any contact.” Very carefully she approached the children playing and asked them to play with her, almost in a whisper. “The answer was no. No one wanted to interrupt the game to play with my daughter. I understood, but it hurt.”

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Problem solved

And so Rachel stood for a moment with her hands in her hair. “Should I just look at it? Talking to my child? Listen to her feelings? And then I decided to do something crazy: I kicked off my slippers and sprinted to the fountain for some water fun. There I was, my glasses fogged up and my hair soaking wet.” Rachel’s daughter hesitates for a moment, but then also runs to the fountain. More and more children are added. “And with that, all tension was gone. At that moment I realized: raising a child is the strangest, hardest and most fun thing I have ever done.”

Source: Scary Mommy

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