You can’t teach yourself to be an extrovert if you’re not naturally one of those people who walks into a party, says, “Hi Everybodyyyyyyyy!” and has a conversation with every person in the room before the night is over. You might try to be that person, and you will fail miserably.
Or if you are naturally gregarious, and you force yourself
to be buttoned up and quiet, eventually you will explode and annoy everyone
around you with your sudden burst of chatter.
Or you will implode and be miserable.
As they get older, I see my husband and I in our children. They have their own personalities, of
course. The mix of familiar characteristics
that they exhibit are at times alarming and endearing, like when my son flies
into a rage one minute and realizes his mistake and apologizes the next (me) or
when my daughter sees the silver lining in every situation (my husband).
However, each of our children is growing into their own
person, and it is interesting to see their personalities develop over
time. I am learning to let them grow and
not project my personality onto them.
Our daughter, who’s eight, had to make a PowerPoint presentation
at school. It was to be given the night
of Take Your Child To Work Day, that unofficial school-sanctioned day where
teachers across the country get a break from educating our cherubs in lieu of parents
supervising them for once. She took her
presentation to Dad’s office to practice on his co-workers.
She’d forgotten her notes at school, and refused my help when
I offered to help her draw up some new ones.
She simply said she’d remember what to say.
Because I get heart palpitations any time I even think about
being noticed in a crowd, let alone being the center of attention in one, it’s
an understatement to say that I was nervous for her. I was so nervous that I may have passed some
of it on to my husband, who is normally unruffled in public speaking
situations. I worried that she’d mess up
magnificently and it would set her up for future public speaking panic.
The time came, and when the room filled with 35 of my
husband’s coworkers and children, she grabbed the microphone and made her presentation
on wolves with authority and confidence, the likes of which certainly did not
come from me. Her dad said that she didn’t
seem nervous at all, and when I asked her if she worried at all about it, she
looked me as I was the stupidest person in the world for even suggesting that
being anxious about a speech was possible.
For that, I’m proud. Proud that she did well, proud that she wasn’t
frozen by panic, proud that she has been spared by the social anxiety gene that
I present so dominantly.
So far, so good.
*******
She is fabulous!! Love her!
ReplyDeleteP.S. Could she give me lessons in PowerPoint?
I'm sure she could. Would you like to also join her public-speaking seminar? I'm the first one signed up.
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