The Hidden Gifts of the Introverted Child (15 page)

Innies need to feel a sense of security and safety at home. They are deeply affected by their surroundings and do best when home is harmonious, tidy, quiet, airy, and filled with pleasing scents, comfy furniture, good lighting, soothing colors, and views of the outdoors.

While they enjoy being around family, innies also need a place of their own where they can keep energy demands to a minimum and refuel. If he doesn’t have his own room, your innie could claim a certain nook where he is protected from the incursions of siblings or other family members. Innies love cozy spots like a playhouse, the storage space under the stairs, a tree house, a tent pitched in a bedroom, an attic, a corner of the porch, or any other small, discrete space. One little innie I know has a pink fabric playhouse cottage in her bedroom. She pops in and out of it all day long—taking little recharging breaks. A tween innie I know has a special armchair where he curls up to read.

How to Eat Like an Innie

“
Talk to your children while they are eating; what you say will stay even after you are gone.” —Nez Percé saying

Innies must stay fueled to keep their energy levels high. Keeping up with the demands of an extroverted world is demanding enough without adding the weariness that comes from being hungry into the equation. Our culture has its “three square meals” rule, but innies require a constant caloric inflow throughout the day.

When it comes to behavioral issues, parents tend to look at any number of possible causes before considering nutrition. I often raise questions about eating with parents because I find hunger is the most common cause of meltdowns—in innies of
all
ages.

Many innies are picky eaters. I was a picky eater, and my innie grandson is a picky eater. Family lore has it that his innie father was a picky eater. We have all survived so far; none of us have starved to death. But pickiness makes eating a fertile ground for power struggles. Don’t get pulled into one. Introduce a couple of new items each week and don’t make a big deal of it. If she eats it, great. If not, move on. She may like it later. Innies may respond well to explanations about why their bodies need food and water. As your child grows older, you can show him books about the body and explain why the rest-and-digest side of the nervous system needs fuel to burn.

Food for Thought

• Know that not all innies love to eat, and they often eat slowly.

• Read children’s nutrition books with your innie and talk about why certain foods are important for energy to play and work.

• Teach your child to notice the feeling of hunger and low blood sugar.

• Be aware that innies may be more sensitive to different smells and tastes.

• Serve good healthy food early in the day, as innies tend to eat better then.

• Keep healthy snacks within reach; innies are usually grazers.

• Don’t get into a power match over food. Save her meal or snack and if she doesn’t eat it, remove it without comment. Try again with a healthy choice later. Innies can withdraw and become stubborn when they feel pushed.

• Never use food as a reward or punishment.

Crash and Burn

Hypoglycemia is a medical condition that has drifted in and out of fashion. It is often minimized by physicians. But it is a real problem for many innies, especially in the empty-calorie world of high sugar and simple carbohydrates that we live in today. Innie children
must
have protein and complex carbohydrates, and their tanks need to be constantly topped off. If children don’t have enough of the right kinds of foods, their energy plummets, glucose dips, and oxygen traveling to the brain is depleted. In short, they crash and burn.

I know exactly what this feels like. It can happen without warning. It feels as if all the life force has plunged to your feet. Suddenly, your body is
soooo
heavy. Your head is fuzzy. You have to sit down. When this happens to your innie, she loses energy, gets droopy, and can’t think or learn. What causes this? Blood sugar zooms up if we eat too much sugar or carbs and then drops like a rock. Or, it can occur just because we have run out of food to metabolize, like Audrey, the alien plant in the movie
Little Shop of Horrors
. And like Audrey’s, the innie’s system is always saying, “Feed me, feed me.” The best way to maintain blood sugar levels is by eating frequently and consuming protein and complex carbohydrates together—for example, putting nuts on your oatmeal and using whole grain bread for turkey sandwiches,
etc.
If you give your child a sweet, make sure that she has eaten protein beforehand, or that she has some with it.

Some of the common symptoms of hypoglycemia include: feeling awful after eating, fatigue, looking pale, insomnia, agitation, mood swings, depression, sweating, heart palpitations, headaches, lack of motivation, dizziness, and irritability. If it’s extreme, someone can tremble, throw up, or faint.

How to Battle Low Blood Sugar:

• Grazing, or eating small meals all day. (I usually finish breakfast by about lunchtime.)

• Eating protein and complex carbs first thing in the morning.

• Carrying protein snacks (nuts, cheese and crackers, protein bars).

• Reducing intake of sugar and simple carbohydrates.

• Eating sweets and carbs
with
or
after
protein.

• Teaching your child to gauge how he feels so that he will learn to manage his sugar level (and it doesn’t become a power struggle with you).

• Explaining to your child that she may need to eat when she doesn’t feel hungry.

For more information, contact the Hypoglycemia Support Foundation,
www.hypoglycemia.org

Eating Out

Innies often lose their appetites in crowded or noisy restaurants. The commotion, unfamiliar food, the rush or the wait affect their ability to take in food. They may eat better at home, having small snacks or being able to nibble finger foods at meals. Don’t expect your innie to be a big eater in any crowded situation like a family celebration. It may work better to feed him at home first, and when you’re out, let him snack off your plate or just have a small dish.

Off to Sleep

“
The baby’s temperament shapes her patterns of sleeping and waking from the start.” —T. Berry Brazelton, M.D
.

Many children I see in my practice don’t get enough sleep. I find that if innies don’t get at least eight hours of sleep each night, they won’t recharge energy. And they will have more difficulty storing what they have learned during the day into their long-term memory. Since innies predominate on the rest-and-digest side of the nervous system, they need more rest than outies. Teens in particular need plenty of rest—just when they’re least inclined to take it.

Test-Drive the Opposite System

Innies and outies both need to use the nondominant side of their nervous systems. For instance, exercising gives innies energy from the outie side of the nervous system. Sleep, on the other hand, uses the innie side of the nervous system, and it restores outies in many ways: emotional, cognitive, physical healing, proper digestion, and other conserving functions.

Sleep is an ongoing challenge throughout life for introverted children. Acetylcholine is our major neurotransmitter, and, in conjunction with other chemicals, it switches dream and alert cycles on and off. Acetylcholine ebbs and flows like all neurotransmitters, and, since innies are sensitive to its changes, it impacts their sleep cycles. Innies need the right amount to go to dreamland—and stay there. If too much acetylcholine is released, it causes sleepiness. And if an innie’s fight-and-flight mechanism has been activated, he can have trouble calming down from the buzzing, anxiety-producing chemicals. Innies’ active minds can be hard to switch off.

Another reason sleep may not come easily is that it also represents a central psychological issue: separation from parents. Sleep
can trigger lots of fears, especially in younger children. As a result, many kids have trouble falling or staying asleep. A child needs to achieve the ability to soothe herself back to sleep when she wakes up—which happens at least four or five times a night. The ability to sleep through the night is an accomplishment that involves the maturity of the child’s nervous system.

Giving Your Innie a Restful Retreat

• At each age range, set an appropriate bedtime that your child knows and can predict.

• Develop bedtime rituals: singing, rocking, reading, rhymes, and
short
quiet games. For older kids, reading or quiet talking.

• Remember that at each new stage of a child’s development, sleep patterns usually change. Expect sleep disruptions during stressful periods, new experiences, family changes, and during touch points in a child’s development. Gently ease your child into putting himself back to sleep.

• Innies can wake up if they are hungry or too hot or cold. Studies show that innies sleep better if their hands and/or feet are covered at night. Christopher, my innie grandson, wore his Big Bird slippers to bed every night until he was about three.

• Encourage your innie to take something comforting, like a blanket or stuffed animal, to bed to hold. As innies grow older, they may need gentle music to get out of their busy minds. Extroverts usually need all outside stimuli reduced.

• Respond to your child’s fears calmly and with respect. Help your child look for monsters in dark corners or under the bed. I used to sweep a baseball bat beneath my daughter’s bed and wave it in her closet to clear out those pesky gremlins.

• Make sure that bedtime doesn’t get dragged out. Two requests—and that’s it. For younger kids, make some “Bedtime Request” coupons that read: “Drink of Water,” “Go to the Bathroom,” or “Blow Me a Kiss.” Give your child two a night and then say, “Oh no. You already used up your two coupons. Night, night.”

Delicate Discipline

“
Without discipline, there’s no life at all.” —Katharine Hepburn

Discipline prepares children to be independent adults. It’s not always comfortable—for either of you—but it’s necessary. A parent has but a short window of opportunity in which to influence a child. Interestingly, the number-one way that children learn about discipline is through observing their parents’ behavior; kids respond more to what you
do
than what you
say
. During the short time span you have with your children, you can model self-control, make good choices, and think independently while also respecting authority. You can demonstrate one of life’s most important lessons: that responsibility is the price of independence. In
Gifts Differing
, Isabel Myers highlights the importance of
self-
discipline, which she calls good judgment: “the ability to choose the better alternative and act accordingly.” If these building blocks aren’t established early, it makes life harder as the child grows up.

Introverted children have hardwiring built in for self-discipline. They can say no to themselves, they evaluate situations, and, as they pause to think before acting, they naturally make choices about their behavior. If they aren’t treated badly, it’s easy for them to develop self-discipline. They only need delicate discipline to guide them in the right direction.

The Discipline Continuum

The degree to which children are disciplined runs the gamut. On one end of the continuum are children who lack discipline altogether. Without discipline, children don’t have to face the consequences of their actions. As a result, they don’t learn to connect their own choices and actions to what happens in their own lives. The message they get is that everything they do is acceptable.
If something goes wrong, they may blame others for their problems. On the other side of the scale are children who are
over
disciplined. Too much discipline and the wind gets taken out of a child’s sails. She lacks confidence and may feel like a failure. She gives up easily.

Positive discipline means maintaining a good balance between not too much and not too little. Fortunately, for you as a parent, introverted children tend to be amenable to discipline. Innies are wired so as to put the brakes on their behavior. As they take their time before acting and speaking, they rarely speak or act impulsively. Particularly in comparison to other children, they understand consequence. They are observant and perceptive about what’s going on around them. They have a strong, often precocious, sense of morality. That said, they’re still children and do need to test their boundaries from time to time. They will make errors of judgment. And they are very strong willed.

Discipline is quite different for innies and outies. Innies’ basic hardwiring is built to inhibit their behavior. Innies usually want to please their parents, and they feel shame and guilt easily. Outies are wired to let their “fur fly.” They want outside approval but not always from their parents. If outies don’t receive enough stimulation they may get into mischief to stir up some excitement. They may actually enjoy conflict because the stimulation is exciting for them. Since outies can be impulsive, they need firm, consistent limits. They aren’t as impacted by shame and guilt as introverted children are.

Most innies only need encouragement, support, and a few well-chosen limits. Usually just explaining to an innie does the trick. “Hon, I have a headache, could you take a break from your electric guitar for a bit tonight?” They tend to be able to adjust easily to others (the why of this is explained in
Chapter 2
) and naturally restrict themselves without feeling resentful. They usually need more help with the opposite behaviors—to disagree or take risks.