The Hidden Gifts of the Introverted Child (8 page)

• The brain has separate functions and it is associative—one thing is connected to another.

• All senses have both a fast simple tract and a slow complex pathway.

• The brain is always torn between speed and accuracy.

Memories Are Made of This

Storing memories is one of the brain’s most important functions. Children need to remember all sorts of diverse information, like recognizing friends, which dogs are friendly, the rules to games, how to tie their shoes—not to mention what they’re taught in school. To avoid an overflow of information, the brain has evolved a complex but clever process of storing information and memories, using the short-term memory system and the long-term memory system. The short-term memory remembers what happens from one minute to the next. It holds snapshots of images, remembers up to seven numbers, letters, or words in a row, and it is good for quick thinking. Ninety-nine percent of these memories are forgotten. Long-term memory remembers facts, stories, and skills, like how to ride a bike. It also recognizes what’s familiar and pairs emotions with experiences.

In general, extroverted children use their short-term memory more often and easily, while introverted children depend on their long-term memory. This is because of the location of the major brain areas used for each type of memory—short-term memory is located along outies’ primary pathway, and long-term memory is located along innies’ dominant pathway.

All memories must be reinforced and retrieved to be remembered. It may sound bizarre to outies, but innies often struggle to retrieve memories quickly because it takes longer and requires special techniques to effectively trigger their long-term memory. When required to retrieve learned information, their mind often feels blank. This can be especially frustrating for children who are called on by their teachers for on-the-spot answers.

To help your innie prime his long-term memory pump, explain that memories are broken up like jigsaw puzzles and that the pieces are tucked all around his brain. Make it a game of hide-and-seek. Ask your child what he thinks about when you say a word like “kite.” Can he find its puzzle piece and the memories attached? Associated memories could be seeing the color of the kite, and recalling the feeling of holding it and/or the thrill of finally getting it aloft.

Or suggest that he sit back, relax and let his mind wander, allowing any images, sounds, feelings, or other sensory keys to float into his mind. Explain to him that recalling the smell of the ocean, the taste of pizza, the feeling of skating, or the image of his cousin will unlock a whole chain of other memories. And whenever you ask your innie a question, give her time to fish for her thoughts and feelings. Say, “Think it over and let me know what bubbles up.” If your innie can’t remember where she placed something, encourage her to walk around the house. This will activate a different memory system that stores location.

To help innies strengthen their short-term memory, suggest that they connect an image with a word, number, or a name. Remember Jack by picturing Jack and Jill. Saying a new pal’s name aloud and connecting it to a character in a movie or book will help it stay in short-term memory longer. Playing cards and other games that require the use of short-term memory can also be helpful. Although it requires lots of practice, your child will slowly learn to retrieve information in his memory banks faster.

However, the emotional and visual right hemisphere continues to be dominant through the first three years of life. As I have discussed, some children’s right brains will remain dominant throughout their entire life. One fascinating way to detect a more right-brain-dominant
child is that around the age of two or three, she may speak out loud to herself in order to communicate better with her left hemisphere to improve her language ability. An innie may be more hesitant to walk and talk due to her less activating sympathetic nervous system. An outie’s less activating parasympathetic nervous system may have trouble slowing her down for listening and language development.

THE WHOLE ENCHILADA

The brain can be divided into two hemispheres, right and left (only the left is visible here), connected by a main bridge, the corpus callosum. The Great Divide marks the line between the front and the back of the brain (the bonnet and the boot). The brain is also often described by the duties of the four main lobes: Temporal, Frontal, Parietal, and Occipital
.

Although you can’t change your child’s hardwiring, you can help him integrate the four areas of his brain in a rather simple way. You can tell him your life story, and you can encourage him to tell his. Forming a narrative that makes sense and being able to share it weaves together these four parts of the brain. Sharing stories bridges the introverted personal world with other humans in the extroverted outside world. And it helps us reflect on and store our experiences in our memory banks. Bonds are deepened between people because we are enriched by hearing others’ stories and gratified by having our own stories heard.

This has particular relevance to parents of innies. Outies live their lives acting in the outside world. They function based on current
sensory information and old memories by responding with quick talking, thinking, and acting, and they rely on their short-term memory. They also need to talk and develop shared stories, but if they don’t, they can still function adequately. However, they will lack some amount of self-reflection and a basic tool to build social skills: imitating other people.

Innies, however, live internally, and they need someone to draw them out. Without a parent who listens and reflects back to them, like an echo, what they are thinking, they can get lost in their own minds. Their thoughts and feelings may become disconnected. And they don’t store their experiences in their dominant memory system: long-term memory. Innies in particular need to know that someone out there hears them: “I hear you—your thoughts and feelings are real. They are important, and you can organize and use them in the outside world.” Innies also need to practice testing their inner perceptions in the outside world. This will strengthen their innate gifts and beef up the other areas of their brain.

The Heart of the Matter

•
Innies and outies travel different brain pathways and use opposite sides of the nervous system
.

•
Behaviors differ when kids are dominant in the back or front of the brain or on the left or right hemisphere
.

•
All children use less dominant regions of their brain, but it takes more effort and the results aren’t as effective
.

CHAPTER 3
Introverts’ Advantages in an Extroverts World

Learn to Highlight Your Child’s Hidden Gifts

“
Our culture made a virtue of our 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

Jeannette, a mother of two, confided that she can’t stand to watch her eight-year-old son, Colin, on the baseball field. He has just joined the team and only has a few games under his belt. “It frustrates me to watch him hang back while all his teammates rush onto the field,” she says. She and her husband wonder if he has enough motivation. He didn’t look aggressive enough when he stepped into the batter’s box. Like Steve Martin’s son in the movie
Parenthood
, Colin just limply waved the bat at the ball as it zipped past him.

Jeff, a single, divorced dad, is concerned about his eleven-year-old daughter. “Molly looks at her shoes and doesn’t look people in the eye when she talks,” he said. “She speaks slowly, and sometimes pauses when she’s trying to find just the right word. I get nervous because I think kids will stop listening to what she’s saying. Sometimes I jump in to finish her sentences. That’s probably worse—she may not want to talk at all.”

Boys Will Be …?

All innies experience some discrimination, but boys who are innies face even more challenges than girls. Our culture isn’t always thrilled with boys who are quiet, enjoy solitary activities like reading, and aren’t aggressive. The myth is that being masculine, by definition, means being assertive, proactive, venturesome, and free of doubt. Anyone who bucks that trend is suspect. Just think about how many jabs were thrown at the children’s television icon, the late Fred Rogers. “Mister Rogers” was often made the butt of jokes for being too feminine, too nice, or a homosexual (which he wasn’t), when in fact his only “crime” was serving as a wonderful role model of a caring, compassionate man.

Research indicates that introverted girls are described as gentle, quiet, and thoughtful. Boys with the exact same qualities are described as weak, passive, and lazy. If you have a male innie, be sure you are helping him feel confident about his qualities and abilities. Encourage him to participate in activities that take advantage of innie strengths
and
have some cachet in the extroverted world. For example, suggest that he take lessons in the martial arts, join the photography or science club, or take up a musical instrument. I know one innie who proved to be very popular in high school because he was a fabulous dancer. He was in great demand at parties. Who knows? Your introverted son could grow up to be another Steven Spielberg, Bill Gates, Tiger Woods, or Tobey Maguire (all innies)!

Many parents, aware that we live in an extroverted world, worry about their introverted children. And the fact is, introversion is devalued in our culture. Extroverted qualities like “the gift of gab” and the ability to “work a room” are prized in contemporary society. We value
doing, getting out there, speaking up, winning, and achieving. One could argue that the United States was built by people who were go-getters who were able to adapt quickly to new groups and situations. So regardless of what being an introvert means to the individual, a child with that temperament is going to face some cultural bias.

Sociologists describe the North American cultural ideal as group acceptance, assertiveness, external accomplishment, and success. These standards of being active and “out there” have been integrated into every institution, school system, and virtually every other environment that an introverted child encounters.

More children at younger ages are spending time in group settings such as preschool and group day care. This is challenging for innies, who do better at home during their early years and adapt more successfully to group settings as they grow older. Many schools don’t allow parents to stay and help their young children ease into the group experience; many parents of introverted children don’t realize that they
should
stay and help the child adapt. With the huge emphasis on socializing, parents, and sometimes staff, too, think the paramount goal for all kids should be making friends and being popular—even when children are toddlers and preschoolers!

The extent to which a person fits into his culture inevitably affects his self-esteem. And the bias toward extroversion in American society is not lost on the perceptive innie child. I worked with the parents of a child who attended a prestigious preschool. The school made a sociogram of who played with whom in the class, and showed it to four-year-old Jill’s parents. The director said that the sociogram revealed that Jill generally only played with one other child. They suggested that the parents help her with her lagging social skills. Jill said to her parents, “Miss Terry says that Hannah and I have to play with all the kids. But Hannah is the only other kid who knows about mummies, and she likes to play archaeologist with me. What were we doing wrong?”

Not all cultures are oriented toward extroverts. Researchers divide societies into “low context” and “high context” cultures. In low context cultures, the ideal is a focus on the external world of reality and tangible details with clear and direct communication preferred. The United States, Germany, and Switzerland are offered as examples of low context cultures. These cultures focus on people and things, quick decisions and actions, and social skills that reflect an effortless “hail-fellow-well-met” style. One should be able to accept what someone says without having to puzzle it out.

In high context cultures, however, discretion, nonverbal cues, and subtlety are valued. Examples of high context cultures are Japan, the Scandinavian countries, American Indian tribal groups, and China. These societies value the internal world of impressions, ideas, and feelings. Slower, more deliberate action and complex social behavior are preferred. People from such cultures are multifaceted and, to the low context person, even mystifying. In a high context culture, one “look” might express a great deal.