Parenting Styles And Childhood Shyness - socialization research - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), May, 2001

Parents who are worried about their shy child's ability to socialize, but are unsure how to react, can find help in a study by a team of researchers which included Larry J. Nelson, professor of marriage, family, and human development, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. They found that there is an explicit relationship between child behavior and parenting styles. "Parents really do have a great influence on the behavioral and social abilities of their children," Nelson points out.

The study supports previous research which shows that parents who are less likely to encourage independence of thought and/or deed in their offspring are also more likely to have socially inhibited and shy youngsters. "In the case of shyness, we found that parents' behavior was influenced by their perceptions of their children's withdrawn behaviors. For example, we found that parents who believed their children were shy at age two actually became more overcontrolling in their parenting styles," Nelson notes.

Parents should not become overcontrolling or overprotective of their offspring, he cautions. "If these shy kids want to try something, it's important that you let them try something new." The limits that parents place on their perceivably shy child can deny the youngster essential challenges that develop self-regulatory abilities and social skills, Nelson says.