The Anti-Show-Off
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Family on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:53 PM
Our two-year-old is talking like crazy these days - complete, complex sentences - but if you visited us and met him, you’d never know it. He clams right up when a stranger is in the room.
Do your kids do this? I first noticed the phenomenon when my daughter was a toddler. She was a chatterbox at home, but never said a word in public or at friends’ houses.
And it’s not just with talking, and not just with strangers.
I coined a term for this a few years back: Trick Pony Radar. I know there are exceptions - some children are very outgoing and like to be admired even by people they don’t know - but for the most part I think my theory holds, at least for toddlers and preschoolers.
It goes like this: the more you want your child to show off a particular skill he or she has, the less motivated he or she is to do it.
If I say to a guest, “Oh, Camilla learned to do somersaults this week,” then Camilla - the alert from her Trick Pony Radar squeaking away in her head - will sit firmly where she is. But if I then leave her alone and move on to another topic, in a few minutes she’ll be happily somersaulting across the rug.
Whereas if I ask, “Blaise, Grandma really wants to hear you count to ten. Will you count to ten for Mama?” the more I coax, the harder he sets his lips and shakes his head. The kid’s Trick Pony Radar alert is screaming. We won’t hear those digits out of him for days.
I think Trick Pony Radar is probably good for me as a mother - it reminds me to treat my children as individuals instead of as performing monkeys. (Not that I’d ever really think of them as monkeys, but I hope you know what I mean.) I’m disinclined to ask them to “show off” any of their skills, since I know I’ll set off Trick Pony Radar and my efforts will be fruitless.
And in general, the whole thing makes me laugh. Children are funny! My little guy loves to walk around the house counting things (all the way to “twelve, firteen, sixteen” - he’s working on it). But if I ask him to show someone his counting skills, he’d rather do anything else. Hilarious! I love the way they’re little individuals from the very beginning.
Have you noticed Trick Pony Radar in your kids?
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