I am naturally quite shy. Yes, it can quite hard to believe ::) but I am really. I find it very hard to go into groups of people or even to meet people one on one. But I force myself. I have taught myself over the years how to control my feelings of shyness, although it is still a natural tendency within me.
I noticed that one of my girls was very naturally ‘reserved’. Different from shy in that she would talk to be a lot but was very reserved and never seemed to open up and just let herself have fun. Always so serious. She still is, but she’s learning. 
I taught both my girls how to talk to people. I tried to teach them that it isn’t about themselves but about others. Meeting the needs of others should be greater than serving our own needs. The reserved girl has fully embraced that teaching and is now very sociable. The younger daughter never had any problems and was often the life of the party, so to speak. But over the years has become quite different and seems to have lost all social skills. She has them but wants not to have, methinks.
My sons are very quiet and reserved (until they get home in the safety of their own home! ) and I find I am spending more than 2 times the amount of time trying to teach them. It isn’t that they don’t have head knowledge- they don’t have as much practical experience as the girls had.
Sometimes, shyness can be a mask of something else – something that is often bandied around as low self esteem but I disagree. I believe it is often something called pride. Yep, PRIDE. No one wants to look silly or dumb. They don’t want anyone to think less of them. So rather than speak up and risk that, they keep quiet.
Shyness can also be selfishness, I believe. Yep, we can deny others knowledge, friendships, the benefit of others knowing they’re not alone, but the bottom line is that we need go out of our comfort zone, think of others and learn to live despite shyness. The Christian needs to die to self in order to bless others.
Shyness can also mask fear, which shouldn’t be allowed to control us. With good attitude, skills, practice and prayer we can learn to live with it.
There are probably more serious conditions that are related to mental illness and other serious disorders which all need to be considered, but these aren’t what I’m talking about here.
Modeling (an example) can help to create desire + learned skills +practice is vital.
As homeschoolers I believe we can facilitate all four keys. By modeling good practices we can increase desire… by teaching learned skills in a ‘hands on’ and one on one way and by creating lots of real life opportunities to practice the first two keys.
I found that having a few good (trusted) friends was beneficial. I spoke to them and told them my plans and what I was doing. I asked for this help and gave them cues so they could discuss things with the girls. And they did! I also tried to do the same with their children.
Some points that I harp on about are:
- eye contact (it’s a biggie for me)
- firm but gentle greeting
- open ended questioning style of conversation
- learn to read people- tone of voice, body language, etc
- practice good body language ( I borrowed a book from the library)
- offer feedback to person’s responses (Narration basically. Helps with understanding)
- Less of ‘me’ (or personal pronouns) and more about them
- Learn how to ask questions
People will quickly get turned off if I talk about me, myself and I too much.
Also, I’ve found that the more general knowledge I have, the better a conversationalist I can be. Even though I don’t know a lot about much I have learned how to ask questions. This in turn gets the other person talking about their interest, and I get to learn something, which in turns comes back full circle by making me a better communicator. So while it isn’t about being smart, it’s again about the ‘other person’ and not myself.
Another point that helped me was to learn that I am not the only one who struggles with being shy. A lot of people do so I need to give them a little leeway or grace. If they’re not talking to me well, it may not be because they hate me- they may not be great communicators themselves. This allows me to then focus on someone else other than myself.
Heart attitude and communication is the key, I believe. Teaching skills, and then allowing room to practice, which we all know means room to fail and room to succeed.
Borrowing a book from the library and talking about it, then providing room for practice will, instill the necessary tools and skills that each person needs for good communication. To me, it’s not necessarily about overcoming shyness as I’m still shy, rather it’s about not letting my shyness control me or my actions.
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I am also naturally extremely shy but it is something that I have forced myself to overcome. I thank my dear dad for helping me as a teenager because instead of speaking for me in situations he would FORCE me into uncomfortable arenas!! I hated being pushed but I loved the end result!! Sometimes people think I am confident because I tend to “babble on” but mostly that is my nerves trying to overcome the shyness. Anyway, I agree with you 100% in what you have shared. I am also trying to push my quieter children out of their shell……I am even trying to train my quiet, shy sons to shake hands with visiting male guest……gosh that is hard!! LOL
I’ve never been shy a day in my life.. and yet something you said really struck home. You said that a Shy person needs to learn to ask questions.
My best friends is a question asker.. and she’s quite reserved as well – but recently it came out that I’ve been HURTING her – hurting her feelings – because I don’t ask quetions of her. She takes this to mean I’m not interested.
I don’t ask questions, but I assume – that if she wanted to talk about something, she’d come right out and talk about it.
WOW, very different ways of understanding, behaving, communicating. Thanks for pointing this out to me.