My little guy can be shy. Super shy. Although that seems hard to believe in some situations. After all, he loves attention and needs it almost every single moment but if everyone in the room stops what they are doing and focuses on him entirely, he balks. (Me too, babe.)
He had to present his very first book report to his class recently, and every night that lead up to the big day, he told me he couldn't do it. He absolutely, positively could not do it. And since all of the advice that I've heard about public speaking has had zero impact on me over the years, I was at a loss for words. But I thought back to my elementary school days and I thought about what I would have wanted someone to do to help me through those terrifying moments, and I supposed that what I would have wanted was for someone to tell my teacher that I was deathly afraid (not just "nervous") and that maybe if I didn't have to pretend that I wasn't afraid, I wouldn't have to be. So that's what I did. I talked to his teacher who not only understood, but offered to do the report with him to help him through it. We thought that was a good plan. He didn't. A good plan would have been to not do it at all. When she finally called his name to say it was his (their) turn, he politely said, "No thanks." By the end of the week, though, he had agreed to give his report to his teacher alone, and that's what he did. I was so happy he did it, and I was so happy that we found a way that he could.
Then, in comes the Third Grade recorder (you remember the recorder, right?) and suddenly there is something he'll do in front of people, something he'll ask to do in front of other people, for the sake of other people. Every day he showed me the new song he learned in music class and then he practiced at home to get it just right. He even did something unprecedented at Thanksgiving dinner: He put on a little recorder show for the whole family to hear. And he was good.
After putting the kids to bed on Thanksgiving night, Michael and I turned to each other and almost at the same time said, "Wasn't that fantastic?" Yes, it truly was. And the other thing that's fantastic? Perry wants to take piano lessons. And he meets his piano teacher on Friday. No pressure, we'll just see how it goes.


