Shyness

Christian seems to have gotten very very shy ever since his sister was born. Not sure whether it's a result of his ever-growing self-awareness/ consciousness, or some other more sinister reason. 

The other day when we went to pass Noemi our neighbour her Christmas present, her father Tom said thank you and bye to Christian. Another neighbour came home at that moment and said "hello boy!" My son looked down, kept quiet and eventually hid behind my thigh. =S

I decided to bring him to Derek's de facto housewarming party last Saturday since it's rare that the two of us go out together these days. I thought he would eventually warm up to my friends but he remained rather reserved and his voice way below his usual 50 decibels. They tried and tried to engage him but barely got anything beyond a monosyllabic reply from him. They were quite impressed at how 'well-behaved' he was cos he was eagerly carrying back dirty utensils to the kitchen for us adults, but I was secretly worried about his reticence.

We brought him down to the playground on Saturday night and it was teeming with children. There was this particularly persistent tanned boy chasing our son while on a skate scooter "What's your name? What's your name? What's your name?? Can we play?" and our son just kept running away like a timid, silent mouse. Sigh. 

This led P and I to wonder if the reason why he's so talkative is cos he represses himself at school and around others, and saves it all for us.