Communications

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So Wednesday night Shy Skyped with Amy for a very short time. On the other hand, when Barry called and wanted to talk to her on the phone, she said no.

Then last night Barry called and wanted to Skype with Shy but she didn't want to and she didn't want to talk to him on the phone either. I know Amy reads this blog and I am sure she took that last suggestion about Skyping and thought it was a good idea. I agree. It is a good idea. Apparently only when shy is in the mood though and quite frankly, I can't figure her out.

Sometimes, she will answer the phone and talk to whoever is on the other end for quite a while. Sometimes she will answer the phone just to see who it is and then hands the phone to either DW or me. Sometimes she won't go near the phone and when someone asks for her, she has no interest in talking. Very hard to figure out which "phone shyanne" is going to be place at a given time.

I assume when she gets a little bit older and her friends are calling/texting/whatever they will be doing 10 years from now, she will be responding to them more often than I care to know about. Now children at this age are always finicky about talking on the phone, and I guess now skyping as well. There have actually been times when Shyanne has wanted to Skype and the person she wants to skype with is not available. She can have a major meltdown over that. Of course she doesn't remember that when people want to Skype with her and the answer is no.

I know it is a good idea to maintain as much communication as possible for Shy so that she doesn't feel left alone when she says good-bye to people, and I think just knowing that they are there and wanting to talk to her may be good enough for her. I certainly hope so, but she still gets so upset when she wants to talk to someone and they aren't available to speak, yet she thinks nothing of saying no to talk to other people. That is what bothers me the most.

Last night was another example. She wanted to ask her friend a question and called the house. No one answered the phone and she had a major meltdown. I think she would have been better had she been able to leave a message but the person was on the phone and didn't go over from the call-waiting so there was no machine either.

I have already talked about my age many times on this blog, so it doesn't bother me to day...."Back in the day".... before call-waiting, answering machines and the like, this was not a big issue. If someone didn't answer the phone, they weren't home, and you called back later. Today we expect either a person to answer or a machine to pick up and when it doesn't happen for this particular 6 year old, boy does she get upset.

Just one of the many things we have to work on, but we are confident we can overcome this with time. We will keep stressing the way she feels when people won't talk to her when she decides not to talk to someone else, and hopefully at some point she will get old enough, wise enough, and mature enough to want to talk to people, or to at least be polite enough to say hello.

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