Confidence

Isaac is not shy, as you might recall me writing in several posts of the past. Temperamentally he has always been slow to warm up to new situations, but just before he turned three he became confident when talking to adults, as well as speaking up during circle time in school. He is not always interested in talking, however, and in that case he's strong-willed enough that he just stays quiet.

Usually I find him to be an intriguing combination of reserved and confident. (Although he is increasingly private about his personal thoughts, especially when upset, and then I wish he was more forthcoming!)

Anyway, Isaac has been confident in front of a group several times lately. In his developmental kindergarten class they celebrate each child's birthday in circle time, and Isaac had the very first celebration of the year. The teachers checked with him (and me!) first to see if he was comfortable being the first child to sit up in front of the class, and he said he was. It was actually a nice ceremony. Everyone sang "Happy Birthday" to him, he placed five candles on a feltboard birthday cake, and one of the teachers read from a book of wishes his classmates had prepared for him. (And he wore a crown, as you can see in this photo.)

A few weeks later we went to a fundraiser for Isaac's school, and it turned out I knew the magician who had been booked to put on a magic show. When we were talking before the show, the magician asked Isaac if he would like to come up and assist him, and Isaac said he thought so. When the time came and the magician called on him, Isaac stood up without hesitation and participated in a magic trick where it seemed that a cup of water was going to be poured onto his head. He liked it enough that he put on a pretend magic show himself when we got back home.

Perhaps even more telling is an anecdote from Sunday school. I didn't get to observe it first-hand, not being a churchgoer myself, but Isaac told us about it. The four or five children in the class were all given a turn to stand up in front of the group with a world map, and they were supposed to explain about the brotherhood of man, or God's love for the world, or something like that.

Isaac apparently enjoyed this experience a lot -- so much that he hoped to repeat it.

He told us disapprovingly, "Everyone listened to me the first time I did it, but when I did it again, no one paid attention."

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Actually, Isaac has always been a bit teacherly, as demonstrated by this post listing the pedantic expressions he was already using at the age of two and a half. He still uses "actually" with great frequency. As do I!