RE: Married to an introvert - mission possible?
I'm clearly more introvert than extrovert, even though I love to travel to new places as well as to meet new people. I do remember my mother being very worried that I was staying too much at home and not having many friends as a child. Now we (and the school, and the child protection service, etc) have the same worries about our children.
The eldest is the most introvert, it was particularly terrifying when our now eldest son was 3 years old and started in the kinder garden. He was so happy at first, it took us several days to realize that what he was happy about was nothing but all the new toys. He stopped talking for two years. He would talk with me and his mother, but he even stopped talking with his grand mother. It has always been difficult to drag him out to birthday parties, school parties and other arrangements. For his last birthday he didn't want to have any party, he just stayed at home.
Our youngest daughter is actually a bit extrovert, she enjoys socializing, communicating and talking, but not with too many people at once. Still, she also stopped talking in the kinder garden at the age of three, after she got moved from the small children department to the "big" children department. She's very sensitive for noises. The kinder garden was horrible for her, it's a very open kinder garden with very much noise and lots of other children. To make matters even worse, at her team the employee turnover was crazy, there were supposed to be three people working in the team, but they were never there, only different replacement staff. The kinder garden (of course!) thought the problem must be with the parents, and reported us to the CPS (barnevernet) rather than trying to make things better for her in the kinder garden. Eventually we've moved her to another kinder garden with just a handful of kids, and she's really blossoming now!
I am so sorry for what you were through with that kinder garden adaptation. It is always so stressful for the little ones. I fear this process myself, although my son is only five months old and there is so much time until we get there.
Sadly, a three-year-old is still too young to be left by himself or herself, but our society puts economic development above personal development. It's more important to the society to get you back to work instead of helping you to bring up a happy individual.This is the harsh reality and we all have to put up with it somehow.
My husband went hysterical every time when his parents tried to leave him at the kinder garden. At the end the teachers didn't wanted him there -it was too much trouble for them. So, lucky him, he was sent to his grandmother, to a different town, so that she could look after him.
I hated going to the kinder garden myself and still remember this time like a very sad period of my life.
When I was working at a school I was really annoyed by the horrible miscommunication between the parents and the school stuff. Always blaming and pointing at each other. Everything we did was for the sake of the children after all, so why did we act as if we were from different sides? But this is human nature, I guess, it is always easier to blame the others than try to make things better.
I am very happy that you managed it somehow with your youngest daughter.
I hope your eldest is fine now. I hope he would put this horrible experience behind him. But it takes time and understanding. The best thing is that you are not pushing him too hard to interact. He would get to it eventually.