Importance based on various perspectives:
Family Perspective:
- Interactions and relationships with others are influenced by family communication, family functioning, and family environments.
- Adverse childhood environments, such as (mental illness or alcoholism present in parents), influence shyness
- Understanding relationships with family contribute to a child's social skills, because the family is the origin where children's social skills first develop.
- Social Learning theory- children learn positive and negative social skills by observing/modeling parent behavior
- Parents and family influence the types of interactions their infants engage in. If parents are uncomfortable in social situations they will not expose their children to the same social situations
- Shy parents do not provide the chance for their child to learn how to behave in social context.
- Parenting and attachment predict temperament ( characteristic of shyness).
- Parents who are negative or restrictive tend to develop shy children.
Teacher Perspective
- Shyness can be a negative outcome in the classroom environment.
- Temperament is a characteristic of shyness and also a way to measure the degree of shyness
- Temperament is common in children, and easily observed in the classroom by educators
- Temperament predicts behavior problems, such as negative emotionality.
- Negative emotionality is common in school aged children and is explained by how easily children become irritated, angry or scared. Children who display negative emotionality are commonly shy and display problems with effortful control.
- Effortful control is the teachers ability to control behavior and attention such as following instructions.
- Teachers need to recognize these behaviors to help shy children with their learning experience.
- Teachers should give shy children control.
- Teachers should also avoid "pushing" shy children into uncomfortable situations, that will develop anxiety or anger.
- Teachers should reduce shy children's stress, by exposing them to new tasks and keep them with friends when making group assignments.
Peer's Perspective
- Shyness is also a potential stress that elicits negative emotions towards peers.
- Shyness can be observed through interactions with peers by watching a child playing alone.
- Shyness with peers is also observed by watching others play in group activities but not joining in.