Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC Does your child have an overactive amygdala? Is there any way to know? Is it your fault? Can you fix it? Yes, there is a way to know. If he does, it’s not your fault, and you can’t fix it. What you can do is help your child learn how to manage it. The amygdala is a small, almond shaped mass of nuclei located in the temporal lobes of the brain near the hippocampus. It can trigger the so-called flight-or-flight response, which prepares the body to either fight or flee a threat. This acute stress response can be triggered by both real and imaginary threats. If the amygdala is too excitable, you react with fear to things that others wouldn’t find all that scary. Some would find those same things pleasant! Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan has studied children to determine which ones have a relatively calm amygdala and which ones have an overly reactive one. He shows a 4 month old baby a toy he’s never seen before. After twenty seconds he shows him another one, twenty seconds later another one, and then another. Some of them find it pleasant, but some “hate it, crying so hard they shake in protest.” (Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence, page 147) When one 4 month old reacts to a situation with glee and another reacts to the same situation with terror, it isn’t their parents’ fault. Infants are born with different neurotransmitter patterns. Those patterns excite each infants’ amygdala to a different degree, and you see a very different response to the same stimulus. So yes, you can tell, and it’s not your fault, and you can’t fix it. So why discuss it all? And what is any of this doing in a book called “Social Intelligence.” According to Professor Kagan, the infants who are discomforted by the changing toys grow into the toddlers who are wary of new people and places, and the school children who are shy. In other words, if your child is shy, it’s not your fault. He was born that way. He will find it harder to be gregarious than someone who wasn’t born that way. Your role is to help him when it’s hard. Helping him doesn’t mean that you tell him it’s not hard, or that it shouldn’t be. Here’s a conversation I had with a mom who wanted her son to make friends with some boys in his class. Why can’t I get him to realize that there’s nothing for him to be afraid of. They’re just children like him. They’d like to be his friends but he’s so awkward, he comes across as aloof. He appears awkward because he is nervous. He stands apart from them to avoid risking rejection, and they think he is rejecting them. But if he would walk over to them and be natural, they’d be fine with him; they’re nice boys. Can you ride a bike? Sure. Why? When you bought your son his first bike, did you assume he would be able to ride it as naturally as you can? No, I got him training wheels. He still managed to fall down a few times, and then a few times more when I took the trainings wheels off. When he fell off, he eagerly climbed back on? Oh no. He wanted to quit. He said he didn’t care if he never learned how to ride. But I told him he’d get hurt less often if he kept trying, and then he’d enjoy it. That it was worth the bruises. Right. You didn’t tell him that it didn’t hurt, that there was nothing to be afraid of. You told him to brave the fear and tolerate the discomfort, and you soothed and encouraged him when he did get hurt. Gradually, he gained his balance, and now he enjoys riding his bike. So it’s okay for him to be afraid to try to make friends? Yes, just as okay as it is to be afraid of falling when you try to ride a bike. What’s not okay is to let your fear stop you from learning something or doing something that’s scary. With practice, it becomes less scary, and maybe, after a long time, it isn’t scary anymore at all. The fight or flight response is sometimes appropriate. Some things that are scary should be avoided. Other fears can be overcome. Not fixed; managed. The Rambam wrote that to overcome a bad trait you have to go the opposite extreme. A miser needs to become profligate, not just generous, for awhile. Why is that? Because it is not enough to expand your comfort zone. You have to move out of your comfort zone into a place that is truly uncomfortable for you, and learn how to tolerate that discomfort. The novice bike rider falls down, but over time he creates and stabilizes neural networks in his brain that enable the coordinated physical movements that come with repeated efforts, and setbacks. Eventually he stays upright. If he cannot tolerate falling down, he’ll never get to enjoy riding. So what should I say to him when he says he’s afraid to walk over to the boys and try to join their conversation? Ask him what he thinks will happen when he does what he’s afraid to do. What if he says he’s afraid he’ll say the wrong thing and they’ll laugh at him? Ask him what he wants to say to them. Role play with him, and see if he can come up with something to say that he thinks they won’t laugh at. But he’s still going to be afraid that they might laugh at him. How can I convince him that they won’t? Convince him that they won’t? How can you predict that? Maybe they’re going to laugh at him no matter what he says? Right, that why he’s scared. I understand that. So ask him what he intends to say or do if they laugh at him, because you agree with him that they might. What do you do when you try to be nice to someone and they laugh at you? You can ask them what’s so funny, or you can decide that maybe this person isn’t your best choice for a friend and look elsewhere. You get knocked down, and it hurts. You feel bad, get up, dust yourself off, and try someone else. Your world doesn’t come to an end. Help your child learn to overcome his fear of being hurt and disappointed. Not because it won’t happen; you can’t promise him that. What you can promise him is that when it does, it won’t be the end of world. Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with specialties in marriage, relationships, and parenting. He works with parents and educators, and conducts parenting groups for men and women. He can be reached at 718-344-6575.