I was wondering if you could give me some specific examples of things you were worried about in relation to your child when they were younger, which turned out to be okay in the end when they grew up?
I’m a bit worried about my DS who is almost 8. He is quite self focussed and doesn’t seem to care very much what other people think about him (not in a horrible or nasty way, rather in an oblivious way if that makes sense). I’ll try to give some examples. We met some family friends this week for Christmas and one of them asked him how his school is. He doesn’t answer. Just literally doesn’t answer and looks off into the distance. This is a very common problem with him and it is definitely not due to shyness, it feels more like he just can’t be bothered to answer people & he doesn’t seem to feel any normal social embarrassment about this. I have tried reprimanding him about it, pre warning him that he needs to respond when people speak to him but to no avail. I get so embarrassed that I end up filling in the silence by answering for him. Me and DH both have pretty good social skills so I’m baffled by how rude he can be. I remember years ago his preschool teacher saying that she wondered if he had a processing problem but this also confuses me because if you said to him “do you want some ice cream?” he would process that in half a second.
He does have at least some ability to empathise - we have a new baby and he loves talking to him and tells me what he thinks the baby is thinking. He can even accurately tell me how I’m feeling in certain situations (today he said I was a more relaxed parent with the baby because he is my 4th!) so he is obviously able to put himself in someone else’s shoes.
I suppose I’m just looking for some hope really that this rude/selfish behaviour is something he might just outgrow. I have younger DCs and don’t have the same worries - they can answer questions and be polite. I just worry that life will be really hard for him if he can’t learn better behaviour