Extremely shy toddler - Anyone been here/done that?

[bluebear]

My ds - 2 and a half, has been getting shyer and shyer. He has always been very outgoing and fun when with family, but a very 'good' boy at nursery. He is now so shy that if we go the the park and another child enters the play area he will run to me and want to be picked up, or will hide behind me. At nursery he wouldn't talk to staff or children until recently, and even now will only say one or two words a day (he gabbles sentences continuously at home), and when we have friends' children to visit he hides or tries to ignore them.
Anyone had a similar toddler -Is it a developmental stage or is it likely to last? Anything I can do to help him find mixing less scarey?
At the moment he is in day nursery 3 days a week, but I need to get him childcare for another 2 days soon (will be 2 days nursery ,2 days other), any thoughts on whether a childminder (with other children to practise mixing with), or a nanny (ie. just him and his baby sister) would be better?

My 2 and a half year old is quite shy though nothing like as much as yours. He has had a nanny on and off since he was 5 and a half months. This summer we had a second baby and the nanny was dismissed and I got to spend some time with him ( as I got part time help with the baby ). By the end of the summer other nannies who knew him were saying that he had changed from being a shy little boy who hung on to his nannies side to a much more confident little boy.

So what did I do ?

I gave him huge amounts of praise and encouragement when he tried something new - playing on a new piece of apparatus at the park and tried to give him as much space as possible. If we went to the park I would play with him and then after a while tell I was going to get something from the buggy and maybe sit down and let him play on his own until he started looking around for me. Never forced him but tried to give him space and support, talked about what he did.
It is frustrating sometimes - you have made this huge effort to take him somewhere that you think he is going to enjoy and he doesn't want to get involved but hang on to you. You just have to be patient and spend some time with him and then try and withdraw slowly.

He will always be a little reserved at first and take his time with new things until he has built up his confidence. But those aren't bad things as it is good to take time to assess situations.

Nursery must be a bit much for your DS and his reaction is just to shut down - I am sure that DS1 would have had the same reaction if he went to one when he was younger. I would highly recommend getting a nanny or childminder who can give him some one to one attention. Try and get someone with a very positive attitude and can do attitude who will give him lots of positive feedback and allow him to get messy, fall over etc.. . Our first nanny was very protective and never left DS1 to play on his own and was paranoid that he would fall over and hurt himself. In retrospect I think that she re-inforced his shyness and clingyness by not allowing him the space to discover.

So don't push your DS but try and give him the space to explore. Remember that it isn't so much that he is shy but that he lacks confidence to get stuck in, he does want to.

Don't know if you saw child of our times this week. There was one little boy who was very shy, despite having very confident outgoing parents. At nursery he was very shy and didn't want to join in. They did a test to check the childrens self esteem and he came top. He came from a very loving supportive family where he was very happy and outgoing but was just finding moving into the big wide world a little hard. So don't worry you are doing a great job and just take things at your DS's speed.

Kaz - thanks for the reassurance.