Lately I’ve been wondering if my 4-year-old is an introvert or a snob.
When my other kids were 4, they were friendly. If we ran into someone we knew at the store — they would excitedly say hello; they made countless playmates on playgrounds and managed to be halfway decent on play dates.
But not so with Jonah. He can be friendly and has a number of friends — but he can also be aloof and sometimes downright mean. A classmate from Sunday School recently caught sight of him at a swim meet and excitedly called across the pool but Jonah barley glanced at him and refused to say hello. Another friend approached him at the library recently, but Jonah couldn’t be bothered to talk to him. When his best friend was over to play last weekend, he put on a scary mask and scared him out of the house. He later told me he did it on purpose.
My first thought was that he’s just one of those mean kids. It drove me crazy because I was often the butt of those kids’ jokes when I was little. I wore glasses and was far from “cool.”  But a friend told me the other day that her daughter had been similar when she was younger, and she thought maybe it was because she was shy.
I hadn’t really put it in that context before. Maybe he’s an introvert and not a snob. Maybe when friends he doesn’t know that well approach him, he feels timid. Maybe when he scared his friend off with the mask, he was just saying “I’ve played nicely for about as long as I can handle, and now I need a bit of alone time.”
I like that scenario a lot better than the snob one. I sure hope that’s the case.