Not sure what I want to write about

My kid is shy. No, not shy - tentative to the point of debilitation when among unfamiliar people, especially kids. Once she knows the people, she's the most outgoing blabbermouth you've ever seen, but throw one unknown kid in the mix and she clams up and (usually) starts screaming.

Needless to say, this makes visits to the playground a bit traumatic. It wasn't bad during the winter, when most people stayed inside and we had playgrounds mostly to ourselves. It started getting bad a few months ago - we went to the indoor playground at the mall when it was raining outside, and there were maybe 10 kids playing. It took 10 minutes (yes, I timed it) to pry her off of my lap, get her to stop saying, "Mommy, make the other kids go away," get her to stop wailing and shrieking because one of them tried to talk to her, and convince her to go play. Then she tried to run in a circle around a piece of equipment, but when she got to the other side there was a parent standing in her way, so she had to run back the way she came, and she managed to make it back to my lap before she had a total meltdown. Another 10 minutes of sniveling and whining and "Mommy, make them go home! I don't like other kids!" and she finally went off to play, and I ended up having to drag her out of there half an hour later, she was having so much fun.

Next trip there, same thing, only without the break in the middle - 20 minutes of nonstop whining and moaning and asking very politely for me to tell the other kids to go home, followed by her finally working up the nerve to go play and then not wanting to leave.

We went to a birthday party for the older kids of some friends, and my kid was a wreck the whole time, despite the fact that we're over at that house all the time and we know the kids and she's best friends with the youngest sibling. Why? All the grandparents and great-grandparents were there. Next time I told her we were going to visit those friends, the kid started kicking and screaming and saying no she didn't want to go, it was too scary. After some prying, I was told it was too scary because there were "all those people there."

When my mother-in-law was visiting last month, we took my kid to her end-of-school picnic, which was held at a park we go to pretty frequently. The picnic was for every kid in the school, plus parents, so there were a lot of people there. We were there for close to an hour and never could get her to go on anything other than whatever baby swing was currently occupied by another kid. We had to sit on a bench a few dozen yards away from every single other person on the playground and watch. In the cold. For an hour. And as soon as we left, she wanted to go back and play, after I told all the other kids to leave. Um, no.

We went on vacation, and she loved the hotel pool ... unless there was anyone else using it. We managed to get her to ignore the one guy swimming laps by assuring her that he would stay on his side of the pool and we would stay on ours, but the four rowdy folks on Sunday kept her out of the water for at least 15 or 20 minutes, standing on the edge telling us to make them leave.

She was so excited to go to summer camp at her regular school ... until she found out that none of her previous classmates were in the camp, and there were a bunch of other little kids she was going to have to play with. The screaming was so bad the first day that we left after 20 minutes, I didn't even try to leave her there. It was "too scary," she wanted to go home so she could "just be with Mommy," and couldn't I just make the other kids leave?

The next day I told her I would stay the whole time, and she was fine in between the six or so complete meltdowns she had because, say, that girl looked at her pink hula hoop. The following day I did a dump and run, and after calming down from her initial hissy fit, she was fine. The next week I dumped and ran on the first two days and she was fine after a few minutes of crying; on the last day (her favorite day - water day! with swimsuits and everything!) she hadn't stopped crying after 45 minutes, so I had to come get her. What was so horrible that she couldn't stop crying? According to her, some other person had eaten her snack (because she was crying and wouldn't eat it), and she hadn't gotten to do craft (because she was crying and refused to participate) and she hadn't gotten to use the water table (because they were just lining up to go outside to use it when we left). Um, kinda circular logic there, what with the "I'm crying because I'm sad that I didn't get to do things because I was crying," but it's been a recurring theme recently.

On Monday we went to a friend's house to throw water balloons at each other, and after a while I put away the balloons and the kids went in the backyard to play on the swingset. The friend's next-door neighbor has a 2-year-old, and she came over to swing with my kid's best friend. My kid wouldn't look at the neighbor, wouldn't sit on the same side of the swingset as her, and only barely managed to avoid a full-on fit.

Yesterday she didn't want to go to camp, but I took her over and told her she could watch through the window for a while. After assuring her that no, I can't tell the other kids to go home, I managed to get her inside the room next to her class ... but she wouldn't budge from there. I decided that it's not worth the psychological damage she's starting to associate with school, just for me to have two hours of free time, so I didn't make her stay.

Today we didn't even try to go to school. Instead we went to the playground, the one she specifically said she wanted to visit because the little splash pool was finally open. When we got there, there were maybe 10 kids running around and splashing near the pool. She wanted nothing to do with it, and we had to use every deserted piece of equipment that was as far from the pool as possible. Another kid came and sat on the swing at the opposite end of the swingset, so we had to leave. A kid tried to climb up the ladder wall next to her - a couple feet away, not paying any attention to her at all - and she lost it and screamed and whined and rended garments and summoned demons and I could only calm her down by telling her that if she's trying to get the other kids to not notice her, wailing like a siren wasn't the best choice.

After maybe half an hour the preschool group that had come in the meantime all climbed out to get dried off for lunch, and there were only three or four kids in the water, and I managed to convince my kid to sit with me on a bench near the pool. She stood there, got up the courage to go into the water in front of us - there was a 20' circle free of other kids - and before she could get her shoes off, some other kid walked through the empty space. Didn't stop, didn't look at my kid, didn't even know we were there, but my kid lost it again and 5 minutes of screaming ensued. She finally went in the water when I agreed to come stand next to the edge (rather than sit on a bench 10' away), and I had to practically drag her home after another 30 minutes of playing in the freezing cold water.

On the way home, she wouldn't stop talking about the "friends" she made at the pool, the one little girl who walked with her (for five feet, and I'm not sure she even realized Liza was there) and the other girl who could get her whole head wet, not just her hair (as the girl derisively pointed out to my kid and her walking friend, who were leaning over getting the tops of their heads wet). Neither of these girls are likely to even remember Liza tomorrow, but I'm going to be hearing about them for a week.

*******

I hate this. I hate that she's so tentative, so slow to warm up, so overreactive about the littlest, weirdest things. I hate that she's so tall people assume she's older than she really is and expect her to be able to hold it together better than she does. I hate that she's always on the outside, watching through the window or from across the playground, lucky if she talks to one kid without melting into a wailing puddle on the floor. And I especially hate that I know exactly how she feels.

I was always the one on the outside, wanting to join in but too painfully embarrassed to try. I can remember sitting on the fringes of the playground, watching the other kids play, wanting to be invited to join but never making it over there to ask if I could. Feeling like everyone was watching me, judging me, criticizing me - when it's unlikely they even knew I was there. I was the tall one, the chubby kid with glasses and bad hair in the back row of every single class picture. The kid who was so unpopular in elementary school that the boys who played Dungeons and Dragons wouldn't even let me join.

My parents wanted me to be outgoing - my dad is the kind of person who will go to a historical reenactment village and end up chatting with the sawyer for 45 minutes - and I don't think they ever quite got it. Go join things! Talk to people! Be nice! Nobody's making fun of you, it's all in your head! I did, I tried, I was, they were, and it wasn't. Sorry, guys.

I tried to join the field hockey team in 7th grade, and I didn't even make it through the organizational meeting before I got so embarrassed at my own lack of knowledge and/or skill and/or physical abilities that I burst into tears and had to get my application back from the coach. And that was just sitting in the auditorium in a meeting - I never even made it to the field.

I tried to go to my 8th grade "formal" dance, despite not having a date and hating dances in general. I got the dress (a black tank-top knit dress with a long swirl skirt that looked really good on me, and cost $80), got my dad to drive me to the dance ... and as far as I can remember, I started crying in the car as we pulled into the school driveway, and I never even made it to the door. Every other girl was wearing $200 prom-type dresses and had dates, and I was going to be the awkward dateless one. Again.

In high school I was on the fringes of a couple groups, the band geeks and the theatre people and the math nerds. You know you're in trouble when you're the least popular one in Math League. I had one good friend (Hi, K!).

I joined the fencing club in college, not because I had any particular interest in fencing, but because one of the members literally reached out and dragged me over to the table during the activity fair at the beginning of my freshman year. She was tall and weird and a little chubby, and I loved it. Fencing attracts all manner of oddballs and outsiders - let's face it, MLF, you have to be a little off to enjoy poking other people with potentially deadly archaic weapons - and yet I was still on the outside. I was the one who didn't drink at parties, who didn't sleep with everyone in the club, whose room or apartment no one ever bothered to visit. I was asked to parties only because the entire club was invited (and they needed someone sober to keep score during beer bowling); I was asked to come to the mens' team away meets because I had been nominated the Team Mom, mainly because I had a sewing kit and was the only person liable to have cough drops, kleenex, or extra snacks in my gym bag.

I made a few friends with coworkers after college, but when I switched jobs I didn't keep in touch with more than one or two. I didn't make any friends at the new job, although we did end up being good friends with our neighbors, mainly because they gave us no choice (Hi, guys!). When we moved to Kentucky I only ended up with friends because they pretty much grabbed me at the library and forced me to join in (thanks, Kimberly! I needed that!). I had people to hang out with who had kids roughly the same age as mine, but I never got to the point where I could just call one and say, "Hey, let's ditch the kids and go see a movie."

I've been back in Cleveland for over a year now, and despite visiting playgrounds, going to storytime at the library, going to tumbling lessons at the rec center, hanging out at the library, and joining the local preschool PTA group, I have a total of two friends in town - my former next door neighbors. I go to kid activities, and either the parents all already know each other, or they blow off my attempts to start conversations, or I'm so busy wrangling Little Miss Whinypants that I don't get a chance to try to meet people. I went to two PTA meetings - the first one I had to take my kid with me, and she refused to stay in the gym with the other kids where were being babysat by the girl scouts, so I didn't even make it to the actual meeting. I went to one other meeting, and I swear I was the only one in the room who wasn't paired off with someone they already knew, chatting and having a good old time. I sat there like a stump and went home having talked to a total of one person - the one at the door who asked my name so she could make my nametag.

I hate this. I hate being awkward and outside and lonely. I hate that I do the things I'm supposed to, yet somehow friends never magically appear like they seem to for other people. I hate that when something good (or bad) happens, I call my friend (singular), and I call my mom.

I really, really don't want this for Liza. She's been like this since birth, always wanting me or Jason, never anyone else, never showing much interest in what other kids were doing, never wanting to play with them or talk with them unless she already knew them. She'll chat up the clerk in the grocery store for 10 minutes, but she won't say "Hi" to a girl on the swings.

I want her to be the kind of kid that walks into new situations happily, not the kid who clings and cries and protests and refuses to try new things. I want her to want to talk to other kids, even ones she doesn't know. I want her to want to join in, and then DO it. But it isn't happening.

And I hate it, because I know I can't "fix" it, it's just who she is, just like it's who I am. And some days, I hate that, too.

*****

Also, I hate that I just wasted my kid's entire nap by writing this. So much for getting anything done today.

*****

Edited to add: Also, hate thatshe insisted on wearing underwear for nap today. When I woke her up from her nap, she was dry, but groggy, so I let her stay in bed while I went to switch a load of laundry and go to the bathroom. Huzzah, dry after nap! BUT... When she got up a few minutes later, she was in a huge puddle, which had soaked through her waterproof mattress pad and soaked the mattress, too.