social confidence

It continually frustrates me that I can't be more like my mother - in the sense, that is, that she was a person-magnet. People were drawn to her, stayed with her, enjoyed coming to visit her. But I think I've finally come to the reason - social confidence. She had it. Despite a much-mentioned inferiority complex, she could walk into any situation and be comfortable with the people she met. Like me, she talked a lot, she talked loudly, she had a lot of opinions she wasn't shy about sharing. But where mine seem to be somewhat off-putting (or at the very least, fall short of magnetic), hers seemed to make people warm to her.

Thanks to my training (by her - being dragged along with her to every event she went to, whether it was appropriate to take me to or not), I can also walk into any situation and talk with people ... but I'm not always that comfortable with it. And after it, I go home and beat myself up for every stupid thing I perceive I've said. (There is usually no shortage.) She may have done so, too, and resorted to the drinking to quiet that replay of the event, among other reasons, but you could never tell.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to help my first-grader navigate the murky waters of the elementary school social sea. And he, too, seems to be having trouble with a lack of social confidence - worrying about what he says, not entirely sure of his place in the pecking order. He does all right, but also feels the lack of a certain personal magnetism. I wish I had a good way to help him resolve that issue, other than the time and age that seem to slowly be easing my anxieties.