Is This Normal or Nuts?
Your oddest human compulsions, evaluated by Lori Kolman
YOU LIVE A PRETTY NORMAL LIFE. You’ve got friends, you’ve got hobbies, and you’re happy to spend 20 minutes hunting for the toothpaste at the pharmacy rather than—God, no! No! Anything but that!—actually asking a clerk for help. Trust us, that behavior is normal, because all of us area little, well, quirky. And in most cases, our idiosyncrasies are curable, or at least curbable. We asked an array of psychiatrists, psychologists, and other health professionals to weigh in on a variety of odd behaviors burdening our readers and staff. You might recognize one of them in yourself and wonder, Am I normal or nuts? The answer is always yes and yes.
Why am I awkward around kids? I have nothing to say to people under 12, and frankly, I don’t find them particularly cute. What’s wrong with me?
“I hear this all the time,” says Charlynn Ruan, a Los Angeles clinical psychologist who works, ironically enough, mostly with mothers.
“A lot of them say, ‘The only children I like are my own.’” At the root of this more-common-thanyou’d-expect dread is the ever-potent fear of embarrassment. One common concern is that “out of the mouths of babes” will come a truth no one wants to hear: “That man smells funny, Mommy.”
“Wow, lady, you must eat a lot of food.” “What are all those lines on your face?”
Then there’s the cringe factor of doting parents—and worse, grandparents!—hovering nearby, convinced that everything their child says should be etched in stone. No wonder you’re uncomfortable talking to the no-neck monsters.
But there’s a solution, says Howard Forman, MD, a psychiatrist at theAlbert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City: Grab a book and read to the kid. That puts you in the driver’s seat and gives you something to say.