1 SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL IN CHILDHOOD

This chapter concerns a topic unlike most that appear in this volume. Social withdrawal is not a clinically defined behavioral, social, or emotional disorder in childhood. Indeed, some individuals appear perfectly content to pass the better parts of their lives removed from others. These individuals include those who spend their days and/or nights tending to their computers, or designing homes, automobiles, space modules, or writing scripts, poems, lyrics, chapters, and so forth. Often these individuals have a distinct need for solitude. Conversely, there are individuals who avoid others when in social company and those who choose solitude to escape the initiation and maintenance of interpersonal relationships. Lastly, there are individuals who have little choice in the matter of solitude because they are isolated or rejected by others in their social community. In the latter two cases, social solitude could hardly be construed as normal or as psychologically or socially adaptive. But it is not the display of solitude per se that is the problem; rather, the central issue is that social withdrawal may reflect underlying difficulties of a social or emotional nature. To some researchers, the expression of social withdrawal reflects particular temperamental and/or personality characteristics or traits (e.g., Fox, Henderson, Rubin, Calkins, & Schmidt, 2001; Kagan, 1989). To others, withdrawal is viewed as a behavioral index of the child's isolation or rejection by the peer group (e.g., Hymel, Bowker, & Woody, 1993; Parkhurst & Asher, 1992). Still others believe that social withdrawa