As a result, they need a psychiatrist to help taper their turbulent emotions. Instead of learning from past, they unlearned anything.

I know an elderly man who becomes obsessed with past. He blamed his parents for his inability to finish school, blamed his friends for his low grades, his wife for his bad occupation, and his co-workers for his misfortunes. When I saw him, he was a bitter man and full of rage. He later became very depressed.

On further evaluation, I realized that this elderly man could have done something differently if he bothered to review his past. He could have corrected his unproductive patterns and ways early. Almost close to his death bed, it’s now too late.

How can you benefit from past?

Review your life every few weeks or months. Some people even benefit from a daily review.

Check for patterns, habits, attitudes, behavior, and mindset that are counterproductive. Correct those unproductive ways of living your life. Do you need to change your life’s perspective? Please do so and do it quick.

Learn from these reviews. These lessons can’t be acquired through expensive formal education.

Who needs a rear-view mirror? All of us! Only those who don’t want to have positive change will do otherwise. Remember, living a life is more important than driving.

Life is product of actions and reactions interwoven in our daily existence. Life therefore requires a meticulous review of past.

Lest you think for a moment that your child can’t succeed in this world being introverted, being just way they are, here is a list of introverts who have made tremendous contributions and achieved great things by any standards, during many different time periods: Warren Buffett (the world’s richest man or greatest investor), Mother Theresa, Queen Elizabeth II, Jackie Kennedy, Michael Jordan, Michael Douglas, Steven Spielberg, Katherine Hepburn, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton and Peter Great. If you would like to learn more, please visit my website. I have many inspirational articles about introverts who took world on their own terms and were successful.

I’m afraid none of activities I’ve mentioned for a typical school day are of any intrinsic value to introverts, although your child may very much enjoy learning subjects, playing a musical instrument or engaging in sports as an individual. Being required to give enormous amounts of energy to socialization process, trying to be something s/he isn’t, leaves them little time for things they do find valuable, such as quiet times, reading, walking, collecting things, becoming an expert at something, watching a video or DVD, browsing on internet (the internet is an introvert’s heaven) or playing with pets.

The second reason for closed door is because introverts focus and concentrate. That’s why we consider small talk, unnecessary socializing and group activities such a waste of time. We don’t benefit from social aspect and on other hand, it destroys our focus and concentration.

Some of us remember being forced by a teacher or by peer pressure to join a study group only to agonize through hour of wasted chitchat before going home and beginning to “really study”. It’s like double jeopardy. To an introvert, most “group activities” and “study groups” are a mystery, if not to say a form of Medieval torture and we are doubly penalized by time it wastes when we could be studying and time we have to spend afterwards to make sure we learn stuff our way.

I run polls on my website to gather information from real people about their introverted experience. Most of them comment on exhaustion and hopelessness they felt during school years. They found it almost impossible to keep up with social demands of school and accomplish other things that they valued. It seemed they were working twice as hard just to stay in place. When your introverted child or teen returns home after days like this, they are exhausted.

If there is one symbol I could pick for difference between extroverts and introverts, it is closed door. This is something near and dear to heart of every introvert that seems to strike terror in heart of every extrovert.

What are we doing behind closed door? We’re filling up with energy. You may find us lying on bed staring at ceiling, listening to kind of music we like, thumbing through picture albums or collections, writing in our journal, browsing internet or just rearranging and cleaning our room. We are enjoying some quiet time to ourselves. If we are interrupted, this adds more stress to stress we’re trying to recover from because even when we’re relaxing, we are intense and focused. To an introvert, interruptions are stressful. We learn to cope with them as a reality but when we are exhausted, we need to set some limits. Children can’t do this without your help and support.

When I wrote about this on an introverts' forum, Shelley responded quickly, “Funny that you should mention [personal space]. I recall moving into a big closet in room that my older sister and I shared so that I could have my own private place. I had a bed made on floor inside there with all extra blankets and pillows in house and then I'd go in there and shut door. Sometimes I'd draw, sometimes I'd just take a nap. By way, this was when I was grade school age.”

Another forum member replied, “I have closet envy We moved quite frequently when I was young, and not usually to places where I had a room of my own (really a room at all) until I was a teenager. The couch being my usual bed, you see. But I remember with delight dragging home a refrigerator box, cutting a little door and window, and hanging a night light on an extension cord through "ceiling." My Mother, an introvert herself, must have understood, letting me keep box for as long as we lived in that location.”

This Christmas, heck, this weekend, give your introverted kid gift that keeps on giving … personal space. Be it a room of their own with a door that closes, a closet or a box, it’s kindest thing you could do for little one you love.