How to Understand Your Child’s Temperament
As parents, we tend to view our child’s mood and behavior as a reflection of our upbringing. When you see someone’s light and outgoing child who can adapt to sudden changes in plans, and you think, “God, these parents are doing a great job.” Meanwhile, your child gets angry or frustrated quickly and needs to get things done in a certain way, and you wonder where you went wrong. The answer is simple: it’s just the temperament they were born with.
What is temperament?
A person’s temperament is his unique set of personality traits, which determines how he reacts to the world around him and interacts with others. While this may be influenced to some extent by early childhood experiences, for the most part, the temperament we are born with is the temperament we will have throughout our lives.
You can see signs of a baby’s innate temperament as early as infancy. Some babies will cry when they are hungry; some will scream. Some will smile all the time; others are more serious. Your toddler may try to climb every structure of the playground almost before he can walk; mine was the one who stood on the sidelines for the first half hour trying to decide if this shit was safe.
While we cannot change our child’s temperament, understanding it alone can help us adjust our own expectations and improve our interaction with them.
Nine main characteristics of temperament
While there are three broad categories of temperament (mild, slow-warming or shy, and difficult or defiant), according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) , there are at least nine other specific characteristics to consider and every child will eat them. another sample. Here’s how the AAP defines these characteristics :
- Activity level : The level of physical activity, movement, anxiety, or restless behavior that a child exhibits in daily activities (and which can also affect sleep).
- Rhythm or regularity : The presence or absence of a regular pattern of basic physical functions such as appetite, sleep, and bowel habits.
- Approach and withdrawal : How the child initially responds to a new stimulus (fast and bold or slow and indecisive), be it people, situations, places, food, routine changes, or other transitions.
- Adaptability : The degree of ease or difficulty with which a child adjusts to a change or new situation, and how well the child can change his or her response.
- Intensity : The level of energy with which a child reacts to a situation, positive or negative.
- Mood : The mood, positive or negative, or the degree of pleasantness or dislike in the child’s words and behavior.
- Duration of attention : The ability to concentrate or stay on a task, distracted or not.
- Distraction : The ease with which a child can be distracted from a task by external (usually visual or auditory) stimuli.
- Sensory threshold : The amount of stimulation the baby needs to respond. Some children react to the slightest irritation, while others require an intense amount.
Temperamental knowledge is power
Once you start looking at each of these nine categories, a picture of your child’s temperament (and perhaps your own) may begin to emerge. While we cannot achieve regularity in their physical functions, make them more capable of adapting to new situations or get rid of all their troubles, recognizing that these are the traits with which they were born can help us better navigate certain situations. They can do nothing if they are more moody or more easily distracted than the average child; they just are.
It does not give children the right to break rules, act unsafely, or treat others unkindly; but it is helpful to recognize that some children find it easier to be an easy-going and light-hearted rule-maker than others. When you think about your own child’s temperament, ask yourself how intensely your child responds to certain events, how well he copes with change, if he has a clear pattern built into their day, how well he copes with frustration, how well he is. can they not be distracted from the task and what is their general mood.
When we connect multiple dots, we can begin to see patterns. A child who is “picky about food” and is also very sensitive to the sensation of clothes has a low sensory threshold, while their sister can eat whatever you put in front of her and would not even notice if she was wearing shoes. wrong legs.
As the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group notes, while some temperament traits are easier to live with than others, each has its own advantages and disadvantages:
For example, children who:
- Being cautious in new situations can frustrate parents who become impatient, but this child may also be strong-willed and more self-aware.
- Adaptation is often more flexible and easier to get along with, but peer pressure is easier to influence.
How to support a child
It’s important to think about how your temperament might affect certain interactions or conflicts with your children. Some temperaments go well and some don’t. My son and I have a similar temperament, which I’ve found helps me empathize with him in certain situations, but it also means that our individual intensity can spark each other on (frequent) occasions. But understanding why and how this happens is half the battle in containing that intensity.
Recognizing your child’s individual temperament can also help you see positives, even in those traits that don’t look so positive on the surface – and if you see positives, they are more likely to see positives as well. Sometimes it just means rethinking how you label them in your head. They are not stubborn; they are tenacious. They are not fussy; they are highly energetic.
You cannot force your child to be someone they are not. You cannot trade their temperament or personality for someone easier to raise children with. But you can meet them where they are, let their personality talk about how you raise them, and encourage them to try things that might be difficult for them given their natural temperaments. They may suddenly surprise you by being ready to try all sorts of new foods or finally feel comfortable spending the night at a friend’s house. And you know that although it took them longer to get there than some of their colleagues, it is a huge win for them.