One of the joys a parent can experience as their kiddo grows is to see the blossoming
of their child’s personality.
One component of a person’s personality is their temperament.
Temperament refers to certain patterns in a person's behavior and the way they relate
to the world.
Are you happiest when busy or need a slower pace of life?
Do you find change hard to cope with or just go with the flow?
Are you overwhelmed by lots of noise or feel bored when it’s quiet?
All of these preferences are the product of how your brain works, based on your genes
and your early environment.
Each of us is born with a unique temperament.
From the 1960’s to the 1980’s Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas observed that newborns
have different characteristic ways of responding to their environment and expressing themselves,
and that these differences persist through childhood.
How we perceive with our various senses, process those sensations in our brains, and react
to them is generally a pretty hard-wired pattern.
As their studies continued, Chess and Thomas proposed that there are nine behavioral traits
that fall under temperament: A person’s level of physical activity, how they respond
to new situations (either by withdrawing or approaching), how adaptable they are to change,
how sensitive they are to stimulation (i.e. sound, light or touch), their attention span,
their ability to be persistent in tasks, their general mood, how intensely they react to
a situation, and their regularity and predictability of sleeping and eating behaviors.
Although each person’s temperament is unique, Chess and Thomas described three general types
that still guide professionals and parents today.
Children can be “easy”, “difficult”, or “slow to warm.”
An “easy” child is pretty consistent in their sleeping and eating.
They are generally curious and easily interested in new things.
An “easy” child can be quickly and readily adaptable as well as emotionally positive
and generally low key.
Although the original term was “difficult” we prefer the terms “challenging” or even
“spirited” for a child who withdraws from unfamiliar situations and adapts slowly to
change.
They generally lack predictable sleeping, eating, and toileting behaviors, and are usually
intense or even negative in their overall emotions.
Spirited children are often sensitive to stimulation--like taste, smell, sound, sensation, or even the
moods and energy of others around them.
However, these kiddos are often especially independent and insightful.
A child who is “slow to warm” will initially withdraw from new situations, but come around
as they “warm up” to the new person or place.
They tend not to be as emotionally irritable as a “difficult” child, but can be more
negative than an “easy” one.
Even though temperament is usually used to describe a child, grownups also fall into
these temperament ranges.
It’s important to consider the match between a parent and a child’s temperament.
We call this “the goodness of fit”, the compatibility between one’s temperament,
the circumstance, and their environment-- which can be a person or a place.
A child who is overstimulated by noise and activity might have a hard time getting to
sleep on a family trip packed into a cabin with a dozen family members.
An “easy” grandparent might harshly judge a “slow to warm up” grandchild for not
showing immediate excitement about their surprise visit.
A child with a ton of energy and need for physical activity might have a hard time with
a parent who tends to move more slowly and need down-time.
Big differences between people in any relationship can cause differences in expectations from
each other and can lead to tension.
But even similarities in temperament can pose challenges for grownups and their kiddos.
Since temperament has a strong genetic component, it is pretty common for a spirited parent
to have a spirited child, an easy parent to have an easy child…
You get the idea.
Regardless of their own basic temperament, parents can choose to match their child’s
needs by adjusting to their child's temperament and being more mindful of their own.
There is no right temperament.
The words “easy” and “difficult” have positive and negative connotations – which
can be misleading.
The caution of someone who is slow to warm up can be protective, keeping them from approaching
a strange dog that appears in the neighborhood – who might then bite the hand of their
easy sibling.
The stubbornness of a supposedly difficult child serves them well when they stay firm
against pressure from a peer to smoke a cigarette.
Temperament gives us each strengths and challenges that follow us through life.
This video was brought to you by the folks at HelloJoey with special input from Psychologist
Neha Navsaria and our Lead Researcher Rachel Solomin.
For more information head on over to hellojoey.com.