Temperament
May 21st, 2008 |By Arthur Becker-Weidman, Ph.D.
Click here to contact Arthur and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile
Temperament is a given and appears to be largely genetically based. Understanding what is temperament and how it may affect your relationship with your child can help you develop a better relationship with your child and avoid many problems later in life.
Temperament is a largely genetically determined set of characteristics that remain unchanged from birth throughout life. Beginning as early as four months of age, a child’s temperament can be determined. These temperamental traits are largely unchanged throughout life. Understanding temperament is important since these personality traits do not change. A parent needs to understand these dimensions so that the parent can adapt to the child.
Temperament refers to enduring traits of a person’s approach to the world. These dimensions are found in all children across cultures. A child’s temperament is a core element of the child’s personality. Since it is unchangeable, understanding temperament is essential to knowing how to approach your child. What may appear to be a problem may actually be a mismatch between your temperament and that of your child.
1.ACTIVITY LEVEL: Physical motion during sleep, play, work, eating, and other daily activities.
(High or Low; Active or Inactive).
2.REGULARITY: The predicable recurrence of a child’s response to daily events. The rhythm of their body functions such as sleeping, eating, elimination. In school age children, regularity is observed as consistency, organization, or predictability. Is the child orderly with toys and possessions? Is the child’s after-school routine the same each day?
(Predictable or Unpredictable).
3.INITIAL REACTION: The child’s reaction to new people, places, things, foods, and routines. For example, tries new foods, refuses, or looks it over, pokes it, and then tries a bite.
(Bold or Inhibited; Approaching or Cautious).
4.ADAPTABILITY: Like initial reaction, but refers to the child’s long-term adjustment after the initial response. The ease or difficulty with which the child’s first reaction can be changed. How quickly does the child make transitions or adapt to changes in routine? How quickly can the child make a choice? How does the child react to last minute changes?
(Flexible or Rigid; Quick or Gradual).
5.INTENSITY: How much energy the child puts into a response. Is the child loud? How does the child respond to disappointments, praise, failure, surprise, or frustration?
(Intense or mild).
6.MOOD: What is the child’s dominant mood or overall pattern? Is the child generally positive, negative, or in between?
(Positive or Negative).
7.DISTRACTIBILITY: Is the child able to tune out surrounding sights, sounds, or people and continue without interruption or is the child distracted by outside stimuli? This is not the same as persistence. A child can be easily distracted yet return immediately to the task at hand and stick with it until it is completed. How quickly can a baby be soothed?
(Rarely or Often)
8.PERSISTENCY AND ATTENTION SPAN: Persistency is the child’s tendency to stick with an activity despite interruptions or outside distractions. Attention span is demonstrated by how long a child sticks with an activity when there are no interruptions.
(Often or Rarely; Persistent or not; Short or long).
9.SENSITIVITY: Sensory threshold or the amount of stimulation required to get a response. Watch all five senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste).
(Nonreactive or Sensitive).
TEMPERAMENT CHECKLIST
Temperament is composed of nine dimensions. Temperament is easily determined at birth and does not change, it appears to be genetically determined. At the Center we use the Cary Temperament Scales to measure a child’s temperament and provide parents with a report detailing their child’s temperament and the potential strengths and pitfalls that the parent and child may experience. The traits on each continuum are neither good nor bad. However, mismatches between a parent’s and child’s temperament can create discord and problems. The following check list is not meant to replace a professional assessment or to substitute for a reliable and valid test such as the Cary. However, this check list can help you identify areas of match and mismatch between your temperament and that of your child.
On each scale below place a mark to indicate your estimate of where your child, you, and your partner are on that scale. Child = , you = X, and your partner = O.
ACTIVITY LEVEL: HIGH/ACTIVE————-LOW/INACTIVE
REGULARITY: PREDICTABLE————-UNPREDICTABLE
INITIAL REACTION: BOLD/APPROACHES———CAUTIOUS
ADAPTABILITY: QUICK——————-GRADUAL
INTENSITY: MILD——————–INTENSE
MOOD: SUNNY/CHEERFUL———-STORMY
DISTRACTIBILITY: RARLY——————-EASILY
ATTENTION SPAN: PERSISTENT/LONG———INTERMITENT/SHORT
SENSITIVITY: NONREACTIVE————-SENSITIVE
If you find more than two mismatches, there is the potential for conflict and parent-child difficulties.
©Copyright 2008 by Arthur Becker-Weidman, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Arthur and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:58 pm
I am afraid that I have to disagree on this one. There are some elements of a person’s temperament which are hardwired into that person but I really believe that a child behaves the way they are taught and modeled to behave, and that is thru nurture. They will simply give back what they receive.
May 24th, 2008 at 3:35 am
Total agreemnet with you on that one Jeanette. Nature does play a role but I think that kids give what they get- you model for them with your own behavior and they imitate and grow up like the only role models they know.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:19 am
But what about those of us who did grow up in a loving nurturing environment and still end up with things that go wrong? Don’t you think that this can be a cse for nature winning out over nurture?
May 25th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I see the impact temperament has on parents, teachers and caregivers on a daily basis…as a parent, as a psychotherapist and as a consultant to Head Start programming. The more we understand temperament and how to BEST respond to each temperament, the better chances we have at raising emotionally intelligent children. Oftentimes, I have seen individuals attribute negative connotations and labels to children based upon behavior, which was derived from the child’s basic temperament and constitution. While I agree that parenting and caregiving can help a child learn to self-regulate and manage his/her emotions, I also know that temperament is REAL and that the adults are the ones that need to learn to adjust and provide meaningful interactions with “difficult” or “challenging” children. The more we learn about temperament, the more we see that there are many types of “normal”. (This has nothing and everything to do with behavior management. I am not suggesting that we chalk up misbehavior for a “temperamental” glitch…rather, I know that we need to address and respond to misbheavior. However, we need to recognize that temperament has a REAL and LASTING impact on the very behavior with which we are dealing. Wendy Young, LMSW, BCD
May 26th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Well I think that can be true in some cases. I think that like everything else in life there is a healthy balance which has to be found. There are some aspects which are innately ours and others which are a virtue of what was learned and taught. In some people the nature role wins out and in others it is the nurture side. I think this is very much an individual thing.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:43 am
A child’s temperament can have a great deal of control over how parents react in certain situations, and vice versa. Parents and children together, but especially the parents, have to work on a model for getting along that takes all of these things into consideration so that situations do not reach boiling points due to this.
May 28th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
When are parents going to realize that how they deal with a situation greatly influences the behavior of their child? When your own behavior escalates naturally so is that of the child. Temperament or not there are ways to handle certain situations and ways you should not and I strongly feel that nurture and parent behavior greatly dictates a lot of this.
May 29th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
There is no doubt that temperament plays a huge role in how people react in certain situations. The big question is are the adults in the situation going to indeed be adult enough to get a handle on their emotions and do the right thing?
May 30th, 2008 at 3:14 am
I see a lot of relationships where the children know how to be more of an adult than their parents actually are so that is the scary thing with this whole topic. There are bound to be confrontations when neither party is adult enough to know that their temperament is only adding fuel to the fire.
June 9th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Based on what I’ve seen in my own clients, nurture seems to edge out. We learn from our parents and primary caregivers about how to “be” based on their responses to us - and each other. Clearly temperement - and levels of resilience - can impact how people respond to their environment in a helpful way - and a not so helpful way. The same goes for how parents deal with temperement of their children. I agree with Sandy about how scary it is when the children act more like an adult than the parents! What I enjoy are the clients who grew up in horrendous situations - but due to temperement - and resilience - have risen like a “phoenix out of the ashes.” These clients are truly exhilirating and never cease to amaze me.
June 28th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
What can you do to help the temperaments to mesh? Do you have to wait until the child is grown before that can happen or does there need to be some give and take all throughout the formative years? That is what I vote for because otherwise the relationship will always have a dangerous quality to it.
June 29th, 2008 at 11:14 am
No you can’t wait until you have an adult child because by then it is too late. There may be no relationship left to salvage. You have to work on it all through the child’s life and come to a point of love and understanding where you can both participate from and feel good about things.