Temperament is believed to be innate, meaning it is present at birth and remains relatively stable throughout a person's life.
Understanding how your particular child’s temperament interacts with their environment—and you are your child’s environment—helps you set them up for success and increases opportunities for positive interactions. In this episode, Dr. Nanika Coor explains how leaning into your child’s temperament can help you lower resistance and increase calm and cooperation.
Project Parenthood is hosted by Dr. Nanika Coor. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
Have a parenting question? Email Dr. Coor at parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com or leave a voicemail at 646-926-3243.
Find Project Parenthood on Facebook and Twitter, or subscribe to the Quick and Dirty Tips newsletter for more tips and advice.
Project Parenthood is a part of Quick and Dirty Tips.
Links:
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/subscribe
https://www.facebook.com/QDTProjectParenthood
https://twitter.com/qdtparenthood
https://brooklynparenttherapy.com/
The relationship between parents and children is simultaneously shaping and being shaped by the expectations parents have for their children and vice versa. And just as the quality of the parent-child relationship impacts a child’s development, a child’s temperament can influence or even elicit specific parental behaviors.
Understanding how your particular child’s temperament interacts with their environment—and you are your child’s environment—helps you set them up for success and increases your opportunities for positive interactions with them. In this episode, I’m talking about how leaning into your child’s temperament can help you lower resistance and increase calm and cooperation.
Welcome back to Project Parenthood! I'm your host, Dr. Nanika Coor—clinical psychologist and respectful parenting therapist. Each week, I’ll help you repair and deepen your parent-child connection, increase self-compassion and cooperation from your kids, and cultivate joy, peace, and resilience in your relationship with them.
So what is temperament? It refers to a person's natural disposition, which shapes their behaviors, emotions, and attitudes. Temperament is believed to be innate, meaning it is present at birth and remains relatively stable throughout a person's life.
Researchers Thomas and Chess examined nine dimensions of temperament:
Activity level: Is the child mostly active or inactive?
Mood Quality: Does the child tend to be happy and content, or unhappy and displeased?
Approach/Withdrawal: Does the child react or respond positively or negatively to novel stimuli?
Adaptability: Is it easy or difficult for the child to adapt to unfamiliar circumstances?
Rhythmicity or Regularity: Does the child have sleeping, eating, and elimination patterns that are predictable or unpredictable?
Reaction Intensity: Is the child’s energy level high or low when reacting to stimuli?
Persistence and Attention Span: How long will the child continue to sustain an activity despite difficulty or interruptions? How long can the child maintain interest in an activity?
Distractibility: Is the child easily distracted from a task by external stimuli?
Threshold of Responsiveness: Does it take a little or a lot of stimulation to elicit a response from the child, like laughter, pain, or fear?
Different combinations and levels of these traits biologically predispose infants to interact with and adjust to their environment in particular ways. There are three main temperamental profiles:
And then there are babies who show a combination of behaviors seen in these three profiles. Each child's temperament is unique, and there’s no "right" or "wrong" temperament to have. However, certain temperamental traits may make it easier or more challenging for a child to navigate the world around them. Kids adjust better in the long run when there is a “goodness of fit” between their temperament and quality and the demands of the environment they’re developing within. So what’s even more important than categorizing your kiddo’s temperament is being responsive to it.
Closely observe your child's behavior and notice patterns. How does your child react to different situations and stimuli? Try to identify their unique temperament traits and respond accordingly. Prepare a slow-to-warm child in advance for interactions with unfamiliar settings or people. A highly sensitive child may be easily overwhelmed by loud noises or bright lights and need you to make sure they have access to a quiet, calm environment. While a child with high activity levels may need more opportunities for burning off energy.
It’s common for children that parents describe as “easy” kids to fly under a parent’s radar. Parenting them seems almost effortless since they adapt quickly and easily to daily routines and generally get along with siblings and peers. This means that they can sometimes be taken for granted and don’t get their emotional cups filled up as much as they might need. Stay involved with your easy kiddo and show authentic interest in who they are and the things they do. A more intense, impulsive, distractible, or “prickly” child might have a harder time adjusting to everyday demands and more easily find themselves in conflicts with parents and siblings. A child like this might need more prompts, reminders, scaffolding, and structure than a more flexible kid.
The match or mismatch between you and your child determines the level of harmony between you, leading to positive interactions, sometimes to frustration, and sometimes to conflict. Remember that you have a temperament too! You might be a parent who is assertive, quick reacting and intense, or slow to respond and generally quiet. Are you flexible and adaptable or are you more rigid?
It’s important to acknowledge and accept your child's temperament, even—or perhaps especially—if it’s different from your own. This can help you avoid unrealistic expectations and frustrations that arise when you try to use rewards and punishments to incentivize your child into behaving more to your liking. When you create an environment that supports your child’s temperamental needs and adjust your parenting style accordingly, your child’s nervous system is calmer, and your child experiences fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety, leaving more room for positive behavior.
Understanding your child’s temperament helps you parent proactively and increase the peacefulness in your family. It reframes how you interpret the reasons for your child’s behavior. You begin to see your child’s behavior as temperamentally based rather than willful—meaning you’ll react less negatively to them in these moments. You can make small adjustments to family life that ultimately reduce tensions. Does your distractible and slow-moving child need to get up 15 minutes earlier to allow for more dawdling time? Does your hyperfocus-inclined child need several reminders at regular intervals to “unhook” from a preferred activity? Viewing your child’s behaviors through the lens of temperament also helps you anticipate problems before they arise. You can let your slow-to-warm child know well in advance of changes to routines, and you can make sure your highly active, intense, and impulsive child has regular breaks and intervals of high-interest activities on a long car trip.
Through ongoing patience and observation, you can learn about and better support your child’s unique personality. Remember to avoid labeling or judging your child's temperament as good or bad—it's simply a part of who they are. Every temperament has its own strengths and weaknesses, so identify and encourage your child's strengths. Your family life can run more smoothly when you’re sensitive to your child’s temperamental style, help them develop their unique talents and interests, and create a positive environment where your child can thrive while feeling comfortable in their own skin.
Sources:
Augustine, M. E., & Stifter, C. A. (2019). Children's behavioral self-regulation and conscience: Roles of child temperament, parenting, and parenting context. Journal of applied developmental psychology, 63, 54-64.
Gurian, A. (n.d.). Parenting Styles/Children's Temperament: The Match. NYU Child Study Center. Retrieved April 26, 2023.
Kamarova, S., Dunlop, P. D., & Parker, S. K. (2023). Trait continuity: Can parent‐rated infant temperament predict HEXACO personality in early adulthood?. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology.
Liu, P., Kryski, K. R., Smith, H. J., Joanisse, M. F., & Hayden, E. P. (2020). Transactional relations between early child temperament, structured parenting, and child outcomes: A three-wave longitudinal study. Development and psychopathology, 32(3), 923-933.
Zubizarreta, A., Calvete, E., & Hankin, B. L. (2019). Punitive parenting style and psychological problems in childhood: The moderating role of warmth and temperament. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 28, 233-244.