Understanding your child - how to read temperament
The first thing to do with a result is decide how to read it. Read it wrongly and it doesn't help - it confines.
What is inborn and what changes
What tends to hold is the speed and intensity of reaction: how quickly a child responds to something new, how big the feeling gets, how long recovery takes.
What changes is the skill of handling that reaction: what they do when angry, how they start in an unfamiliar room.
The second is where parents have leverage. Trying to change a temperament mostly fails and leaves the message that something about them is wrong.
And stability rises with age, which means the younger the child the lower it is. Results at ages 3-6 read more accurately as 'what we've been seeing at home lately'.
There is no good temperament
The most-cited idea in this field is goodness of fit. It doesn't ask which temperament is better, but what environment suits this child.
A very high-activity child is a problem in a classroom requiring all-day sitting and an asset in a setting built around movement. Same child, opposite verdict.
What this framing gives you is a better question: instead of 'how do I make my child less sensitive', you ask 'what would an environment look like where this sensitivity isn't a problem?'
Conveying the result to your child
Children file an adult's description of them as fact. The younger, the more so.
So there's one rule: don't tell a child who they are, tell them what they've been doing lately.
Instead of 'you're an introvert', try 'I've noticed crowded places tire you out a bit lately'. The first is identity, the second is observation.
The animal isn't a ranking. Look at the five bars together, explain it's about which side, and name the strengths at the low end specifically.
The parent is a variable too
The side most often left out of goodness of fit is the parent. The largest environment a child has is their parent.
A high-activity parent with a low-activity child feels their child is perpetually flat. The reverse pairing leaves the parent exhausted all day.
The hardest case is matching temperaments. A parent and child who both go up big escalate each other when they need time to settle.
The answer to 'why does this particular behaviour get to me' quite often sits on the parent's side rather than the child's.
In short
- · The rank order of temperament is stable; how it shows up keeps changing.
- · Change the skills for handling a temperament, not the temperament.
- · There is no good temperament - only goodness of fit between child and environment.
- · Say 'you've been doing X lately' (observation) rather than 'you are X' (identity).
- · Parent temperament is a variable. Matching pairs are the hardest.
This article is general guidance, not a medical or psychological diagnosis. If you are worried about your child's development or emotional wellbeing, speak with a paediatrician or a child psychologist.
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