January 2009

What Is Temperament?

And Why Does It Matter?

By Erin Mantz

We spend a lot of time trying to understand what makes our kids tick. From the first weeks of life to the toddler tantrum years, through kindergarten and elementary school struggles and successes, we strive to understand how our kids interact with others and react to the world around them. Ask a dozen parents how their 5-year-olds focus on a task in a noisy room or greet new people, and you’ll likely get lots of different answers. Greet a group of first-graders, and at least one kid may hesitantly hang back while another enthusiastically runs up to tell you his name. That’s because every individual—even from birth—has a particular temperament.

A Style of Behavior

Children are born with a tendency toward reacting to people and events in certain ways. A child’s preferred way of responding is known as “temperament.” Generally, temperament is identified with personality components that are biological rather than learned. It’s a style of behavior, and it’s relatively consistent across situations and age spans. When we think of individual differences in how children take in information via their five senses, react to the environment with certain levels of intensity and regulate their reactions, we are talking about temperament.

A child’s temperament includes traits such as his level of activity, adaptability, intensity, distractibility, sensory threshold, approach/withdrawal, mood and persistence. His temperament is neither good nor bad and has nothing to do with temper, as some may assume.

Think about how your child usually acts. Does he get easily frustrated or have trouble transitioning? Do you get frustrated with one child over his frequent fear of unfamiliar things, yet marvel at his sibling’s boldness in new situations? If you feel like you have two very different kids, you’re not alone; studies show temperament differences among siblings are even greater than differences among kids from different families!

Why Does It Matter?

Why does it matter? For many parents, a child’s temperament becomes a daily source of frustration. A child is born with a certain temperament and, despite a parent’s best efforts, it cannot be changed to any substantial degree. When your child is very different from you, he may experience emotions and sensations that you are not aware of. When you can understand your child’s temperament, you can better predict his typical reaction, monitor his emotions and pick up cues before he loses it.

The impact of your child’s temperament will go way beyond your family room walls. Temperament plays a critical role in your child’s social and emotional development. Leading researchers at the University of Maryland’s Child Development Lab in College Park are now revealing just how much temperament matters, releasing key findings from their longitudinal “Temperament Over Time” (TOTS) study.

What Research Reveals

Dr. Nathan Fox, distinguished university professor and lab director of the University of Maryland Child Development Lab, spent the past eight years leading TOTS, a temperament and social interaction study designed to identify factors that moderate a young child’s temperament and chart typical social and emotional development across infancy and childhood. In this longitudinal study, his research team followed hundreds of children starting at 4 months or 2 years of age and saw them yearly at ages 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7. Each visit took place in the Child Development Lab, in most years with two kids being observed and matched on the basis of age and gender. In later years, they monitored the participants’ brain wave activity as they played and responded to different computer games and scenarios. Parents contributed by completing questionnaires that conveyed information about their children’s activity levels at home, child care situations, sensitivities, typical reactions and more to provide greater context for researchers.

Key TOTS findings reinforce the importance and stability of temperament in social interaction, and create a strong call for parents to tune in to their child’s individual temperament:

These findings will help advance the science and understanding of child development, something of interest to everyone from parents and policymakers to psychiatrists and educators.

Impact of Temperament

Parents of study participants recently gathered to hear Fox report on his findings. Naturally, many wanted to know how their child’s temperament will impact his success at school or his ability to fit in socially. Fox says that temperament can impact academic success, but in indirect ways. “A bold and active child may not be able to sit still in school, so he may have a hard time focusing on a lesson or listening to instructions. A timid or fearful child may have a tough time socially in school, which may impact his overall school experience and learning.” But study findings do not dictate a child’s temperament alone will make or break his academic achievement, Fox says.

When should parents be concerned about whether or not their child’s behavior is “normal”? “All definitions of ‘normal’ have imperfections,” Fox says. “The question is: Can your kid do what other kids do, such as go to school? Is he missing out on things that are important to him?”

Origin of Temperament: The Nature vs. Nurture Debate

There is no single gene inheritance for temperament. Mom or Dad should not praise or blame themselves (or each other) for the temperament their child “got.” So before you catch yourself saying to your spouse, “He got this behavior from you!” or yelling at your child that he’s just like his father, take a deep breath. While you can’t trace or change your child’s temperament, you can adjust your parenting behavior based on it--and you should, according to Jonah Greene, a clinical social worker based in Kensington who specializes in family-centered psychotherapy services. He encourages all parents to be aware of their parenting styles. “A cookie cutter approach doesn’t work best,” Greene says. “Aggressive children need more parental control, but be careful you aren’t being overly negative. A shy child needs gentle encouragement, yet it is important parents aren’t overprotective.”

In the case of a fearful child, research shows parents can cause a positive change in some cases. Being overly cautious and acting like an alarmist with a fearful child is not the best approach. TOTS study findings show that exposing a fearful kid in a gradual manner – “exposure intervention” – is successful in reducing apprehension. For example, if your child is scared of being with other kids in big crowds, schedule a play date with one other child. Get him used to being with that child, then add another into a subsequent play date.

Temperament can be shaped by a child’s world, and events within a family can have a significant impact on a child, but temperament already exists early in the first year of life. What about when life events, such as divorce, the birth of a sibling, a move or a death in the family, strike? “In general, kids who are less reactive will have an easier time with a challenging life event, and other kids will need more support,” says Fox.

Tuning In to Your Child’s Temperament

Learn more about temperament traits and take an online quiz to help assess and understand your child’s temperament at http://readyforlife.org/temperament/quiz. Once you are more aware of your child’s temperament, you are better equipped to help and guide him in ways that will work best for him. You may also discover more about how you and he are different—and alike!

Erin Mantz (erinmantz.com) is a writer and communications professional based in Potomac, where she lives with her two sons, 4 and 8, and a pug named Rizzo.

TOTS Findings Reinforce Key Points to Remember When Parenting Our Kids