Author: Amerja Karande | Jun 01, 2016
Shruti (name changed) is an active 4-year old who visited Sethu for an assessment. Shruti’s mother’s complained that she takes time to mix with other kids and adjust to new people. She has very few friends in school and is reluctant to participate in group activities. Shruti takes her own sweet time in completing regular activities like getting up in the morn, brushing her teeth, drinking her milk and so on. This turns mornings into mayhem. However, her mother also shared that Shruti loves to draw, is affectionate and likes to be independent.
My overall assessment about Shruti was that she was cooperative and was keen to know about her environment. Though she took some time to warm up to me, she completed all the tasks I presented to her and responded very well to descriptive praise. When she felt shy, I recognised her feelings, saying “It is difficult to talk to a new person”. This helped her to feel better and relax. By the end of the session, she was jabbering away!
Lack of cooperation and shyness are often seen in young people. Many parents compare their children with others and tend to put them down when they are difficult to handle. However, no two kids are completely alike. Every child is unique in their own way and to a large extent, this depends on their temperament.
Temperament is the ‘how’ of behaviour. Three children may approach the same task in different ways – one may start immediately and finish quickly, another may start immediately, but work slowly till the end and a third may take a long time to start, but complete it fast. All three children have accomplished the task, but how they did it varied due to their different temperaments.
Temperament was first described by Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess in the 1950s along 9 dimensions of behaviour. Several aspects are responsible for behavioural individuality, some of which are the child’s activity level, attention span, the mood, intensity or forcefulness of the child’s behaviour, the ability to follow routines, capacity to stick to what one is doing, the sensitivity of the child to various sensory stimuli such as light, sound and smell, the manner in which she relates to others and ease at which she handles changes.
Children often show a mix of the above characteristics. Depending on the behavioural features, children are described as having sunny, slow-to-warm-up or difficult temperaments. A parent’s reaction should be compatible with the child’s behaviour – the goodness-of-fit between the child’s approach and the parent’s response determines how the parent-child interactions proceed. For example, a highly active child would do well with a good dose of physical play in his daily schedule. A child who thrives on routine needs advance notice (preferably in pictures or writing) of any changes in the day or environment. Goodness of fit helps parents to manage their children in keeping with their individuality. Parents should never take their child’s misbehaviour personally. Parenting a child is often a tiring job but calmness, patience and humor give us strength to overcome all the odds.