Understanding Your Child's Temperament

When it come to your child's behavior, things are not as difficult to understand as they may seem. For those whom deal with extremely emotional and aggressive children, and even those that may be on medication, there is a common denominator in all of this. Once the basis of this behavior is realized, steps can then be taken toward a resolution.

The reason why many parents do not understand the sudden outbursts of their child(ren), is because they miss the link between their child's behavior and what their child is actually feeling. We as parents tend to try and identify our child's problems with something particularly relating to the incident at the time. Our one tracked mind can sometimes have us only look for an immediate tangible thing as the source of the problem. However, the problem can be more dynamic than that. With that being said, a different approach to resolving the issue must be take, and the first step to take is, understanding your child's temperament.

To understand your child's temperament, you must study your child from various different platforms. When their sad, when they're happy, when they are alone to themselves, and especially when they interact with others-adults & other children alike. Of course, you may perhaps do these things already, most of it being from a subconscious stand-point. This may result in a statement like "I know my kids!", but when observing their behavior, there are some underlying things you want to watch for and take note of. These things include dialog, body gestures & mannerisms and responses.

Dialog is key to knowing what your child is thinking. Again, they do not yet have the ability to be verbally manipulative. This proves true with things like interrogation. Whether they want to or not, they will always refer to the truth, and it is your job to figure it out. This is so because of the reactive nature, as explained in the previous article Understanding Your Child to Effectively Deal with a Crisis Situation, truth is all they know, in it's most candid form. This is why a deviation from the truth can always be pinpointed, through a long & drawn out story, different versions and explanations of the same story, or simply a lie-detector test. Children cannot help being honest because it is all they know, they cannot speak upon what they do not know, for they are still learning. Thus some of the most famous sayings are derived, "How can you tell a Lawyer's lying?...". Because children will always, in some form or another, refer to the truth, we as parents and our manipulative "know-how", must incorporate cleverness to extract that truth.

Listen to how your child talks. Not just to you, but to others. Try to stage yourself out of the presence of your child to get a candid observation of the way they speak around others, especially other kids their age. You will be surprised to not only notice a difference in their dialog, but the tone of voice they use, their pitch, even the way they use their words.

Particularly around kids they can relate to, children will be their full selves. This is where you will not only notice the dialog change, but a change in their gestures and mannerisms. Think about how you used to act around your family versus your friends. Out of a general-understood respect, you would of never dared exhibiting certain behaviors that friends have witnessed, in the presence of relatives. This holds true for many well into adulthood. The same process takes place with your child, and as the famous saying goes, "There's nothing new under the sun." Sure, technology and slang and style has evolved, often booting parents out of the loop, but the fundamentals remain the same, and using the basic tools will make you successful in your endeavors of understanding the temperament of your child. Because kids are filled with raging emotions and hormones on a consistent basis, they have to learn how to harness this energy in their own way, to prevent from a complete overload. This is why they are skillful at putting on "a front", depending on whom they are around. Not because they know how to lie or hide their feelings, but because they know how to manipulate the one thing that you and they both know that they have. Their emotional behavior!

Do not worry about seeming like a CSI agent or investigator. Believe it or not, your child wants you to get involved, even when they don't want you to get involved. How ironic is that? Being discreet and allowing them to still grow is all they ask for. They just want to know that you are in the corner ready to help when they look out of the corner of their eye.

The last thing to look out for are responses. Pay attention to how your child responds during any type of challenge, from the smallest of tasks like picking something up off of the floor, to larger ones like getting a school project done. Take note on every detail, from their response time, their mannerisms about performing the task-whether they seem aggravated about doing it or if they get it done without incident, and even the facial and body gestures-when asked, during the task and immediately following. Sure this may seem like a lot of detail work, proving to be too much for even the best on the vice squad, but it will prove vital toward future issues and interaction with your child.

With all of this compiled data, one should be able to predict certain reactions and responses of their child based on circumstances. It will also help you at better managing the environment to free the area of those things that reflect negatively on your child's behavior. also, better analyzing your child's feeling with their behaviors will open the door to many unexpected things like, having your child open up with intimate troubling issues. If you can show them that you are concerned with how they are feeling, and why they are feeling the way that they do, then they will be more inclined to allow you to help them resolve the emotional wreck that they are in, thus without incident or negative responses.