In my classes this month, we’ve talked about “Your Unique Child: the Influence of Temperament, Gender, and Learning Styles on How you Parent Each Child.”

The key takeaway points from our discussion on “Your Unique Child” are listed below, and I’ve included links to other posts on these topics.

• Children are born with distinct personalities. We can use concepts like Temperament, Learning Style / Multiple Intelligences and Gender and Introvert / Extrovert to help us better understand them.
• However, we don’t want to “label” our children (as “the shy one” or “the wild one” or “the musician”) because that limits our view of them and limits their ability to grow and develop into all that they are.
• There are not good or bad temperaments. But, there are goodness of fit, and badness of fit. A high activity child has “goodness of fit” on the playground, but not in the library. A very regular, routine-oriented child might “fit” well with a similar parent, but not so well with the free-spirited parent.
• It’s good to know your children’s strengths, so you can give them plenty of experiences that let them use those strengths to build their confidence.
• It’s also good to know what your child struggles with. On a good day, we may gently push their comfort zones to encourage growth in those areas. But, on a day when we’re tired and they’re tired, or we’re away from home, it may be easiest to adapt to their temperament accommodating how we need to in order to make it through the day. (So, our sensitive child may need a quiet day at home. Our active child may need a day running at the park. Our routines kid needs to bring routines from home wherever he goes.)

Lots more resources on temperament listed here.