Differences from Birth: Responding to the Temperamentally Difficult Child (continued)

As one reads these descriptions of temperamentally difficult children, one might forecast a gloomy future for them. However, while these children will face greater obstacles than their peers with easy temperaments in achieving high self-esteem and success in many areas of their lives including in their friendships and in school, there are actions that parents, teachers, and other adults can take to help temperamentally difficult children live more satisfying lives. The first two points were discussed in my column about "slow-to-warm-up" children, but since they apply to difficult children as well, I will review them briefly in this article and then introduce the notion of a "proactive" parent or other caregiver.

First, parents and other adults must become as knowledgeable as possible about temperamental differences in children. If we are not aware of these differences or minimize their importance we will continue to hold the same expectations for all children, which is not the fair thing to do. As I continually emphasize, if children are different from birth then fairness should not be interpreted as treating all children the same but rather treating them differently based on their unique temperament and needs.

Also, if we are not aware of these differences we may assume things about our children’s behavior that are not true. For example, a mother of a temperamentally difficult five-year-old girl said to me, "I think my daughter has a personal vendetta against me." Unfortunately, this mother had little information about the different temperaments in children and viewed her daughter’s excessive demands and anger as a deliberate attempt to get back at her for something she may have done.

Second, we must learn to accept our children for who they are and not what we want them to be. This is easy to say, but not to achieve. Whether we realize it or not, as parents we have expectations for our children even prior to their birth, but most children are not able to meet many of these expectations. When they do not, negative feelings are aroused as illustrated by the mother, who said of her five-year-old temperamentally difficult son, "My son made me feel like the most inadequate mother in the world from the moment I first held him." He was a child who did not like to be held or comforted.

Accepting children for who they are is not meant to suggest that we refrain from helping our children modify those characteristics of their temperament that are causing them and the adults in their lives distress but rather that our assistance must be done with empathy, compassion, and caring. Caregivers must recognize that we as the adults must have the insight and courage to take the initial steps to accommodate to the child’s style rather than expect the child to adapt to what we want. Parents and other adults must strive to provide what is called in the child development literature a "goodness-of-fit" between our expectations and the child’s inborn temperament. In essence, if the temperamentally difficult child is to have an opportunity to lead a happier life filled with satisfying relationships then it is the adults who must at first accommodate within reason to the child’s style rather than expecting the child to accommodate to theirs.

Third, we must understand how best to arrive at this "goodness-of-fit"? I believe to do so we must adopt a "crisis prevention" or proactive position rather than a "crisis intervention" or reactive approach. Without realizing it many parents tend to be reactive, that is, they react from moment to moment to their children’s behavior and as a result feel harried, hassled, and even helpless. It is especially important to become a "proactive" parent when we have temperamentally difficult children who can so quickly perceive the world as unfair and who can react with such intensity to various situations.