How to deal...

• Difficult Temperament

Children can develop different types of temperaments.  There are generally three types.

1. Easy Temperament
2. Difficult Temperament
3. Slow-to-warm-up Temperament

And according to to one of my course textbooks (that I am reading at the moment), 40% of children in a study fell into "Easy" Temperament.  Which is usually characterized by easygoing, positive mood children who tend to adapt well most of the time to changed routines.  Where as the opposite would be the "Difficult" Temperament child (10%) who displays more aggressive behavior with frustration to change routines and adaptation to meeting new people.  And "Slow-to-warm-up" Temperament (15%) would be more in the middle...like the "social butterfly". (Schaffer, D. R. (2009).  Social and personality Development. Belmont: Wadsworth)

Well, I notice and new for a while that my son falls into the category of children with the profile of Difficult Temperament.  He is a very active child, who has social interaction problems when dealing with other kids and usually is fussy, irritable and have numerous temper tantrums.

Well, my reactions to some of the situations were usually showing that I don't tolerate such behavior by yelling.  Oh my gosh did I yell so much!  I honestly thought that bad behavior had to be corrected by spanking and yelling to let them know it's wrong. 

But I was noticing my frustration how he would develop the aggressive behaviors that I would display.  I knew this was not working.  So I kinda "gave-up" on the yelling and decided to try in most situations to just talk to him.

Well looking more into my course textbook, I was surprised to find this is the way to interact with Difficult Temperament children.  It seems that when you talk to your child instead of spanking, yelling and screaming or preaching to your child.  You can teach your child how to react in such intense situation by displaying calmness and "explaining" to them in children terms what is wrong and "show" them the right way to do things.

Because, in order to cease one habit, you must replace it with another.  A child or any human being as a fact react this way when it come to learning behavior.

Great finding..now it's my turn to do more research and implementing these techniques and see how things go.