The husband and wife team of Dr. Alexander Thomas and Dr. Stella Chess. Temperament to be described has to be distinguished from some other qualities, so let me start with that. If one talks about what children do, there are such things as... what they can do. Now that involves abilities, intelligence, talents, and so forth, the capacities that a child has.
Then there's the question of motivation, which is the reasons why a child will be able to do it. do something. That brings us to temperament, which is the style with which a child behaves.
After years of experience in public and private practice, Dr. Chess and Dr. Thomas noticed that their training had ignored a critical critical factor. And we found very early that our psychoanalytic training simply did not take account of what was going on between parent and child. And it took about 10 years to get firmly in our heads that it had to do with certain kinds of individual differences which we had seen in our own children early on and had noticed in the children of friends as they grew up and we saw them grow up.
And then we began to do our work by interviewing parents of newborn children, carrying on for two years, working out a series of attributes, which we called individual differences in childhood. I might add that if something developed in the child's behavior, which was deviant in any way. from the traditional, normal, quote, child, that this must have been the fault of the parents. And we just, it just didn't fit with us. While that was true with many parents, sometimes very good parents had children who had problems.
And on the other hand, some parents were not good mothers, in quotes, but yet had... good children. The style that makes one child different from another is the child's particular mix of temperamental qualities or traits.
These nine traits include sensitivity, intensity of reaction, activity level, adaptability, approach withdrawal, persistence, rhythmicity, quality of mood. Let's look at each of these traits. Sensitivity refers to how much stimulus is needed to evoke a response from a child.
Some children, infants, will blink at sunlight and some will scream because it's annoying. If it's a loud noise, some children will scarcely make a recognition and others will be exquisitely sensitive to that noise. Intensity of reaction refers to the energy level of a child's response.
A highly intense child with a pleasant mood may have loud laughing or giggling or shouting. whereas the slow intense child might have a quiet smile. When it comes to negative mood, the high intense child will be the one who screams and cries loudly or may even have a temper tantrum, whereas the low intense child will, with something unpleasant mood, may show it with a wail. whimper or mild fussing. The activity level of a child is another temperament trait.
Some children prefer highly active games or move actively no matter what they do. Other children choose a lower level of activity. A low active child may watch television quietly for several hours at a time.
A highly active child may also be interested in a television film. but will tend to move, to jump up maybe after 15 minutes to get a drink, to do something, or come back again and watch the game again, but then has to jump around to do something else. Adaptability looks at a child's response to changes, including intrusions, restrictions, transitions, or a sudden shift in plans or expectations. Some children move very, very quickly into... they adapt swiftly and others will adapt very, very slowly.
They move one step at a time and it may take hours. It may take days, it may take weeks, or in some cases it takes months to become used to a new routine, a new person, a new bed, a new place, a new event, later on a new way of learning something. Temperament also looks at approach and withdrawal. A child's first response to a new stimulus. Some children have a tendency with a new situation to feel immediately comfortable with it, which would be an approaching reaction.
Some children feel quite uncomfortable with a new situation. and they hold back in infancy. They'll just stare until they feel comfortable. In older childhood they may literally hang back until they've cased the joint and they're comfortable with it. Other children move immediately into every new situation and approach.
The trait of persistence refers to a child's continuing an activity until it's finished. Persistence has to do with the child's keeping at a task until it's finished, whether it's interrupted or not. Rhythmicity refers to the regularity of a child's biological rhythm. The predictability or unpredictability of any function. Some examples are the regularity of a child's sleep-wake cycle, hunger and eating pattern, and elimination schedule.
Some children are quite regular in all their biologic functions. or most of them, they are sleepy at the same time every night and wake at the same time in the morning. Quality of mood refers to how often the child is pleasant, joyful, and friendly, as opposed to being a little bit of a nuisance. being unpleasant, unfriendly, and fussy. Some children are very, very happy most of the time.
These are the ones that are a joy to be with, and some children are more often unhappy during the day than they are happy, and these are somewhat of a trial to parents who frequently will think it's all due to them. Distractibility, the last temperament trait, looks at how easily a child is drawn away from an activity. If the child is working at an ongoing pursuit, whether it be sucking at the bottle or playing with Legos or doing a learning task like a puzzle, any person going by will stop the baby from sucking while he tracks the person with the eyes.
The child who's not distractible may track the person but keep on doing the sucking. All children have all nine temperament traits, each trait ranging from high to low. How the traits work together, and many combinations are possible, determines a child's unique behavioral style. Temperament clusters are not the only factors that influence whether a child has behavior problems.
Goodness of fit, that is parents'and teachers'responses to the child's temperament, are critical.