Every individual has inborn traits that subconsciously determine one’s behaviour. As a parent, a knowledge of your child’s temperament will help you to discover his/her strengths and weaknesses and harness the potentials inherent.
Parenting thrives on good communication. When it comes to disciplining your children, knowing yourself, your child and temperament is a good way to start. The reason is that your communication skill is equally affected by your temperament.
The fact that you are highly vocal and quite expressive does not mean that people who are quiet are less gifted.
Learn to adapt to your children’s weaknesses while strengthening yours. What your child do is in his gene, as inherited from you or your parent. Remember, our goal is to improve parent-child relationship and general communications.
The Temperament theory is traced back to Hippocrates, who categorized people into four types;
1.The Sanguine: These individuals are superextroverts who are talkative, energetic, friendly and compassionate.
Your sanguine children are likely to be loud and noisy. They find it difficult to settle down and concentrate in their studies, thus may not excel in their academics, except with discipline. They easily forget instructions and give excuses to justify their mistakes.
Their procrastination portray them as not being serious and consistent. They have lots of friends and are easily distracted. Give them a minute and watch how they make a mess of your hitherto tidy home.
A Sanguine parent is likely to be a screamer who is equally spontaneous. If you fall within this category, your children must have gotten used to your shouts and ‘empty’ threats. A sanguine parent is likely to be a Permissive parent. I identified types of parenting two weeks ago when we discussed, “Parenting;Communication Counts”.
Sanguines struggle with stability hence their leniency encourage lawlessness in their children. However, their kind, playful, fun and forgiving nature help them to love and care for their family.
2. The Choleric: These are extroverts who love vision, position, production, decision and action.
Your Choleric child enjoys independence and adventures. He/she tends to dominate and control other children. They may not be brilliant students but they are clever and strong-willed, with great leadership skills.
Show some love when communicating with your choleric child, otherwise they will degenerate to selfish, angry, hostile, violent and insensitive adults.
A Choleric parent loves authority and wants to be in charge always. His dictatorial style may trigger robotic response from his children who are equally frustrated by their ‘hard to please’ parent.
The choleric criticisms and spanks tend to be too often such that their children feel discouraged, hated and haunted. But if cholerics can learn to speak words of appreciation and approval, their children’s self esteem will be given a greater boost.
CHIAMAKA BOBBY-UMEANO
