Unique Child Equation
Anyone who is raising children realizes how incredibly complex they are, growing at extremely rapid rates in many different areas. When trying to understand your children and their behavior and to do the best job you can to raise them, it helps to start by looking at the many pieces of the puzzle that comprise the complete picture of who they are. In this article, you will learn about these factors.
You can think of your children as an equation with them being equal to the sum of all the different elements that go into making up their unique selves.
With this in mind, your children’s behavior at any given moment can be explained by:
- the developmental stage they are in,
- the developmental tasks that they are working on,
- their temperament,
- how mature they are,
- any outside situational factors that could be influencing your children’s growth and behavior.
What are each of these elements? Here is a brief overview; for more details you can read more about each in articles posted in our Resource Library.
Developmental Ages and Stages
Children’s behavior follows a course in which smooth, calm behavior often precedes unsettled, uneven behavior, cycling in and out of times when their actions can be more or less challenging. It is almost as if they need to take two steps backwards developmentally before taking a huge leap forward. We call this the “Roller Coaster” of developmental ages and stages.
Developmental Tasks
Developmental Tasks are the broad “jobs” of childhood that need to be accomplished in each stage in order for children to learn life skills at the appropriate times. Some of these tasks result in behavior that is challenging for parents to deal with but they are essential for the children’s emotional growth and increasing maturity. The degree to which parents support or thwart this process partly determines how emotionally healthy their children will be.
Temperament
Temperament is the part of the Unique Child that refers to the fact that all children are born with their own individualized blueprints for reacting to the world around them. Ten temperament traits have been identified that are consistent throughout a person’s life and that everyone exhibits in their own unique way. Temperament explains why some children are very easy-going while others tend to be more challenging for parents. Children who are considered difficult or spirited may have temperamental traits that make them more demanding to parent.
Maturity
The maturity of children consists of the degree of willingness a child has to do a certain task and how able he is to do that task. It is not an either/or quality. Children acquire maturity over time and it occurs physically, socially, emotionally, intellectually and morally. They can be mature in one of these areas and not in others.
Situational Factors
All the other parts of the Unique Child exist within your children. In contrast, Situational Factors are any outside elements that impact children’s lives, thus affecting their actions and behaviors. These can be large things such as a divorce, a death of a parent or a re-location, or they can be seemingly small things such as a friend moving away or a new neighbor moving in. Being aware of possible factors in your children’s lives helps you to understand and be better able to deal with your children’s behavior.
Why is knowing this important?
If you have more than one child, or if you have ever looked at children other than your own, you realize that each one is different and unique. How you parent one child will be different from how you approach another. This fact is part of what makes parenting an art rather than a science. What ‘works’ for Brad may not be appropriate or effective for Samantha. And what works for Sean at one point in time may not be effective a few months or even a few days later.
Each of these 5 parts of the equation makes up a vital part of who your children are and any one or combination of these elements could help to explain why your children are behaving as they are. When trying to determine why children act a certain way, it is helpful to take on the role of a detective and see if any part of the equation could be a contributing factor to explain what makes your child ‘tick’.
Knowledge of who your children are and the various stages of growth they go through can be invaluable in helping you to know what to expect as your children enter each new phase. You can prepare yourself better, and think in advance about parenting strategies that might be helpful. It also helps you to understand your children better, which assists you in being a more effective, patient and tolerant parent. Understanding each element of your unique child will allow you to better ‘fine-tune’ your parenting approach to meet the individual needs of each unique child.
As you consider the different pieces of the equation, it can be comforting to realize that some behaviors, although challenging, are quite “normal” for certain ages. This information can help to take some of the pressure off you and help to eliminate the tendency to “blame” yourself or your children for some of those challenging behaviors. You didn’t create your children’s temperament, and they are not behaving as they are simply to “drive you crazy.”
Children’s growth is not a smooth path, but rather includes many twists and turns and even some detours. Just as maps keep you heading in the “right” direction, the unique child equation keeps you on track in guiding your children toward their long-term destination of becoming successful adults who reach their full potential. The material in this equation will aid you in reaching this important goal.
For more detailed information about each part of The Unique Child, read the other text articles posted in the Parenting Information Library on our website.
