Posts Tagged ‘baby personality’

Welcome to Part 8 of my Baby Temperament and Sleep Series. If you are just joining us, you may want to start with Part 1, where I define baby temperament. This article will discuss energy as a baby temperament trait. At the end of the series, I will give you a quiz to determine your child’s temperament.

Baby Temperament – Energy

Your child’s energy level is how much she sits quietly versus runs or moves around. Some kids are always on the move. But, just because your toddler might not climb, doesn’t mean he isn’t energetic. Maybe he runs, never walks. Many spirited children have high amounts of energy. These are the babies that might roll over early or kids that fall out of their chair at the dinner table and have trouble with long car rides without the ability to get out and run around. Being house-bound in the winter can be a nightmare for these children. Investing in a bouncer for your newborn or a Jumperoo for your older baby may be a necessity.

Many children who have been diagnosed with ADHD have a lot of energy, however, it’s important to note that having a lot of energy does NOT mean your child will be diagnosed with ADHD. ADHD is not being able to focus that energy to complete a task. Many children with a lot of energy can and will complete tasks. They simply need to exert a lot of energy to feel good.

Once again, my eldest son also has a lot of energy. As I’m typing this, he is jumping around watching some race cars. I think he loves the energy of the race cars. Also, after meals, you can often find him running back and forth between the couch and playroom (we call it “exercising”). He’s in his own world when he does this for about 10-15 minutes almost after every meal. It’s actually pretty cute. He has also suddenly fallen out of his chair at dinnertime (now that he’s no longer in a booster seat) out of the blue. He just needs to MOVE! But, from when he was 2 he was able to sit and focus on a jigsaw puzzle that was actually designed for kids older than him and since he was a year old he could sit and read books with us for an hour at a time. So, I’m not worried about his energy, I only needed to know it’s a natural part of him and who he is.

Baby and Toddler Sleep and Energy

How might your baby or toddler’s energy affect her sleep? If your child has a lot of energy, you will likely notice she moves around a LOT in her sleep. If you have a video monitor, you might think she is awake with all the activity in there! Twice, my son fell out of bed when we first transitioned to a big boy bed (once he didn’t even wake up!). Note: Falling out of bed is actually very common even with children who don’t have a lot of energy due to the missing “boundaries” of the crib.

Another way your child’s energy might affect her “sleep” is in the bedtime routine or settling down for a nap. I have found that a one-hour bedtime routine for my eldest is best. I have tried repeatedly to make it shorter and failed every time. The more I try to hurry or rush through it, the more he pushes back and doesn’t cooperate. As he’s gotten older I’ve had to distinguish between a too-early bedtime and his needs to unwind. I have found that no matter what, he seems to fall asleep no less than one hour after we start the routine (some days have been exceptions). This means that it is up to me that we start on time if I want him to go to bed on time. I also have to have the lights out and him “settled” 15 minutes before I want him to be asleep. He needs this unwind time, no matter what. No doubt that part of our long bedtime routine is his energy plus he is slow-to-adapt, so we can’t go through transitions too quickly. Our current routine is: quiet playtime, pajamas, brush teeth, use the potty, more quiet playtime or read books, complain about getting in bed (LOL — and yes every night), tell him homemade bedtime stories (around 10-15 minutes), cuddle quietly or rehash our day a bit and then quiet, him say he’s not tired, me telling him good night and giving him a kiss, and then him falling asleep 5 minutes later, literally.

When you choose a sleep training method for your baby or toddler with a lot of energy, he will likely go longer than others. My youngest son can be playing hard and not seem tired to sleeping 5 minutes later. He’s just different than my first. So, whether you choose cry it out or a no-cry sleep training method, plan for a longer process and be pleasantly surprised if it’s not. With a lot of energy, you can probably bet your baby or toddler will not protest a short 5 minutes like some children, but that will also depend on his persistence.

Again, there are good and bad things about all of these temperament traits. We need all different kinds of people in this world and while it can be tiring keeping up with my sons, it’s a whole lot of fun, too! The most challenging part of the energetic child is combining this energy with other temperament traits. If your child is slow-to-adapt and energetic, he might react like a wild animal with a lot of energetic running around when he is really anxious about having visitors over. If he is overtired after a late bedtime and is sensitive to stimulation, he might get very hyper to the point you think he might not be tired, but in reality he is exhausted (been there, done that). It is important to be in tune to his other temperament traits because if there is something else that he is responding to, no amount of running around may resolve it.

If you are high-energy, it may be easier for you to keep up with your child than a person with lower energy levels. Thankfully, both my husband and I are energetic and active people. If you need more ideas on how to set up your energetic child for success, I recommend the book Raising Your Spirited Child for ideas on tackling each temperament trait.

Explore each of the 9 temperament traits, Intensity, Persistence, Sensitivity, Perceptiveness, Adaptability, Regularity, Energy, First Reaction, and Mood, focusing on how they play a role in your baby’s sleep and in the final part, take an assessment quiz to help figure out you and your baby or toddler’s temperament and see how it might be similar or different.

Describe your energetic child

Welcome to Part 7 of my Baby Temperament and Sleep Series. If you are just joining us, you may want to start with Part 1, where I define baby temperament. This article will discuss regularity as a baby temperament trait. At the end of the series, I will give you a quiz to determine your child’s temperament.

Baby Temperament – Regularity

Your baby’s regularity is how predictable her schedule is from day to day. There are some babies whom you can set the clock by. They wake up at the same time every day. They eat at the same times every day. They take naps at the same time every day. And, yes, some even poop at the same time every single day. No doubt those kids are very easy to potty train.

Inconsistent children are very irregular. They wake up at different times every day. They get hungry at different times and nap at different times for different lengths every day. You can rack your brain and figure out what you did wrong today or right yesterday, but the truth of the matter is, this is just their temperament and nothing you do or don’t do will change it. Getting these children on a schedule can be very frustrating.

Part of my eldest son’s spirited-ness is his inconsistency and boy did it drive me crazy his first 10 or so months of life! I kept an Excel spreadsheet and tracked his sleep, looked for patterns and wondered what I did right or wrong every day. He gets hungry every day at a different time. Some days he’s hungry at 10 a.m. and I give him a little snack and that makes lunch at 1 p.m. or later. Some days if he has a snack, he’s starving at noon. It is so hard to know what will push everything too late or not and it’s hard! But, one of the best things I ever did was one day I finally accepted that the only thing consistent about him was the fact that every day would be different. And, that has been true every day since. But, accepting it relieved my stress about it.

Baby Sleep and Regularity

How might your baby’s regularity affect her sleep? Even though you have an inconsistent baby or toddler or preschooler, it doesn’t mean you don’t try to have a routine and a schedule. You might need to be a little more flexible, but children still thrive on routines and knowing what to expect next. You will want to come up with routines that are flexible for his temperament, but also don’t make you eat dinner late and have your baby go to sleep late. Establishing routines now will only help your child later when it comes to school and you don’t want your family life to be chaotic. Moving your irregular child to a schedule will likely take longer given his natural tendency is not to adhere to a predictable schedule.

The trickiest part for me is that my son is slow-to-adapt, yet inconsistent. So, he thrives on his routines and really needs them, but can’t let them change too much, even though he’s inconsistent (yeah I don’t understand that sentence that much either). For us, that means we have a routine “shell” and things vary in between. I do have to choose my battles wisely as some things are just not worth pressing against his persistence about routine changes.

With an irregular baby who may or may not be tired at “bedtime”, you may need to be a little flexible with the bedtime routine. Of course, with toddlers, they try a lot of things to stall bedtime, so it is tricky to know the difference between stalling and inconsistency. I am flexible within 15-ish minutes (at least I try to be) and then after that I put him to bed and tell him that I will come back to check on him if he isn’t asleep in 10 minutes. Most of the time he falls asleep within 5 minutes of me leaving.

When she is a baby, depending on the age, you may worry if you are doing cry it out whether she’s just not tired. Depending on the age, this can be true, and it’s important for you to know your baby and it helps to track their sleep for a couple of weeks before starting any formal sleep training. After 3 or 4 months old and up through before the age of 2, even the most inconsistent baby will be sleepy sometime between 6 & 8 p.m. After 2 years old, if she is still napping, it’s possible bedtime could get later until she drops the nap (or you drop it for her), but many will continue to go to bed before 8 p.m. In my experience, most babies cry more when they are over-tired than under-tired. If they are under-tired, you can usually tell during the bedtime routine.

If you are using a no-cry sleep training method, you still want to have routines and an early bedtime. You will want to be careful not to let bedtime get too late while you are waiting for your baby to appear sleepy. When a baby is over-tired, her body will release hormones to fight fatigue and they can appear hyper when they are really exhausted. It will just be important to set limits as it will be very easy to let things go too long.

I speak with a lot of frustrated parents with inconsistent children and it is frustrating, but keep in mind you might not do the same things every day at the same time, either. While it might be frustrating now, keep in mind, that we need these irregular children. They’re the ones who work the night shifts, the doctors who work 36 hours straight, and the pilots who fly the red eye (safely I might add). Our society needs all types of people and that’s why it’s really a good thing we have all these different temperaments.

Explore each of the 9 temperament traits, Intensity, Persistence, Sensitivity, Perceptiveness, Adaptability, Regularity, Energy, First Reaction, and Mood, focusing on how they play a role in your baby’s sleep and in the final part, take an assessment quiz to help figure out you and your baby or toddler’s temperament and see how it might be similar or different.

Can you set a clock by your child?

Welcome to Part 6 of my Baby Temperament and Sleep Series. If you are just joining us, you may want to start with Part 1, where I define baby temperament. This article will discuss adaptability as a baby temperament trait. At the end of the series, I will give you a quiz to determine your child’s temperament.

Baby Temperament – Adaptability

Your baby’s adaptability is how quickly your child adapts to changes in schedules and routine. Slow to adapt children often cry or fuss when one activity has to end and another one must begin. They also can get upset with changes in routine. Slow to adapt children may also not react favorably to surprises.

As Raising Your Spirited Child states, “It’s the slow-to-adapt child who loses it because you cut his toast in triangles when he wanted rectangles or you stopped at Burger King when he was expecting McDonald’s. Naptime, lunchtime, bedtime, drop-off at daycare…are all daily transitions that are challenging for this child.”

As I’ve mentioned before, my eldest son is spirited and part of what makes him so is that he is slow to adapt. This improves as he gets older, but is still very much a part of him. When he was a baby, we would need to break our errands into separate events. Every time we left the car, left the store, and got back in the car was an issue because of the transition. It took us a little while to figure that out. We’d go to the store and he’d be ok, but by the 3rd stop, he’d lose it, even if especially if it was a short 5 minute stop. As he got older, when he could understand, we had to count down everything and I’d give him several warnings. “10 more minutes before we have to go inside” (from playing outside), “5 more minutes”, “1 more minute”, “10 more seconds” and then countdown and he’d STILL put up a fuss going inside. Fun times. Now that he’s older, we can run as many errands as we want and don’t need to give him as many warnings, but he is still slow-to-adapt when our routine changes, sometimes, and when it comes to bedtime, in particular.

Baby Sleep and Adaptability

How might your baby’s adaptability affect her sleep? Your child’s adaptability will most affect sleep when it comes to routines, naps, nights, and just day-to-day routines. Many parents like to follow routines even when their baby is a newborn by following an eat-play-sleep routine, for example. For slow-to-adapt children, this can be your saving grace. As a newborn, you might not know, yet, that he is slow-to-adapt, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to try a routine, especially if your baby seems extra fussy all day. Slow-to-adapt children crave routine and need to know what to expect next. Even though my son is more adaptable now, he still does not like routine changes too much and can melt down in certain circumstances.

As you can probably guess, consistency is the most important aspect when it comes to your slow-to-adapt child. As easy and tempting as it feels to read just one book when you usually read three or switch teeth-brushing with putting on pajamas, it might just erupt into a meltdown or rough night for all. A bedtime routine and sleep schedules are musts and whether you use cry it out or a no-cry method, your success will be highly dependent on your ability to stay consistent, which is easier said than done, I know. I have been there!

If your child is slow-to-adapt *and* persistent like mine, it will be challenging to set limits, but limits will be instrumental in tackling sleep problems as well as raising a happy and healthy child in the years to come. If you need more detailed recommendations on helping your child with his adaptability, you can read more in Raising Your Spirited Child and Setting Limits with Your Strong-Willed Child, if he is also persistent.

Explore each of the 9 temperament traits, Intensity, Persistence, Sensitivity, Perceptiveness, Adaptability, Regularity, Energy, First Reaction, and Mood, focusing on how they play a role in your baby’s sleep and in the final part, take an assessment quiz to help figure out you and your baby or toddler’s temperament and see how it might be similar or different.

Share your child’s slow-to-adapt tendencies

Welcome to Part 5 of my Baby Temperament and Sleep Series. If you are just joining us, you may want to start with Part 1, where I define baby temperament. This article will discuss perceptiveness as a baby temperament trait. At the end of the series, I will give you a quiz to determine your child’s temperament.

Baby Temperament – Perceptiveness

Your baby’s perceptiveness is how much your child notices things like people, colors, and noises. A perceptive child may forget directions or instructions you have given her because something else has caught her attention. In addition, she might notice many things that other people don’t, such as a rock in the grass that other kids would walk past.

Perceptiveness and distractibility is not the same as ADHD. Raising Your Spirited Child explains that a child who is more perceptive than other children will notice a lot around them, but will be able to process and eventually be able to focus on something he is interested in and complete a task. A child with ADHD won’t be able to figure out the most important information and won’t be able to focus and complete the task at hand, even if he wants to.

Baby Sleep and Perceptiveness

How might your baby’s perceptiveness affect his sleep? Your child’s perceptiveness will most affect sleep when it comes to napping, routines, and whether you use a nightlight in his room. When you are doing your bedtime routine, your toddler may not be able to follow multi-step instructions, so you may need to break the routines into smaller steps. In other words, instead of asking your toddler to go get a diaper, get his pajamas, and come over to sit down, you might need to ask him to get the diaper first and then ask him to get his pajamas. You also might need to take more time for the routine. If he’s like my eldest son, it might take longer to get through books because he will notice a lot of different things on each page of a book such as the cloud that looks a little like ice cream, even if I’ve read the book 10 times before. I don’t mind at all and encourage his inquisitiveness, but I do need to keep it in mind and plan for how long it takes to get through some things, sometimes.

When it comes to napping, your baby or toddler might look at the light dance on the ceiling from the sunlight shining through the window rather than go to sleep. It is likely she might take longer to fall asleep than a child who is not as perceptive simply because she notices more in the room, especially when there is something new. It is because of this that you will want to put him down for bed at least 10-15 minutes before you want him to be asleep.

You may or may not want to use a nightlight in your baby’s room until he is old enough to care. Remember, he was in the dark in your womb for a long time and until he goes through certain developmental milestones, he is too young to be scared of the dark. I noticed my eldest son would look around entirely too much when he was a baby and it would keep him up, so we did not have a nightlight in his room until he asked for one between 18 months and 2 years, roughly when we transitioned him to his toddler bed and new room. My 2nd son liked to look around, too, so we opted to keep the light off for him, too, though I’m not sure he is as perceptive as his older brother, but time will tell.

When it comes to perceptiveness, you will need to help your child manage it and “hear” you. She will have trouble sorting out what is important and what is not, so keep your messages clear and simple. Encourage her by pointing out the positive aspects of her perceptiveness to her. If you need more detailed recommendations on helping your child with his perceptiveness, you can read more in Raising Your Spirited Child.

As with your sensitive child, a perceptive child will likely take in a lot more around them and can get overstimulated and overtired, so keep that in mind when establishing her sleep schedule. For help tracking your baby’s schedule, you may want to use an online tool, such as Babble Soft.

Explore each of the 9 temperament traits, Intensity, Persistence, Sensitivity, Perceptiveness, Adaptability, Regularity, Energy, First Reaction, and Mood, focusing on how they play a role in your baby’s sleep and in the final part, take an assessment quiz to help figure out you and your baby or toddler’s temperament and see how it might be similar or different.

Share how your child is or isn’t perceptive

Welcome to Part 4 of my Baby Temperament and Sleep Series. If you are just joining us, you may want to start with Part 1, where I define baby temperament. In part 2, I discussed baby temperament trait, intensity, and in part 3, I reviewed persistence. This article will review sensitivity. At the end of the series, I will give you a quiz to determine your child’s temperament.

Baby Temperament – Sensitivity

Your baby’s sensitivity is how aware your child is to noises and emotions, and also, how aware she is to temperature, taste and texture. Your child’s sensitivity (or lack of) can come out in a variety of places. For example, some kids might meltdown if their sock is a little crooked on their toes. Another child might complain about loud noise or light being too bright. Your child might also pick up on your stress or emotions, depending on her sensitivity level. You might notice she starts acting “off” if you are under an undue amount of stress.

My first son is fairly sensitive, but probably only moderately so. From even in the womb, he used to wake up and kick when my husband and I went to the movies. After he was born, he’d become over-stimulated in loud gatherings and melt down even when he was just 2 months old. It shouldn’t have surprised me then, 2 1/2 years later, when we went to the Diego Live! show that he told me it was “loud”.

Baby Sleep and Sensitivity

How might your baby’s sensitivity affect his sleep? If your child is sensitive, this means that most likely he will not be the baby or toddler that falls asleep in a room full of people or with a lot of noise. Due to my son’s sensitivity, I had to remove the nightlight from his room because he’d wake up, see the light, and decide to play in the middle of the night. They are too young to be scared when they are a baby. Once he was older, I bought this nightlight, but still had to cover it up with a washcloth so it wasn’t too bright (he LOVES this light, though!). I also have always had to make sure I put away the dogs so they didn’t bark during naps and keep the noise down, in general. It used to drive me CRAZY when people would tell me he just had to “get used to it”.

It is important to watch your baby or toddler’s reaction to things, even at a young age. You might start to notice a connection between your daily activities and her emotions. You will want to take her sensitivity into consideration when you set up where she sleeps, what she wears to bed and how much noise is going on in the house. Some babies will not like to be too hot or cold while others won’t complain either way. As a baby, we couldn’t have a jacket on my son in the carseat because inevitably he would cry in the backseat within 10-15 minutes during every car trip. Being first time parents, we were especially clueless, but we did figure out that he just would get so hot and be uncomfortable.

Sleep training your sensitive child might be more difficult. You might question whether he’s comfortable, what’s wrong and why no two days are the same. He might become overstimulated easier and need to nap more often. But, your sensitive child’s sleep is ever more important. Sensitive children “take in” a lot around them and that can be exhausting! But, it’s also difficult for him to settle down for the night and therefore, his bedtime routine might need to be longer than normal.

There is a wide spectrum in sensitivity levels. Once you know your baby’s temperament, you can take it into consideration when you choose how to help her get more sleep. You may or may not want to use cry it out to help your baby sleep, but once you know your baby’s personality, that can help you come up with a plan that is more likely to succeed. For help in finding patterns and schedules in your baby’s day, you might want to keep track. You may be interested in using an online baby tracking tool.

For more ideas on how to guide your child in coping with her sensitivity, I recommend Raising Your Spirited Child. She also discusses how to distinguish sensitivity from sensory integration dysfunction, where your child is so sensitive that it’s debilitating.

Explore each of the 9 temperament traits, Intensity, Persistence, Sensitivity, Perceptiveness, Adaptability, Regularity, Energy, First Reaction, and Mood, focusing on how they play a role in your baby’s sleep and in the final part, take an assessment quiz to help figure out you and your baby or toddler’s temperament and see how it might be similar or different.

Share how your child is or isn’t sensitive

Welcome to Part 3 of my Baby Temperament and Sleep Series. If you are just joining us, you may want to start with Part 1, where I define baby temperament. In part 2, I discussed baby temperament trait, intensity, and today I will move on to the next trait, persistence. At the end of the series, I will give you a quiz to determine your child’s temperament.

 
 
 

Baby Temperament – Persistence

Your baby’s persistence is how easily or difficult she can stop a task if you tell her to and how strong-willed they are when they get their mind set on something. Persistence might reveal itself when you take your 8 month old’s toy away from him to start a new game or your 2 year old who needs to get out of the bath and isn’t ready. Or, you might even see it as early as 4 months old when she wants to nurse and he won’t take no for an answer without erupting in tears and will not settle down with any other soothing method. A very persistent baby or toddler doesn’t take “no” for an answer very easily.

I have personally seen my eldest son’s persistence from very early on and it hasn’t let up in his 3 years. When your child is persistent, they really “lock in” to an idea or desire and will not let up easily. I can share a few examples. When my son was a baby, he would “lock in” and get upset when we took a toy away. When he was a little older, taking away the bottle (around 15 months) proved difficult and rather than drink from a sippy, he’d wait it out without milk until his next feeding (we worked on one feeding at a time). We saw his first tantrum not getting what he wanted very early, around 15-16 months, too, and there have been numerous times we’ve been driving somewhere, we didn’t go the way he wanted, and we heard about it ALLLLLL the rest of the way home. As soon as you think he’s forgotten about what he wanted, he will keep harping on it. Sometimes distraction works, but often it doesn’t. Happiest Toddler on the Block has good information about dealing with toddlers in this way (or watch the DVD).

I have purposely kept from using the word “stubborn” to describe this temperament trait. Stubborn has a negative connotation and will only frustrate you if you have a persistent child. Remember that your child is not purposely doing this to drive you crazy (even though there have been numerous times I thought I was headed that way). This is their in-born personality. A persistent child will require you to have more patience and set firm limits. You also have to pick your battles, in my opinion, but giving in to every demand of a persistent child simply to avoid their will, is not a good idea. I suspect many “spoiled” kids are very persistent and I can certainly understand how it “feels” easier to just give them what they want. Combine intensity with persistence (think 30 minutes with a screaming toddler when he wants something) like my eldest son and it can be VERY tiring, but we press on to make sure he has reasonable limits and can grow into a child who won’t expect to always get what he wants. It is my goal to help direct him to be persistent at appropriate times.

As I said last time, there are good and bad things about each temperament trait. The photo I chose for this article is not an accident. Without persistence, it can be difficult to reach the highest mountains and achieve successes in life. There are a number of jobs / careers that need a persistent nature, some more than others. In a job where you might be told no a lot, such as an actor or actress, a less persistent person is not as likely to achieve their dream. Becoming a doctor, lawyer, Fortune 500 CEO, etc. take a lot of persistence, too.

Baby Sleep and Persistence

How might your baby’s persistence affect her sleep? If your child is a less persistent baby, this means that it will not likely be that difficult to get better sleep out of her. Typically, less persistent babies and toddlers accept no for an answer and do not stay upset very long when you make changes. You may simply just need to commit to making changes. If you decide to sleep train with a no-cry sleep training method, your baby will not likely complain very long and quickly take no for an answer when you refuse to continue to replace the pacifier or nurse to sleep or discontinue any other sleep association. Once she is 4 months old if you decide to sleep train using a crying sleep training method, your baby will likely not cry very long, if at all.

On the other hand, if your baby is a very persistent baby, you can bet that it will be harder to get more cooperation out of him when he has his mind set on something. If you use a no-cry sleep training method, it will likely take you longer than those with less persistent babies. It might take you a month or two of consistency to really make a lot of progress and it will take a lot of patience and wherewithal on your part. If you decide to use a crying sleep training method, you can expect long crying bouts, unfortunately. Depending on his intensity level, this may or may not be difficult to get through. If he is low-intensity and fusses for an hour, that might be “easier” than if he is screaming at the top of his lungs for an hour. Regardless of the method, your key to success will be to be more persistent than he is. Luckily for me, I am a very persistent, too (gee where did my son get it? Ha!). You might also notice that you need to keep setting firm limits during bedtime routines as he gets older and wants “one more book”, “one more drink” or “one more” anything.

As you can imagine, since it did prompt me to make a whole website about this, my son’s persistence was prominent throughout our whole endeavor to get better sleep out of him. Not only that, but we fell backwards many times after illnesses, vacations, and teething.

As always, there is a wide spectrum in persistence levels. Once you know your baby’s temperament, intensity level, and persistence level, you can take it into consideration when you choose how to help her get more sleep. You may or may not want to use cry it out to help your baby sleep, but once you know your baby’s personality, that can help you come up with a plan.

For more ideas on how to guide your child’s persistence (i.e. help her learn appropriate times to be persistent), I recommend Raising Your Spirited Child.

Explore each of the 9 temperament traits, Intensity, Persistence, Sensitivity, Perceptiveness, Adaptability, Regularity, Energy, First Reaction, and Mood, focusing on how they play a role in your baby’s sleep and in the final part, take an assessment quiz to help figure out you and your baby or toddler’s temperament and see how it might be similar or different.

Share how your child is or isn’t persistent

Welcome to Part 2 of my Baby Temperament and Sleep Series. If you are just joining us, you may want to read Part 1, What is baby temperament? Today we start talking about the nine different temperamental traits. At the end of the series, I will give you a quiz to determine your child’s temperament.

Baby Temperament – Intensity

Your baby or toddler’s intensity is how strongly he emotionally reacts to something. This could be in a good way or a bad way. Because high-intensity babies react strongly, that means they can be squealing loudly with joy or crying loudly because they are wet. There are babies who barely squeak when they are “crying” and then there are those who scream like you are chopping their arm off. I have a LOT of experience with the screaming kind, unfortunately. Both my boys were (and still are) screamers and what I would call high-intensity (my first more than my second…so far).

Many people will tell new parents to “put your baby down before he is asleep from birth” and you won’t have any sleep problems. Now, if you have the squeaker, this might be really good advice and I certainly encourage new parents to at least try it. But, if you have a screamer, that just isn’t realistic and frustrates those of us that simply can’t take this advice. I am sure there are many parents who simply feel like I made a mistake not doing this from birth, but we all must realize our babies all do not react the same and most new parents aren’t going to let their newborn scream for even 2 minutes from birth! I know I wasn’t willing to.

From birth, both my boys reacted very strongly to things they were upset about whether it was being hungry or too hot (my first son screamed in the car because the carseat would heat him up too much and we’d have a jacket on him because it was winter, until we learned better), tired (especially tired!), over-stimulated, etc. When my son was about 2 1/2 I finally learned where “don’t cry over spilled milk” came from because when he’d spill his milk when he was learning to drink from a cup, he’d start screaming! I finally had to use that saying and really mean it! Ha!

It is not all bad to have a highly intense child. It’s loads of fun when we’re having fun, for one thing. But, another positive spin to your high-intensity child is that you know how he feels. There is no guessing. In that light, I find that I am very in tune to his mood and I feel good when he is happy. He is enthusiastic and full of energy. Not saying that low intensity children are not happy (I’m sure many of them are!), but I can see that more laid back children may not be happy about something, but never speak up, too. Even my second, being the less intense one, tends to need to wait on things because my more intense child is a “squeakier wheel”. I feel bad about that and try to be as fair as I can.

With any of these temperamental traits I will review, there are good things and bad things about all of them. As parents of a high-intensity child, we can learn how to help our child react strongly at appropriate times and learn how to help him diffuse his strong reaction other times.

Baby Sleep and Intensity

How might your baby’s intensity affect her sleep? If your child is a low intensity baby, this means that it may really be much easier for you to put baby down DROWSY, BUT AWAKE from the very beginning and help her learn to fall asleep on her own from day one. Your baby may fuss a little or not at all before drifting off into dreamland. When your baby is no longer a newborn and decides to protest things she doesn’t like, her protests will likely be fairly low-key. If you decide to sleep train with a no-cry sleep training method, you will probably find it easier to not give in to a little fussing. If you decide to sleep train using a crying sleep training method, you may not have a hard time listening to a little fussing while you do the dishes or keep yourself occupied.

On the other hand, if your baby is a high intensity baby, you can bet that it will be hard to leave him upset for anything longer than a couple of minutes when he’s young. If he is like my babies, you won’t need to turn on your monitor at night to hear him down the hall when he wakes up for his midnight feeding when he’s 4 months old. Your high-intense baby might get more upset / angry when he wakes up between sleep cycles and can’t go back to sleep, like mine. You may also need to take longer during your bedtime routine to help soothe him before sleep. If you use a no-cry sleep training method, you will likely have a very hard time listening to a screaming baby while you try to break habits and it will be a lot harder to stick to it if/when he gets upset. If you decide to use a crying sleep training method, you can expect loud outbursts and screaming, which will be difficult. You may be a parent who needs to go take a shower to “get away” for a few minutes.

As always, there is a wide spectrum in between low-intensity and high-intensity and we would all probably have a different opinion about what is low and what is high. Once you know your baby’s temperament and intensity level, you can take it into consideration when you choose how to help her get more sleep. You may or may not want to use cry it out to help your baby sleep, but once you know your baby’s personality, that can help us come up with a plan.

Something else to keep in mind is that YOUR intensity can affect your baby’s, too. If you get really upset about something, your baby might follow suit, depending on how sensitive she is. Both my husband and I are pretty intense, but mostly just happy (and neither of us have a hot temper), so we are working hard in directing my son’s intensity in the positive direction, too, and showing him many things aren’t worth getting upset about and it’s working. The other day I spilled my drink at dinner and I got a little upset and he said to me “It’s okay. It’s okay.” and I said back “Thank you for reminding me it’s ok. We’ll just clean it up. No reason to be upset.” It didn’t stop him from getting upset 10 minutes later when he, too, spilled his milk (we were both tired and clumsy that day!) and I politely reminded him back. Together, we can help diffuse each other’s upsets in life. Thankfully, he is a happy child…when he’s getting enough sleep.

Explore each of the 9 temperament traits, Intensity, Persistence, Sensitivity, Perceptiveness, Adaptability, Regularity, Energy, First Reaction, and Mood, focusing on how they play a role in your baby’s sleep and in the final part, take an assessment quiz to help figure out you and your baby or toddler’s temperament and see how it might be similar or different.

Is your child low or high-intensity? Share your story.

This is Part 1 of my Baby Temperament and Sleep Series. This series is about your baby’s temperament and how it might affect his sleep and/or how you solve sleep problems.

Across this website, I mention temperament a lot and how it DOES affect what sleep training method you might choose to help him sleep better. His temperament and personality will drive whether a no-cry method will take 1 hour or 3 months or, if you choose a cry-method, whether he will cry for 5 minutes or 2 hours, if you let him. It may also affect how difficult it is to wean him from breastfeeding, wean him from the bottle to a cup, how many errands you can run on a Saturday, how many tantrums he has as a toddler, and many many other things parents face on a daily basis. Just a reminder, I am not a doctor, so this is based on my reading / research about Temperament and how I believe it affects your baby’s sleep and what methods may or may not work well when it comes to sleep training. Remember sleep training is not cry-it-out! Let’s get started!

What is temperament?

I happened to get my definition of temperament from the book, Raising Your Spirited Child. The author uses the terms coined by Drs. Stella Chase and Alexander Thomas, “because of their positive, parent-friendly approach”. Even if your child is not spirited, the temperament traits will apply to all babies. At the end of this series, I will give you a quiz to find out whether your child is spirited or not and what his or her temperament is.

Temperament is how your child naturally reacts to situations and stimuli, her mood, her ability to calm herself and how active she is. It is said that researchers have found that temperament is biological, meaning your child comes out of the womb this way. This means that from day 1, the way a YOUR baby reacts to being wet, hungry, tired, etc. may not be like your friend’s baby. Yours might be low-key and not get very upset or your baby may scream loudly. You are not making it up that your baby might not be “laid back”. You might wonder what you did or didn’t do to cause this. I remember one parent saying her husband thought her post partum depression after the birth of their son caused their baby to not sleep well. What a burden to bear! Let me assure you, I did not have post partum depression, was not depressed during pregnancy, or anything close to that and my son had a lot of sleep problems! You have no control over your baby’s temperament. You can only “blame” your genetics and they are still figuring out how it is all intertwined.

One thing that is important for you to know, though, is that you can get to know your child’s temperament and be able to predict how he will react to certain things and you can set him up for success. If you know your child has trouble with transitions, for example, you will be able to help him with those (I will get more into that throughout the series). The best part of this is that you can reduce some of the stress once you KNOW your child’s temperament because you won’t constantly be trying to figure out why he is reacting a certain way. Most of all, you should know that just because he is born this way does not mean that what you do does not matter. You will be able to emphasize his strengths, help him understand his own temperament, and help him learn how to handle his own reactions as he grows up. As Raising Your Spirited Child states, “By adapting your parenting techniques to fit his temperament and his style, and teaching him the skills he needs, you help him to live cooperatively with others and to be all that he can be.” To attempt to make him ignore his temperamental traits is not only very difficult, it teaches him to not be himself.

In the next 10 parts of the series, I will review each of the 9 traits of temperament, Intensity, Persistence, Sensitivity, Perceptiveness, Adaptability, Regularity, Energy, First Reaction, and Mood, discussing baby sleep along the way and in the final part, take an assessment quiz to help figure out you and your baby or toddler’s temperament and see how it might be similar or different.