Nanny Diaries: Personality in children

He sits on the sidelines and watches but won’t participate. He isn’t so social and doesn’t make friends as easy as she’d like. “Do you think he’s not developing properly?” she asked.

I took my time to answer, because I’m not a doctor or a paediatrician. I’m just a mama and a nanny!

But I asked her what her husband was like “oh he’s so shy! “ she exclaimed. “He feels uncomfortable in crowds, doesn’t like to go out partying, to be honest I don’t know how we got together he’s so awkward!” she laughed.

“Well perhaps there’s your answer!” I said. He’s like his Daddy!

The thing is we are in a habit of LOOKING for problems these days in our children. Some parents are constantly anxious their little ones are not meeting milestones the same as their peers. We compete and we measure, we check and double check. Worrying if they are developing the way the books/professionals/other children are.

If they’re not we panic.

Yet I can’t help but wonder though if we’re doing children an injustice and not accounting for personality.

Not all children are identical. Every child is unique. Personality begins to develop in a child from birth, becoming noticeable around 4 months. There are many different aspects of character that can be mixed up with development stages. For instance, Activity level, how active a child is. Can be confused with gross motor ability.

Approach or withdrawal. How the child approaches strangers or responds to changes in situations. Can be confused with socialisation skills. Distractibility, can be confused the attention span and focus.

So I think perhaps, we should not be so quick to judge our children, when they are after all just people and people are all different!