When talking to parents and caregivers, it can be helpful to ask them what they know about temperament and assess their understanding of how their temperament matches (or doesn’t match!) their child’s. Parents may be able to talk about their child’s response to different environments, sensory preferences or reaction to change and may not have thought about their own response. Parents and caregivers may not be able to recognize ways in which their own temperaments impact the behavior of their child.

What is Temperament?

Temperament is generally defined as consistent individual differences in behavior that are biologically based and are relatively independent of learning, system of values and attitudes. One key concept to remember is that temperament is biologically based, not made up of characteristics that are chosen. As such, an individual does not have the ability to change their temperament but rather use their knowledge to adapt to the environment. As an example, for individuals who become overwhelmed by noise, the volume of the television or radio could be turned down, voice tones can be adapted and strategies for calming in loud environments can be taught. Conflict can arise in the parent-child relationship when a parent perceives a child is acting in a particular way “on purpose” or “to make them (the parent) upset.” It is important to recognize that a child’s behavior is often a reflection of his or her temperament. Like many other developmental skills, parents need to be able to teach their children how to appropriately respond to their internal triggers.

Parent and caregiver understanding of how to support a child’s temperament style is crucial in the development of social-emotional skills. When parents can help children adapt to their environment and understand their own preferences, children will be better prepared to adapt to different environments using coping skills and resources available.

Having Conversations about the Parent’s Temperament

I often get questions about how to have conversations with parents and caregivers about temperament. Beginning by asking questions can be a good place to start. Helping parents to gain insight about their own temperament can help them to be more in tune with the actions of their child. Oftentimes, parents have insight into their child but may not have thought about their own preferences or strengths. Parents may not recognize the role that their temperament plays in the dynamic of the relationship with their child. Some questions that could be helpful to ask parents include:

• How do you manage your emotions?
• What are your sensory preferences (e.g. light, sound, etc.)?
• How do you respond to change?
• How do you communicate your wants and needs?

When parents and children have mismatched temperaments, strain in the parent-child relationship can be magnified. Parents may incorrectly attribute differences in interaction style to a child’s developmental delay, ascribing intent behind behavior or believing a child can simply change his or her temperament. Parents may not be aware of their own needs or have the capacity to understand how to adjust in order to have their needs met. When mismatched temperaments are not understood, parents may expect more of their child or believe that their child can change their behavior independently. This can lead to frustration and increased stress for parents. In addition, parents may feel as though they do not have the ability to meet their child’s needs or parent effectively. Children rely on their parents to be emotional co-regulators. This means that especially when children are young, they look to their parents to model how to manage uncomfortable emotions, changes to routine and internal triggers. When parents are calm, children can de-escalate more quickly. As children learn to understand their own temperaments, they can build their abilities to navigate different situations and interactions and become more effective in developing social-emotional regulation.

Talking about the Child’s Temperament

As providers, when parents talk about the ways in which they interact with their children, we can then begin to ask questions to help identify children’s temperament styles and explore which interventions are available to build family capacity. Once a parent can begin tuning in to the child’s unique temperament, the parent can then work to develop strategies for supporting the child’s needs. Here are some questions that you could help the parent to consider when trying to understand their child’s temperament:

• How does my child express their feelings?
• How does my child engage in play?
• How does my child respond when they experience discomfort?
• How does my child react to change?
• What does my child do when going through transitions?

When parents are in tune with their child’s temperament, they are able to support their child’s behavior more effectively. Parents can then understand their child’s needs to provide opportunities for learning new coping skills.

When children are young, it is important for parents to give a lot of support in helping their work through challenges. As children get older and can understand their own temperament style and what they need to be successful, the interactions become more balanced. When parents and caregivers are able to understand the ways in which temperament plays a role in the behavior and interactions of their children, stress is reduced and successful intervention strategies can be realized.

Now that you have some more tools to understand temperament, how can you help parents recognize and respond to their child’s unique characteristics?

Share your ideas by leaving a comment below!

For more information about this topic, check out Naomi’s 2-part webinar series on the VA Early Intervention Professional Development Center:

Foundations of Social Emotional Development: Temperament – Part II

Foundations of Social Emotional Development: Attachment – Part I

Also, be sure to visit the Social-Emotional Development topic page!

Naomi Grinney, LCSW has worked in early intervention for the past five years. Prior to working in EI, Naomi worked as a community-based mental health crisis response provider, as social worker in a psychiatric hospital and as a behavioral interventionist at a residential treatment center. Naomi is passionate about supporting the social emotional development of children and building family capacity and has worked with kids and families for twenty years. As the parent of a child who received Early Intervention services, Naomi brings a unique perspective to her role in providing tools and resources to empower parents in supporting their child’s development. Naomi can be reached at naomi.grinney@fairfaxcounty.gov. 

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Ever been in a home visit with a parent who is simultaneously using his/her phone while discussing the child with you? There are lots of ways that phones and screen time show up during visits. For instance, parents hand their child a phone to keep him quiet or distract other children in the home. Parents may pull out their phones to take down notes about interventions or the next appointment. They show us videos and pictures of exciting progress in milestones, or to ask a question about something going on with their child.

Cell phones and all other forms of screens are such a huge part of life today, including children’s lives starting as early as infancy and toddlerhood. As service coordinators and providers, we can choose to resist or ignore these changes, and feel frustrated with how they impact early intervention outcomes. OR, we can step up to the challenge of employing phones and technology as tools in our interventions and interactions with families.

AAP Screen Time Recommendations

The American Academy of Pediatrics has made a formal statement of recommendations for use of technology for children of all ages in their Media and Young Minds Policy (2016). Some specific advice for ages 0-3 includes:

• For children younger than 18 months, discourage the use of screen media other than video-chatting.
• For parents of children 18 to 24 months of age who want to introduce digital media, advise that they choose high-quality programming/apps and use them together with children, because this is how toddlers learn best. Letting children use media by themselves should be avoided.
• In children older than 2 years, limit media to 1 hour or less per day of high-quality programming. Recommend shared use between parent and child to promote enhanced learning, greater interaction, and limit setting.
• Recommend no screens during meals and for 1 hour before bedtime.

Parents often express guilt to providers over undesirable screen time issues with their child, and look to us for support. Advice from author, Lisa Guernsey, recommends that families and early childhood professionals consider the “Three C’s” when determining when and how to use various technologies: content, context and the individual child. Together with families, we can consider the following questions to begin supporting them in implementing the AAP’s recommendations, while keeping technology as a tool on our side.

• We can ask how does the content help children learn, engage, express, imagine, or explore?
• What kinds of social interactions are happening before, during, and after the use of the technology? Does it complement, and not interrupt, children’s learning experiences and natural play patterns?
• Does this technology match with this child’s needs, abilities, interests, and development stage? (Guiding Principles for Use of Technology with Early Learners, 2016)

7 Ways to Support Families and Outcomes Using Technology

Once we’ve evaluated the values of technology per each child’s situation, we can consider employing some of the following strategies for intervention and improvement.

1. Parents can use video chats as a new and exciting way for children to use their language and imitation skills with a variety of people.
2. Show parents how they can engage in an app or screen time activity together with their child to promote quality interactions.
3. At the end of a visit, encourage parents to set a reminder alert in their phone to practice certain strategies or focus on a specific interaction with their child.
4. Recommend apps that educate and support parents in understanding child development, such as: CDC’s Milestone Tracker, VROOM, and HelloJoey.
5. Educate parents about how to evaluate apps/programs for developmental appropriateness.
6. Coach parents in setting boundaries with screen time and managing challenging behaviors that may arise from this. Help them determine specific “screen free” routines throughout the day.
7. Remind parents that no “educational” technology or program is better for their child’s development than regularly engaging in interaction, exploration, and play everyday!

Share your thoughts and experiences below by leaving a comment:

How have you seen screens and technology impacting Early Intervention visits?

Have families ever asked for advice about apps or programs to help their child? How do you or would you respond?

Please share any great technology resources that you have found in the comments too!

References

Guiding Principles for Use of Technology with Early Learners. (2016). Retrieved from https://tech.ed.gov/earlylearning/principles/.

Radesky, J., and Christakis, D. (2016). Media and young minds. Journal of the Academy of Pediatrics, 138(5), doi:10.1542/peds.2016-2591.

Rachel Todd lives in Northern Utah and has worked as a Service Coordinator for the Up to 3 Early Intervention Program since 2017. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Family, Consumer, and Human Development emphasizing in child development and worked with families in Early Head Start programs before joining EI. She is also a graduate student in the Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences program at Utah State University and loves professional development of all forms. Rachel and her husband have a one-year-old son and a spoiled fur baby and love to get outside in the mountains together every chance they get! You can reach Rachel at
rachel.todd@usu.edu

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Tantrums are a normal part of every young child’s life. If we are honest, we throw our own “tantrums” as adults. When working with young children, especially those with a language delay, we have to understand that tantrums are a mode of communication when emotions become overwhelming. Marci Melzer offers five steps to handle tantrums with late talkers. 

Watch the video here and we will explore each step. 

Children under three are driven by emotions and not logic (Prencipe & Zelazo, 2005). Think about this statement and what it means for the families you serve. Often, a parent’s expectations for a child’s behavior may be unrealistically high for the child’s developmental age. Further, tantrums are stressful for the caregiver and the child. In order to access the frontal lobe (top brain) to make good decisions, the reactive part of the brain (bottom brain) needs to calm to access the top functions of the brain. The caregiver needs to be calm to make good decisions on how to react and support the child. The child needs to be calm in order to learn. This is why each of the steps Marci Melzer provides can be helpful. Let’s discuss each step.

Step 1: Acknowledge and react as if the child was injured.

Marci describes this as the “stop, drop, and roll” method. This is where a tantrum first sparks and you need to put out the fire by providing an empathetic response. “You have to give that tantrum the same kind of attention as if was an accident or illness because in your child’s heart, in their feelings, they feel the same when they want a cookie and they can’t have it as they do when they are running and skin their knee and get hurt physically.” The difference is the empathetic response given by the caregiver in both situations. The child feels the same because both situations are out of their control and they are communicating those feelings. You would give the tantrum the same response of love in both situations (cookie before dinner vs falling and getting hurt). Both instances are “bummer situations.” Once you respond and the child knows you care about the message he/she is communicating, you move to the next step. 

Step 2: Understand the message the child is trying to tell you.

In this step, the caregiver is calm and can access his/her frontal lobe to problem-solve what message the child is trying to tell him/her. Every behavior is communicating a message (hungry, too loud, attention). 

Step 3: Be a language facilitator and translate the message.

The caregiver now becomes the language facilitator for the child by helping to find the words to express the message. Supporting the caregiver to model the words the child is trying to communicate is key. “You deal with the behavior with hugs and cuddles, but you translate this communication into words” (for example, modeling “all done” instead of throwing a cup off the high chair). Marci makes a good point; most caregivers are already translating their child’s language in their heads (“Oh…he is hungry). It is a matter of modeling the language for the child, but step four takes that a bit further.

Step 4: Model the message in words the child can process.

Most children in early intervention are late talkers. This is where we want to make sure that we are modeling the language on the child’s level. This may be a single word or short phrase. It is important to make sure the child is calm and engaged or go back to step 1. After you model the message when the child can process and understand, move to the final step.

Step 5: Make sure the child is ready to move on.

This is all about empowering the child. You acknowledge the feelings and calm the child, understand and translate the message, make sure the child understands the replacement behavior, and then check in with your child and make sure he/she is ready to move on with the next thing to do (such as help make dinner). 

A big mistake many caregivers make is redirecting or distracting without going through and acknowledging all five steps. Without going through each step, children not learning how to handle the big emotions they feel inside. This type of facilitation shows it is okay to have big feelings and how to properly deal with them over time. Remember, children under three react based off their emotions. It is not until after age three where logic starts to be used and there are a lot of emotions children feel as they learn to walk, talk, and interact with others.  

How do you support caregivers in understanding their children’s behaviors in your program?

How do you communicate typical development for children to caregivers?

Share any successful strategies you have in your tool bag.

Reference: Prencipe, A. & Zelazo, P.D. (2005). Development of affective decision making for self and other: Evidence for the integration of first- and third-person perspectives. Psychological Science, 16, 501-505.

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