Personality/Temperament vs Conditioning ???

[Ariana]

Scientifically speaking 50% of temperment is pure genetics and 50% is environment. This has basically been proven through twin studies.

I think often times children can be mismatched with parents and they end up having a much more difficult time than they normally would had they had better matched parents. My sister has zero patience and does nothing to try and help herself or her parenting skills. My niece is very difficult and has been since birth. Sometimes I think if I had her as a DD she would have been better off because I'm much more patient and of course have a bit more experience with difficult children. My DD on the other hand is super easygoing and although has the usual ups and downs, she's mainly an easy kid. Couple that with my patience and knowledge in the area and we rarely have issues with her. I don't think that my parenting can account for all of it but I did read a lot of parenting books so I could be the best parent I could possibly be for myself. There are a lot of parents out there who try to do everything to work with their difficult child and they end up with well behaved children...then there are others, like my sister, who doesn't really care and end up with misbehaved children.

[Country Kids]

Oh my goodness!!! I opened up our newspaper and one of the pages headlines read "Is your child's temperment a good fit for yours?" I immediately thought of this thread. I can't figure out how to find it online and link it here though- I would love, love, love for everyone to read it.

The people who did a study on this are both deceased but wrote a book called "Goodness of Fit" by Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas.

I don't know if you could google the title of the article and have it come up but you might try and if it does it gives for a very good read.

I did google it and it came up! Interesting subject.

[Kaddidle Care]

This thread has been an interesting read. I would tend to lean towards the Parenting/Raising side of how a child develops but yes, there are inherited tendencies.

My sons were born 10 years apart and basically raised the same - yet they are polar opposites. One the introvert, the other the extrovert. One quiet, the other noisy, etc., etc.

But - my husband and I are quite opposite so one son takes after me and my family, the other.. well.. I'm not sure but I think he's like my husband. :: I bang heads with him quite often.

So long as we do our best to teach them, we can only hope and pray that they will turn out right.