Temperament Tools: Working with Your Child's Inborn Traits

by Helen F. Neville, Dave Garbot (Illustrator), Diane Johnson Clark

The most recent and respected research on how temperament can affect a child's progress toward developmental milestones and responses to new experiences

Research shows that many challenging behaviors are connected to a child's inborn temperament, the unique set of characteristics that each child is born with. When adults who work with children understand what makes a child tick, they can adapt their parenting, teaching, or treatment protocols to the individual needs of each child. Coauthor Helen Neville has updated the contents of the original edition of Temperament Tools to reflect the latest understanding about inborn temperament and its effects on behavior. Certain behavior clusters go with certain combinations of temperament traits and some clusters result in a child who can be quite a challenge. This book describes many types of children and offers strategies to help deal with behavior resulting from inborn temperament. Parents fill out a temperament chart to help define and understand their child, then consult the appropriate chapter that refers to that type of child. Temperament Tools avoids the use of psychological jargon while featuring the extensive practical understanding of children and their parents' questions and needs for skills. Adults using the book find the sections on practical ways to handle kids with temperament in mind to be valuable for restoring peace in home or school.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1997

Reviews

[Celine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I browsed through this. Best for kids between 1-4 years old I’d say to better understand what drives their behaviors and how to best support them as a parent

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book definitely made me grateful for my child's temperament, as I compared it with other temperament styles profiled in the book! My child is mainly like what's described in an early chapter: a generally "easy" child with one or two higher-need traits. For this reason, much of the book was not super applicable to us, since it focused on profiling particularly challenging combinations of traits (e.g. "The Active, Intense, Slow-Adapting Child" - yikes), and offering ideas for how to support kids of these temperaments.

The temperament descriptions are great. I liked the chapter about how parent and child's temperament go together, and it gave me some helpful insights. I thought a lot of the suggestions for how to work with kids of challenging temperaments seemed generally good; they were very specific and explained clearly why your child needs things done a certain way, without being overly moralizing most of the time. (The message was more like "Things will be a lot easier for you if you try this" rather than "You must do this to be a good parent".) Also, I liked that the book is not jargony.

I wished this book had more for parents whose children don't happen to fit the specific combinations they profile. Only the first three chapters were universally relevant. A chapter for each trait would have been helpful (and this is not a super-long book, so it could have easily had a chapter about each trait in addition to the profiles of trait combinations).

As a side note, this book is about ages 0-5. That was fine for me, having a toddler, but it would be nice if there were a companion volume for older kids - it would be interesting to know more about how these traits play out at older ages.

[Nicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read about children. A book I wish I had read with my first kiddo,but glad I read it when the second came along! It lists the 9 inborn temperaments, then has tips for parents if your kiddo has that particular temperament or group of temperaments. It helped me understand them better and was given tools for their particular temperament. Great resource if you are a teacher, too!

[Krystin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't have children, so on one hand this wasn't necessarily relevent. On the other hand, I would recommend it to anyone - it is an easy, fun read (these children have AMAZING names, by the way!) and delves into the various temperaments within us. I was able to relate to a few of the children and realize what aspects make up my own temperament and how to best deal with them.

[Christina · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is geared toward children from infant to preschool aged. I wanted more insight into my two very-energetic boys. This book did not offer much more information than the value of consistency and giving children an understanding of what will happen next. Perhaps too simplistic in its approach to temperament.

[Vicki Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book helped me learn more about my three year old's temperament & ways I could help our days go more smoothly.