Art Bennett - The Temperament God Gave Your Kids: Motivate, Discipline, and Love Your Children

THE

TEMPERAMENT

GOD

GAVE YOUR

KIDS

Motivate, Discipline, and Love Your Children

Art & Laraine Bennett

The Scripture citations used in this work are taken from the Second Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (RSV), copyright 1965, 1966, and 2006 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for the United States of America copyright 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica copyright 1997, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

All papal and other Vatican quotations are copyrighted
2012 by Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Every reasonable effort has been made to determine copyright holders of excerpted materials and to secure permissions as needed. If any copyrighted materials have been inadvertently used in this work without proper credit being given in one form or another, please notify Our Sunday Visitor in writing so that future printings of this work may be corrected accordingly.

Copyright 2012 by Arthur A. Bennett and Laraine E. Bennett.
Published 2012.

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All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts for critical reviews, no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without permission in writing from the publisher. Contact: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 200 Noll Plaza, Huntington, IN 46750; 1-800-348-2440; .

ISBN: 978-1-61278-545-5 (Inventory No. T1244)

eISBN: 978-1-61278-207-2

LCCN: 2011941980

Cover design: Lindsey Riesen

Cover image: Veer

Interior design: Dianne Nelson

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For Lianna, Ray and Laura, Sam, and Lucy
and
in memory of William Etchemendy

(1920-2011)

Appendix A:
Temperament and Psychological Disorders, Physical Disabilities, and Other Special Needs

Appendix B:
Temperament Test for Kids

We are deeply grateful to our children Lianna, Ray (and his wife, Laura), Sam, and Lucy for giving us the opportunity to be parents, for being a source of endless inspiration, and for being such good sports. Their wonderful personalities and lively spirits make our lives so rich!

We want to thank our editor at Our Sunday Visitor, Cindy Cavnar, who has stayed in touch with us over the years and with whom we finally are able to publish a book. She is a joy to work with!

We also wish to thank all our friends who shared their own temperament stories with us, especially Robin Sobrak-Seaton and Beth Moschetto.

If a man is fully cognizant of his temperament,
he can learn easily to direct and control himself.
If he is able to discern the temperament of others,
he can better understand and help them.

Father Conrad Hock

Do you have a child who is into everything? As a toddler, he climbs out of his highchair, wails when confined to a car seat, and eagerly explores his surroundings while you chase him. As a schoolchild, he is talkative, curious, friendly with everyone and distractible! Your energetic, bubbly child is often the center of attention and sometimes in the middle of trouble!

Or perhaps you have a child who is just the opposite: quiet, studious, and slow to warm up in social situations. This gentle old soul is serious and very sensitive. Too much activity can cause him to be overwrought, and it takes him a while to wind down. He prefers reading or quiet, solitary activities, and he is happy with one good friend.

Then theres the future lawyer: that argumentative, willful child who sometimes makes you want to pull your hair out. Little Patton takes charge over his peers and siblings, is never satisfied with Because I said so, thats why, and is convinced he is always right.

Or perhaps (praise God!) yours is that one in a million: a sweet, cooperative, and obedient child; agreeable and easygoing at all times. He is undemanding and beloved by his siblings and friends. He sits quietly in the corner, carefully arranging his Matchbox cars, as his siblings and friends create chaos around him.

If yours is a large Catholic family, it is even more likely that you have been blessed with one (or more) of each of the above, as our family has been. You may have been perplexed by the discovery that the same two parents have produced such uniquely individual progeny. You may have these thoughts: Where did this child come from? Why isnt he just like me? Am I doing something wrong?

You are not doing anything wrong, and there is very likely nothing wrong with your child. The differences described above are all differences in God-given temperament. When you understand your childs unique temperament, you will have the key to unlocking his or her behavior, moods, and motivational forces.

In our first book, The Temperament God Gave You, we reintroduced the concept of the classic four temperaments: choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic. We showed how understanding our own temperament helps us grow in self-knowledge, improve our relationships with our friends and family, motivate our children, and deepen our spiritual life. In our second book, The Temperament God Gave Your Spouse, we looked at all the different combinations of temperaments between spouses and explored how temperament interactions affect spousal communication.

In this book we will take a look at how the four temperaments manifest themselves in children; how your parental temperament meshes with that of your child; how temperament impacts your childs socialization and discipline; how best to motivate your child in school, at home, and in his social life by understanding his temperament; and how you can encourage your children to grow in virtue.

Our temperament is part of our God-given nature, our predisposition to react in certain ways our default setting, so to speak. How quickly do we react to a person or an idea? How strongly do we react when we are praised or chastised or when we are pressed for an opinion? Are we easygoing or easily angered? Do we tend to look on the bright side, or do we take a more pessimistic approach? Are we readily distracted or intensely focused? Do we thrive on social situations, or would we rather spend a quiet evening at home with a good book? Differences in mood, sociability, emotionality, and persistence are different aspects of our God-given temperament.

Given the same circumstances or stimuli, different children will react differently because of their temperament. Temperamental biases can be observed in infants as young as four months of age and have been found to impact a youngsters sociability, attention to schoolwork, adaptation to new situations, reaction to stress, and other behaviors.

The concept of temperament dates back more than two thousand years to Hippocrates, the father of medical science. Hippocrates believed that differences in personality were physically based, and he identified four temperaments based on the predominant bodily fluid, or humor. Although this was a primitive system of classification, and we no longer recognize the concept of bodily humors, his insights marked the beginning of millennia of research and theory about human personality. And so, from the start, the sanguine temperament was thought to be eager and optimistic; the melancholic, reticent and somewhat doleful; the choleric, passionate; and the phlegmatic, calm.