My spirited child - part I

I had a book called "Raising Your Spirited Child" by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka on my "to read" list for several months. I tried to check it out from the library, but, lo and behold! there was a huge wait list for this book. (I guess I should feel comforted that so many San Diego parents are facing the same challenges I am??) When my copy finally arrived, I wasn't in the right frame of mind to read it and I ended up having to return it before I got very far. So I bit the bullet and bought my own copy.

It was on my shelf but yet to be opened when a good friend with a spirited child of her own sent an e-mail to a bunch of us "moms of spirited children" raving about what a great book it was. I, by the way, was the first person on the list. :) I had to laugh as I thought, "What made her think of us?"

So I have finally read it, and it really has provided quite a few insights.

First of all, I have to say that I love that the author has characterized these children as "spirited." It's so much more positive than "difficult" or "naughty" or "handfuls" or "pains in the neck" (or other parts of the anatomy).

Ms. Kurcinka says that there are five temperamental qualities that most "spirited" children have and four "bonus" qualities that about half have. And guess what, Jack has almost all of them! He doesn't have them all to the highest degree, but he possesses most of them at least a little bit. The one or two I'm not sure he actually has, I'm also not sure he doesn't have. Really, though, I have no one to blame but myself. I score high on most of them too. And the few I don't have, Tom does. Jack was destined to be spirited. For those of you who were wondering, these are the temperaments:

Intensity
Persistence
Sensitivity
Perceptiveness/Distractibility
Adaptability

Bonus:
Regularity
Energy
First Reaction
Mood

* Intensity - Oh my goodness, does Jack ever have this! I think this may be one of my biggest challenges with him. Specifically, he is in a phase where when he feels overwhelmed or "flooded" (as the author says) with emotion, the way he deals with it is by shrieking at the top of his lungs. It is mortifying. He frequently scares other children so much, they start crying, while I am left helplessly apologizing to their parents. He gets the intensity from me, although I have at least learned to curb the screaming at people not married to me.

* Persistence - When a child fixates on something that s/he wants and won't take "no" for an answer, s/he is "persistent." As the author says, persistence is the source of many power struggles, and boy, do we ever have a lot of those. If Jack decides that he wants, say, a cookie, he will continually ask, "Cookie cookie cookie cookie cookie cookie..." until I think I'm going to go mad. One way that I have found to curtail this is to give him one and tell him firmly, "This is the only one you can have, so don't ask anymore because the answer is 'No!'" Now he'll chant over and over again, "The answer is 'No!' The answer is 'No!'" It's pretty funny.

The other thing I have taught him to deal with this is compromise. Here is a picture of three buttons on our car console that Jack can (unfortunately) see from his car seat:



Jack has decided that he likes it when all three buttons are lit up. The AC button is by default always "on," because the "off" button is lit orange when the air conditioning isn't. (Sadly, the "on" button lights up green, which Jack doesn't like. When it's really hot and I try to cool the car down by turning on the AC, he freaks out that the green light is on instead of the orange. "No green!" he screams. So we swelter.) But the other two, the recycle air and rear defroster, need to be turned on for the orange light to light up. So one day Jack was having a fit that he wanted all three buttons on. I told him, "Jack, you want three buttons on, and Mommy only wants one, so we will compromise and turn on two." I don't love having the rear defroster on when we don't need it, but it's better than having the air recycler on all the time as well. So now when Jack is in the car and only the AC off button is lit, he will usually yell, "Compromise! Compromise!" to get us to at least turn on the rear defroster button. *eye roll* It's enough to make me want turn his car seat back to rear facing again.

I think he gets this from both Tom and me.

* Sensitivity - For a kid as noisy as he is, Jack is very sensitive to loud sounds. He is also easily overwhelmed in crowds and sensitive to strangers or people he doesn't like invading his personal space. Regrettably, this manifests itself in him saying, "No that girl!" or worse, "No [insert name of actual kid here]!"

He has also started to notice smells around him. It's embarrassing when he's around other people and he smells something he doesn't like, whether it's perfume, incense, food, or (Lord help us) something in the bathroom, and he says, "I smell something! Don't like it!"

Jack also gets this sensitivity from me. And unfortunately this means that when he is screaming, it's really easy for me to get overwhelmed by the racket. It's really just too much noise, and all I want to do is sit him in his room and walk away.

It was actually very enlightening and quite a relief to read about this temperament. All my life I have struggled with being called "intolerant" and "easily annoyed." I was always irritated by that person who would jiggle his leg up and down or who said "drawlings" instead of "drawings," and I would wonder why I was always the only one who even seemed to notice stuff like that? I used to wish and wish and wish that I could somehow lower my antenna for these annoying minutia, and yet I couldn't and I'd be blamed for being so touchy. As if anyone would choose to be so easily aggravated!

So I was so happy to read that this is a temperamental characteristic beyond a person's control, usually a result of genetics. And I'm glad that I can recognize this in my own child so that I can deal with it with consideration and, yes, sensitivity. I realize that I am a "spirited" person and must have been a spirited child. I know it can't have been easy for my parents, especially my poor mother, from whom I decidedly did not inherit my spirit as defined herein. But, as I've so often said, "It's not easy being difficult," and life can be just as hard, if not harder, for a sensitive kid as for his/her parents. I want to do what I can to make it easier for my own spirited child.

I have lots more to say on this subject - I'm only on temperament 3 of 9! - but I realize this post is already long and it's getting late, so this is to be continued...