I have to admit, I wonder if this was the OP’s source:
Yes, I do … 
[QUOTE=Foggy]
Do you have a cite for any of this?
[/QUOTE]
www.help-your-child-with-anger.com/brain-development-in-children.html
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Our-Personality-Is-Fully-Developed-By-the-Age-of-7-151093.shtml
I’m pretty sure that nobody took you simply because most people aren’t kidnappers, not because nobody wanted you.
I will also go out on a limb and speculate that it is far more likely that your mother did that to you because she probably had her own battles with depression (and/or other reasons for feeling frustrated/overwhelmed), not because you were any more horrible than any other kid.
I don’t think there’s anything very fixed about who we are. Our bodies are constantly changing. We’re constantly learning and forgetting. Our environments are always changing. Our preferences, tolerances, and sensitivities change. The things that drive us nuts change. The things we want out of life change. So why wouldn’t our personalities change?
I am not the same person that I was when I was five. I was a quiet, goofy, imaginative person then just as I am now, but I’m also a whole lot braver than I was back then. I’m less impulsive, less sensitive, more open-minded, and less superstitious. I also know a whole heck of a lot more about myself and the world. So really, I’m not the same person at all. In another thirty years I hope I can say the same.
I am definitely the same “me” that I was at 5, insofar as I have an essentially uninterrupted continuum of consciousness and the “me” that I was continues to seem like who I am and so forth. I hold various opinions and have various inclinations as a consequence of experienced I’ve had since 5, but they didn’t turn me into a different person.
On the other hand, I’m also still probably the same “me” I was at the age of 2, and although I have no conscious memory of it (the way I have for the ages of 5 and 2), I have no reason to assume my “personality got assembled” between birth and 5 or birth and 2 or whatever, as opposed to “I had a consciousness and it had experiences and I’m still me plus I’ve had all these freaking experiences”.
Weight over volume, evidently!
It seems unlikely to me. When I was 5 I had tantrums that shook the earth when things didn’t go my way (and when you’re 5 nothing goes your way). Other than that I was quiet and shy.
I think the only thing about me that is still even remotely the same is that I still like dogs.
I can remember the angry 5 y/o that I was, but it doesn’t even feel like me. We share nothing, other than memories. Artist Willem de Kooning said “I have to change to stay the same.” If anything, that is the constant. I can’t really relate the reification of the idea of “personality” to myself, let alone the idea that it was fixed at 5.
No way! At five, I was a childish brat and now, uh. mmm. er.
OK, so for some people it may be true.
This is not the same as what you wrote in the OP. 90% of a child’s brain development is not 90% of an adult’s personality.
This is closer to what you said, but it’s not an actual citation. It repeats the claim but doesn’t tell us what the scientists studied or how they came to this conclusion. I can believe that large parts of our personalities are often set by 5 or 7 or something, but I’d like a better source and I’m suspicious of a round number like 90%. How do you even measure that?
BY WEIGHT, I EXPECT!
needed lower case
I hear we only use 10% of our personality anyway, so what’s the big deal?
You’ve gone from “a lot of studies” to two articles that interpret unnamed studies. Got anything better?
The “Up” documentaries appear to be documenting this fact, at least as far as 7-year-olds are concerned. These documentaries, which have visited a group of British people every 7 years since they were 7 (they are now in their 50s), were originally intended to track whether people would stay in their same social/economic class. But they ended up showing that personality really is a constant. Editing may be responsible for some of the similarities, but it’s hard to believe that the shy boy of 7, who is now a shy man of 54, or the young girl of 7 who blamed everyone else for her hardships, who at 54 is still blaming everyone else for her hardships, are very much different from their on-camera portrayals.
It’s only a small, heavily edited sample, but it rings very true for me.
I’m pleased to report that only 73% of my personality was formed by age 5. My rampant paranoia, raging ego, and desperate need to flout social convention all kicked in at a later age.
Furthermore, that percentage may drop, because I’m only 54, and my personality may still not be fully formed. I may add obsession and compulsion to my repertoire.
I doubt this is a solid fact, especially the particular percentage value.
However, I will not be surprised if my older child is always a bit more cautious, concerned with familiarity and control, finicky, and conscientious, while the younger is always a bit more exuberant, impetuous, disregarding of boundaries and limitations (including her own biological needs), and in love with food.
I only have a sample of two, but my children’s basic personalities were evident within days,maybe even hours of birth. My first was a difficult, self-willed child, who resisted change, even change for the good. I learned to rename her personality traits: she wasn’t stubborn,she stuck to her beliefs, she wasn’t disobedient, she was a leader and not a blind follower, the list goes on… to this day, she rejects authority and makes her own determination, she always has to think for herself even when that makes life much more difficult for her. She does have great personal charm, and enormous loyalty to her friends, but she does not suffer fools gladly. She was voted Most Talented by her High School class. My second child was much more laid back and relaxed in his attitude toward life from the beginning: he was almost always happy and content. He has always had great personal charm and was voted Prince of Personality in his high school class, He was a much easier child to parent as he pretty much went along with our parental expectations. To this day, he is a man who gets along with most anyone, and shrugs off small annoyances.
Just a data point .
“They” say that 107% of people misuse statistics. They say it , so it must be true.
Is not!
I went to the psychiatrist for the first time when I was 5 and I still have the detailed evaluation she wrote up for my parents. I have all of the same problems now, 23 years later, but I am less crazy.
It’s not true that people can’t or don’t grow and change tremendously (or sometimes, hardly at all) as they mature and age. But at the same time I think it is true that you are YOU, with quirks and traits and issues you may struggle with the rest of your life, at a very young age. I’ve always believed that because I have been taking care of kids and watching them grow into teens and now adults since I was a kid myself, and I can always see so much of the child, even infant they were, in the older person. As well, I’m very much still the same person that my parents told me about as a baby, toddler, child and teen, and who I remember being as far back as I can. Little things like my dislike of certain noises, loving dogs, not liking to be touched, insisting on doing everything independently.