I ask this because I currently babysit for 2 polar opposites- my niece, a 6 month old, easy-going, barely ever fusses baby, and my best friend’s daughter, a 15 month old ball of attitude.
Where my niece rarely cries unless she has a dirty diaper or is hungry, my best friend’s daughter cries if you try to wipe her face or hands, screams during baths, and throws temper tantrums at the drop of a hat.
I’m wondering if my niece will be a laid back kid while my best friend’s daughter will be a hellion. So, parental Dopers, is there any correlation between personality during the first year and a half of life and later on? Ever have a difficult baby grow into a perfect little angel?
Yes, temperment seems to stick with people as they develop and age. No, they’re not always going to be exactly the way they are right now. They will develop skills (to varying degrees) in dealing with the world and with their own internal state. They will develop or pick up thoughts and expectations regarding behavior.
So the hellion will never be laid back, but will not necessarily be a constant irritation to others. And the easy-going baby will probably always be a bit quiet by nature, but may decide that there are times when noise is a good strategy.
Oh, and about the angel thing: I had a loud one who wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. He mellowed out more, the more he was able to get what he wanted for himself.
I had a quiet one who watched the louder one and decided that he wasn’t going to get short-changed just because he was quiet. So although they are very different by nature, they grew to be more alike behaviorally over time.
Of course, I also have a quiet one who stayed mostly quiet. He was the oldest and didn’t see the noise as competition. This did not mean that he never found ways to get into trouble.
They pop out with the personality they’ll always have. You can’t extrapolate how they’ll turn out, because a lot happens over the years. But the basic personality stays the same, in my experience.
According to my mother, my older brother was a fussy, high-maintenance baby…cried a lot, demanded a lot of attention, etc.
I was the baby who was “happy, content to play in the corner by herself, in her own little world,” according to my baby book.
My brother, at 32, is still what I’d call “fussy.” Complains a lot, very demanding and impatient, etc.
At 29, I am still in many respects the kid in the corner. Self-entertained (a big reader) and not a person who needs a lot of interaction to be happy.
I’m not always happy, obviously, anymore than my brother is always complaining, but I’d say it’s kinda funny the way our baby book personalities are still quite accurate overall.
I agree that their temperment pretty much stays the same.
My daughter was always a laid back happy baby but she had a mean temper. She is still this way. She is mellow 99% of the time but oh boy when she gets angry.
My son pretty much went along with everything as a baby and he is still that way. He does not get angry often and just sort of goes with the flow.
Yes, temperment pretty much stays the same throughout life, barring neurological injury or disease. Infant temperment is identified by rating several factors on a high to low scale:
Don’t despair, though! While that basic temperment doesn’t change, the people around her can almost always learn new ways to work with that temperment to elicit the *behavior *they want and engender the relationship they want. But this means tossing out the notion that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things, and working with your child as an individual.
My daughter, for example, is of a fairly low activity level, moderately sensitive, very flexible in her sleep and feeding patterns, moderately unadaptable to change, very slow to approach new people or things, generally cheerful, completely un-distractible, very intense when pleased or displeased and has a long attention span. Which all adds up to: she’s stubborn as sin. For a while there, she was melting down whenever I handed her a stick of string cheese. I couldn’t figure it out. She’d ask for string cheese, I’d give her string cheese, and she’d freak out, screaming sobbing, classic tantrum. WTF? I finally got it - while she couldn’t take the wrapper off herself, she wanted to *try *to take the wrapper off herself. If I just hand her the wrapped string cheese and walk away, she’ll work at the wrapper and then come find me 5 or 10 minutes later to take it off for her. Easy peasy. Her temperment didn’t change - she’s still being stubborn. But now it’s not my problem!
One of the little guys I babysit? Not interested in removing his own wrapper. He’ll bite right through the plastic and eat it with the cheese! So I don’t have one right way to handle string cheese - he gets his “peeled”, she gets hers still encased in plastic.
This is a silly example of course, but I chose it because I think that it illustrates the important thing well: you are not stuck with power struggles and tantrums, even if you have a “difficult” child. You can’t change who they are, but you can change how you act with them.
Temperament in infancy is, in my experience, a pretty reliable indicator of adult temperament.
My daughter and my sister were born six weeks apart, and we all lived together for some time. My sister was a very fussy and needy child, no doubt exacerbated by being born ten weeks early and having a number of surgeries in her second year that required her to be in a full body cast for nearly six months. During that time, the poor kid, not being able to talk (she was a very late speaker) or move, when she wanted something, she would just point to it and whine. Unfortunately, this behavior lasted years beyond the point where she was both mobile and verbal.
My daughter was the quietest, happiest, most self-entertaining baby I’ve ever seen. She was also quite mobile and verbal very early (both walking and speaking in short phrases when she was eight months old), and as a result, was almost ridiculously independent. (I know I sound all lookitmahbabee, and I suppose I am a bit, but honestly, I often feel like I got cheated out of a lot of babyhood).
One of my favorite stories to illustrate the difference between them is that when they were five, my boyfriend and I took them on vacation with us, and having slept in a bit, we woke to find my sister waiting for us to spread cream cheese on her bagel, while my daughter had built a stack of cushions on a chair until it was high enough that she could reach the cabinets over the counter, where the cereal was.
They’re almost seventeen now, and just the other day, my sister called me to complain that no one was around to give her a ride to the mall, and see if my daughter would come over, since she was bored. My daughter wasn’t home. She’d hopped two trains and a bus to visit a friend of hers south of the city.
One more vote for “yeah”. But you need to remember that you can’t extrapolate accurately what kind of adult the baby will grow up to be, mainly because traits like “fussy” or “quiet” can manifest themselves differently in adults.
I have two grown daughters. The oldest was a quiet, “good” baby, perfectly happy to amuse herself. The youngest was a fussy drama queen of a baby, who always needed a ton of input from Mommy. Both of them have grown up to be very…determined, not to say stubborn, young women.
And they’re both very quietly determined. They both listen to advice politely, then go ahead and do what they had in mind all along.
So you’d think that the quiet, good baby would be a pushover, but she’s not. And you’d think the Drama Queen wouldn’t be able to steer a solid course, that she’d be fluctuating between Plan A and Plan B all the time, but she doesn’t.
So don’t be too quick to write off the toddler as a “hellion”, because today’s hellion may be just Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally–“I just want it the way I want it!” She may be saying, “When you wipe my face for me, you aren’t doing it right and I don’t like feeling in control”, not, “I drink your blood! Die babysitter!”
Based off my best friend’s kids, I’d say it’s not necessarily a perfect match.
One of her kids I actively loathed as a baby and toddler - he was always screaming for attention, whining about something, and nothing ever seemed to satisfy him. He’s grown into a very well-balanced child, and I actually like him *best *of all her kids now.
I really wonder now if he was just bored back then. Once he learned to read and do stuff for himself, he suddenly quietened right down and stopped being pissy at the world. He’s a quiet, happy, day-dreamy kind of kid now, who never lacks for stuff to entertain himself.
Just to clarify, 90% of the time she’s a good baby. Generally cheerful, amuses herself easily, most of the time she’s just a smiling little chatterbox. But, as Whynot explained so well, it’s the intensity of her reaction when she’s upset.
I’d say you could break down baby crying into 3 levels: fussing, crying, and screaming.
She doesn’t fuss. She screams. The entire 10 minute bath she screamed so loud that I thought she was going to lose her voice. I routinely say during diaper changes that if she doesn’t stop screaming the neighbors are going to think I’m beating her.
She also has a real attitude. If you tell her No! or take something she shouldn’t have away from her, she gives you a look that can only be described as stank.
My youngest was the most aware infant I have ever seen. In the hospital just after she was born she was studying people with great intent. I don’t care if they say newborns can’t focus. This one could. I have seen a lot of new babies and she was different. Even though she was slow verbally (you would be too if you had a sister to do all your talking for you) it was obvious that she understood very complex concepts. At four my sister asked what her favorite animal was. She expected an answer like doggie or kitty. Squirt started off saying, “My favorite animal in the temperate forest is the grizzly bear, my favorite animal in the artic is the polar bear, my favorite animal in the rainforest is the jaguar…” Now halfway through first grade she has already learned all the words she is supposed to know for this year and more. I knew she was freakishly smart from a very early age.
I would say yes as well and I have two young daughters. My academic focus in undergrad and grad school was behavioral neuroscience and psychology. I get mad just thinking about the crackpot researchers in the early years (meaning up until the early 1970’s). There were some prominent ideas floating around like kids being a blank slate and you can make them whatever you want through environment. That is a load of horseshit that any mother could have told them.
My daughters have very strong personalities and they are both very smart but they aren’t similar at all beyond that. The oldest has been a bold tomboy since birth. We got used to that but her baby sister is one and has a fascination with shoes and women’s fashion magazines. She finds them herself and can entertain herself for hours with those things.
I am told that as a baby I was rather sensitive and cried easily, especially if left alone. Thankfully that didn’t transfer to me becoming clingy as an adult. I am a strongly independent person for the most part, but I do prefer being physically close to people (that I like, of course) rather than being entirely by myself. It just makes me feel better, even if we’re not talking to each other or doing the same activity.
Well… maybe later in life, perhaps, going by what I was like as a baby. I was a chubby, happy, giggly little baby. I grew into a solemn, extremely quick tempered child. Now, as I head into adulthood, I’ve mellowed out considerably since I was a child, but I don’t see myself becoming a bubbly, giggly person anytime soon.
I don’t know if I should say YAY! or YIKES though in that regard. Because while the basic temperment may stay the same, it’s hard to discover what that means, isn’t it? My daughter is perfectly able to entertain herself, sing to herself, talk to herself at 13 months, very independent. But is that good? Will she be a hermit? Will she be running off to LA to be a movie star at 16? She’s very upset when we take things from her like, oh, cords, things made of glass, other things that are “not yours”. She screams like a banshee and looks ANGRY, not sad. But does this mean she’s a brat or someone who won’t be pushed around by others?
Of course I think she’ll be a very musical track star doctor…but that’s entirely up to her
Our little one is a charmer - everyone, even the most crochety “I hate all kids” types, generally loves him. He’s smart and funny, plays nicely with others, is happy, athletic and outgoing. He’s just over two now and I hope he stays this way in personality forever.
