To think people judge character in small children too quickly

[littlebylittle]

Following on from expectations of babies being ridiculously high, does the same thing apply to small children? I'm not saying people should accept or enjoy anti social behaviour in little ones, but people do seem to label children very quickly as 'lovely', 'bruisers', 'biters' etc and some of the labels have a permanent tone about them. My little boy has just come out the other side of a patch where he would sometimes bite and hit. Not acceptable, I never left it un dealt with but my gut said it would pass as he got more language, which it has. Also, I found with my dd that physical behaviours seemed ranked as far worse than the, typically girly, things like excluding. Seems to go along with this general anti boy thing some people have going on. I so rarely hear 'that's girls for you' but the opposite almost daily. Side issue, sorry.

Absolutely. I think we do it as soon as they're born. My 2nd DS was over 10lb, and he gets a lot of "oooh he's very macho" etc etc, because he's bigger. Also, my older DS is more arty, so I think people project a different personality onto subsequent children: "the bookish one", "the sporty one" etc. This was done in my (lovely) family- I am the clever one, my sister is the arty one, brother is the wild one. It's all bollocks.

YABU... children's characters change but there isn't a parent alive that hasn't looked at a toy or an activity of some sort and thought 'that's just my DC's kind of thing' or 'my DC wouldn't like that at all'. How could we do that if we weren't consciously matching these things to their character?

Parents & possibly teachers might be more likely to give children the benefit of the doubt, looking past some current stage of development and more at their future potential etc. But human nature otherwise tends to be that we judge everyone on how we find them on face value, not just children.

Have a neighbour who declares each of her gc in turn is more and more full of temper and will be harder to handle than the older ones. All 3 are under 5.

I think it's kind of writing them off by expecting the worst, a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Its the reinforcement of stereotypes. We like people to fit into the pigeon holes that we create for them, it makes us feel comfortable.

I've never experience anyone being 'anti boy'...and I've got 3 of the Buggers darlings.

What I find is if anyone is going to stereotype, they'll say 'Boys are more physically agressive' and 'Girls are more bitchy/exclusive'

That Baby Whisperer book has personality tests for newborns (all that gubbins about "spritied" "angel" and "textbook" babies.)

Load of old shite.

YANBU.

My DS (3) is being labelled as stubborn by my GPs. Yes he can be but I generally find it is only when he is very over tired and I ask him to do something. All other times he is only too willing to help out and enjoys doing so.

I do have to try and hide a wry smile when people tell me very seriously that their two week old hates dogs or prefers blue or some such rubbish.
I have to say that my DDs grandmothers are the worst and from birth the children have been labelled as resembelling ancestors, having piano players fingers or being a tarj [?] because of their Fife-ish blood.