Should you, could you, would you try to change your child's personality?

[MrsDistinctlyMintyMonetarism]

I love my dd(7) to pieces. She is my pfb and I would skin a lion for her.

But she is one of the world's most negative people and has been ever since she could talk.

I would love for this to be an exaggeration but I swear it is true.

One day we were having a picnic. Lovely day, nice picnic [smug] dc behaving. It was lovely. I made a comment about the beautiful blue sky. DD pointed to a very small cloud a significant distance away "But look at that big grey cloud Mummy, it will rain later." [head slap]

I try very hard to find the positive in stuff as there has been so much research done about optimists living longer etc and although it was tricky to start with it has become easier (a habit, I suppose).

Before you all jump down my throat, I haven't tried to change her. She is still as melancholy and glass almost empty half empty as ever. My ds(5) is Mr Optimism on the other hand, which has it's own peculiarities!

It's a theoretical question, ok? Does your dc have a character trait that you see as undesirable? Have you tried to do anything about it?

[YoureaKITTY]

I agree that you can't push a person to be an extrovert when they're not, but there's actually huge scope for improving "distorted negative thoughts". Linky.

This is a massive focus of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which has been proven to be really successful for anxiety and depression. I'm of the view that just like you're taught how to throw a ball correctly in PE lessons, parents should teach their kids how not to think "wrongly" too as part of life lessons. It could save your child a lot of distress in the future, and it doesn't have to be therapy-esque at all, just talking about how else you might view a situation when things like that come up.

[hurlingpurrdish]

My child is a bit like this. I got this -

www.amazon.co.uk/Optimistic-Child-Safeguard-Depression-Resilience/dp/0618918094?tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21

and thought it had a lot of good ideas in it. Sort of pre-emptive CBTish things to get kids with a tendency to depressive thinking to look at things that happen in a different way. As I was a depressed teen and twenty-something I'm keen to give my kids some resilience in that area and some ways of challenging their bleakest thoughts with more realistic ones (note that's 'more realistic', not 'more fluffy and feelgood'). I do actually see some value in defensive pessimism at times, but not all the time. I don't see giving a child ways of challenging negative automatic thoughts as changing their personality though.

I agree about how exhausting it can be to live with constant negativity, too, and I worry about how that will affect my child in later life in making friends. I think even if they can't feel more positive themselves it could be useful for them to learn the social skill of keeping at least some of their negative thoughts private!

[ScousyFogarty]

Lots of good post, No conclusions

[lunar1]

I like this thread it really makes you think. I would never try to change who my son is, but I recognize in him difficulties I had as a child. i was scared of everything, completely neurotic and i really suffered as a child because of it. without question the way my mum managed it made it much worse than needed. I can see it in the way she interacts with DS.

examples are, she tried to take me swimming once at 2, I screamed for 5 minutes she got me out the pool and that was the last time I went swimming till I was 9 and started with school. I started ds swimming at 2 he screamed for the first 10 minutes then was fine, after we had been about 6 times he really enjoyed it and there were no tears. Now 6 months later he asks several times a day to go swimming! The first few times we went it was really hard work and stressful, now he jumps in and can get right across the pool with his armbands on.

My mum tells me that we spent most of our time in the house as i was scared of going out and meeting new people. All I ate as a child was snacks as i didn't like healthy food. I went to see a pantomime at 4 was taken out after 5 minutes as i was scared.

I could go on and on with examples of everything i apparently couldn't do because i was too scared. I was never at any point pushed or encouraged to try something different. I was also encouraged to be scared of everything mum was scared of, spiders, water, dentists (we didn't even go till i was 8) again i could go on.

While I wont ever try to change my son, i wont pass on all my rubbish to him. whenever we try new thinks he has a tantrum for five minutes then gets over it and is fine, if mum is with us she tells me we should go home, if he pulls a face at food when we are out she asks if he wants ice-cream, when i tell her no he then eats whatever is on his plate. I heard her tell him last weekend that he couldn't play out as she had seen a spider through the patio doors and they were scary and dangerous (yes we are in the uk!).

It's a real shame as it has meant i have never really been able to leave him with her alone, the last time I did was for 2.5 hours when i had a hospital appointment. I came home by 10am I asked what they had done she said he wouldn't have breakfast so had some chocolate buttons instead and he wouldn't do his teeth as it was messy. I then asked him to come outside in the garden and he told me it had scary spiders.

I want him to enjoy the world not be terrified of it as I was, I just remind myself to respect his personality and wouldn't force him to so something he really didn't like but at the same time i wont actively teach him to be scared. easier said than done sometimes, especially when i'm handed a giant snake at the museum and had so smile and say how lovely it was while ds stroked it!

[ScousyFogarty]

I agree with you Zombie, but I can see that some so-called successful people will try to push their children in that direction. Sports men often seem to have compeititive sons and daughtersAnd it goes down the line

[ZombiePlan]

I think that people should allow their children to be the person they are, not try to make them be the person they want them to be. There's a world of difference between correcting bad behaviour and implying that a personality is "bad" or unlikeable. One should never ever let one's child think that a different child, or type of child, would be preferred over them.

[lesley33]

Agree with other posters that you can't change personality but can modify behaviours.

But the research around health and optimism is more nuanced. Basically when you are younger, optimists tend to have better health. When they are older optimists tend to have worse health than pessimists.

It has not been proven why although there are some theories e.g. That as you get older, health complaints tend to be more serious. Optimists have a tendency to work and do things when they are still ill. Fine when you are younger and health problems tend to be more minor, but if older and seriously ill this can be seriously bad for you.

Also a tiny bit of evidence (not conclusive) that optimists tend to be much slower to go to their GP with unexplained symptoms than pessimists. Obviously if it is a symptom of a serious undiagnosed illnes, then a delay in diagnosis can have a major impact on your health.

There is also research around that shows pessimists are actually far better at analysing risk or seeing things as they are, than optimists.

I am an optimist and I imagine a DS who is pessimistic can be annoying. But being a pessimist in itself, isn't automatically a bad thing.

[LaWeasel]

I don't know!

DD is only 2, but she's had a stubborn streak a mile wide since the day she was born. She won't be taught anything at all. She has to work it out for herself.

Which is extremely like me, and something I had to force myself out of because being able to accept help is an important thing.

[AbsDuCroissant]

I think you can, to an extent, change a person (don't have DCs, but thinking about the continual improve-DP project ) but you have to be very careful about it, and think deeply about your reasons for doing it. When you say "I wish you could be more cheery" for e.g., it can be heard as "my love for you is conditional on you being more cheery". I think to an extent you have to just accept that your child/people in your life is very different to you. I've had nearly 30 years of my mother wanting me to be someone I'm not, and a) it's depressing and b) makes me feel very resentful of her.

For e.g., I don't garden. I don't even have a garden and I've never knowingly managed to keep a plant alive. The other day she says to me "when I die [very common refrain], I want you to make sure you get my new spade for gardening".

[edam]

People change, especially children. There are personality traits that are consistent, but there is also the possibility of organic change as you develop and encounter new experiences. I'm not the same person now as I was at 7 and I doubt any of you are. (Although as I say, some things are consistent.)

A realistic outlook is useful in some fields. The banking crash might have been averted had employers valued analytical skills, doubters and realists as much as aggressive over-optimistic macho types. I think science needs a mix of optimism, creativity and realism, while actuaries need to weigh up all the negatives. Engineers need to think of all the risks and account for them to work out how to make a bridge stay up.

Troisgarcon, do you know many journalists (sorry, don't know how to do the proper French squiggle on a Mac keyboard)? And how old is your son? You do need a wide vocabulary for journalism but literary ability isn't strictly necessary ? it's nice to have but I'm not convinced the average sports journalist is a particularly creative writer. And there's not always much call for creative writing in news - great to have but not an entry requirement IMO (as a working journalist). More important in features. Do you think he has the capacity to widen his vocabulary or to work on his writing? Obviously I haven't read his writing so you may be perfectly right in your view of his abilities, but I've come across quite a few people who think creative writing skills are essential for journalism, and they aren't always.

[LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726]

Just had a thought... What if you keep telling your DD that she's a lovely girl who makes you so happy just because she's who she is... lots of smiling and jollying. Would it rub off, do you think?

[manicbmc]

Can I exchange my grumpy teenager for one that doesn't complain every second of the day? We're off to visit a cat at a rescue centre and she's moaning about her make up not being right. I'm quite sure the cat won't mind.

[LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726]

Maybe it's a coping mechanism for your DD, MrsDistinctly? It's like 'tempting fate' but by focusing on the negative, she's using it as a 'talisman' against that event actually happening because she's already considered it.

I'm going to be using Colditz's suggestions on my Mum... I'm a glass overflowing kind of person and I find my energy zapped after a visit.

Tuesday's child is full of grace, so you're ok there, by the way. Wedneday's child is full of woe... that's why I asked. :)

[Punkatheart]

My father was known for his gloominess.

An example:

'Do you remember that lovely little rabbit out playing on the field?'

'Yes dad.'

'Fox had it.'

Some people don't grow out of it!

[MrsDistinctlyMintyMonetarism]

Sorry for not coming back to the thread earlier - is dc bedtime here in Oz.

I love Colditz's reply and will definitely be trying that one in future.

QuackQuack my uncle (mum's brother) is like this too. It is massively wearing to call and know that there will be a 20 minute whinge about how terrible the world is.

Lying she was born on a Tuesday. Horrid birth that ended in emcs under GA. The midwife said that she glared at her as she was pulled out - 'she's been here before and she's not pleased about it' was often said when she was tiny.

I really like kickingkings idea of a positive journal. Will definitely try that.

The strange thing is when we moved to Australia (here for 2 years) I was very worried about her. Ironically she has settled far more easily than my ds who I thought was fairly bulletproof.

[ScousyFogarty]

WORDFACTORY

"Lead from the front" is an interesting term Does this mean the children have a choice or not? (I suppose at some age they are allowed to have it their way?)

these are difficult questions.

[ScousyFogarty]

The wife would ban me if I tried drinking and computing.

[wordfactory]

As a mother of twins I would say many personality traits are genetic.

However, I do think you can train yourself into more positive thinking...and you can certainly train children to look for positive outcomes. But you have to lead from the front...

[youmeatsix]

but there WAS cloud, she wasnt being negative, she was being truthful
i speak as a parent who has questioned which one of us is correct, myself, or my son (who sounds a lot like the OPs daughter)

my glass is half full
his? its not half empty or half full, its the wrong size!:o

waaaaaaay easier to accept than change, another lesson long since learned

[LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726]

Please write a script, Colditz... We have weather and whales and syringes down... just the rest now.

[SummerRain]

dd has a tendency towards wailing as if she's being skinned alive at the slightest affront. I'm trying very hard to stop that particular trait tbh. She also has a habit of mumbling at you as if she's the shyest quietest girl you've ever met (which is about as far from the truth as possible) so we do make her speak properly when she starts that nonsense as she's completely unintelligible when she does it.

ds1 is a lazy git of the highest order.... ask him to do anything and you get 'I'm toooo tired' or 'I don't know how'. I'd definitely change that!

ds2 is only little but he's got such a short fuse... if anything doesn't go exactly the way he wants he loses the plot.... I'm terrified of that trait staying to adulthood!

[sausagesandmarmelade]

Seriously...it can get quite wearing when you make a positive comment about the weather (or something else) and then someone else puts a dampner on things...very frustrating.

So I think Colditz's response re the weather...storms, whales, getting eaten up was absolultely hilarious...and one that I shall definitely use!!!

[crystalglasses]

I used to be more of a glass half empty person until I met someone who was very much into positive thinking and it rubbed off on me and it taught me a lot about the effect of positivity on myself and relationships with others.

Teenagers are the worse for negative thinking - I'm sure they do it deliberately to wind the rest of us up.

[sausagesandmarmelade]

Colditz...have to say I am crying with laughter at your response!



Might use that tactic meself!

[ScousyFogarty]

Experts say a childs basic character is formed by 5. (I doubt it.)

But the Chinese have children training for sport at 3. (Doesit make you cringe?)

ENglish schools say there will be rigour. (or maybe Rigor) at an early age.
Are they going Chinese?