Parenting On Purpose;
Personality, Temperament and Character.
By Troy L Parrish.

I recently had a discussion with a fellow who has suffered a significant amount of disillusionment about life. He was beginning to understand that a big part of the problem for him was that he has not been intentional in living his life. Instead he has allowed life to simply set its own course. He noted that he needed to start living life with more intention or being more purposeful in what he did and in the choices he makes. Parenting is also something that needs to be done on purpose, it shouldn't be something that happens simply because we have children and it certainly shouldn't be something that is done as a reaction to what our children do. Hopefully most of us have spent some time considering what it really means to parent and have some ideas as what we wish to accomplish in the lives of our children. This thoughtful approach to parenting would suggest that parenting on purpose first requires us to be mindful when it comes to parenting, both in our preparation and in how we actually go about the art of parenting (I say art because parenting certainly isn't a science!). This mindfulness would dictate that we are not reactive in our parenting, allowing the behavior of our children to set the course but that we need to be proactive. In order to be proactive, we must also have goals as a part of our parenting. Goals determine what it is that we are actually trying to accomplish in the lives of our children. These goals of course are shaped by our values and convictions, those things that we wish to pass onto our children. And finally, proper parenting requires that we have a plan. Any set of goals need also a plan in order to effectively pursue the goals.

Maybe an illustration will help to demonstrate the importance of mindfulness, goals and a plan. If you were going to build something you do so on purpose, you do so mindfully. Building something may be in response to some event or need that presents itself, but it not done on an impulse, it is not the result of a sudden reaction to a situation or need. Because you were building something either for your enjoyment or as a result of a presented need, there is an implied overall goal (an extra room in the basement or a tool shed in the backyard) as well as other smaller goals (move the tools out of the garage!). In order to pursue these goals you would undoubtably need a plan or set of plans in order to effectively build something. Without the plans you may be able to build what you invision but you are going to running into unaticipated obstacles all the time, becuase you will constantly be stopping to figure out what is next, the material you will need and undoing somethings that really don't work with what you thought would but don't really fit in the plan. In raising children, in a very real sense, we are building adults, it takes years but we are building adults. You do need to 1) Be mindful or Purposeful 2) Have clear goals and 3) Have plans that enable the pursuit of your goals.

Of course parenting is more than simply getting our children to behave well. No parent would endorse a statement such as "I will consider myself a successful parent if my kid simply behaves well." Certainly good behavior is one goal that we have for our parenting. But the larger goal is the development of our children as individuals. We want to develop in them a skill set such as education, job skills and social skills. But there is also the personal development, who they are becoming as people. We often describe people outside of their skills in terms of their personality. He has a caring personality or he is outgoing in his personality. But what exactly is personality?

Pesonality can be defined as the complex interplay of all the attributes--behavior, temperament, character and mental (our internal thought life)--that characterize a unique individual. In shaping our children, are we shaping their personality or is personality preset, predetermined and the best we can do is to temper that personality? You will notice in the definition that there are several aspects to personality, disctict components that interact to form what we term personality. The first in the list is behavior. We know that behavior is determined by what a person believes, feels and chooses. In other words, behavior is a result of other factors that occur within an individual that are not directly seen. We often infer these elements (feelings, beliefs etc) from a persons behavior because we know these things drive behavior. Looking again at the definition of personality, you will notice that the last aspect of personality listed is thoughts. While thoughts can be drivers of behavior and can occur spontaneously (boy I sure could go for a milkshake!), thoughts can also be shaped, influenced by outside forces; after all the pen is mighter than the sword. We also assume to a great degree that how we think is shaped by our own experience and the personality that we have. If behavior can be influenced as well as thought, what about the other two elements of personality from our definition, those being temperament and character.

Temperament is most often assumed to be that aspect of a person that does not change. Research that study people across cultures find certain aspects of human beings that remain consistent regardless of differences in culture. One such quality in people that seems consistent across all cultures is wether a person is introverted or extroverted. In other words, it doesn't matter were you go in the world you will find people who are introverted as well as finding people who are extroverted. What this means is that this is a quality in people that is not dependent on the environment, circumstances or training. Other example of temperament qualities are boldness, cautiousness, irritability, being docile, reactivity, and passivity. Regardless of how much work or effort goes into shaping a child, these temperment qualities will also be a part of who they are. A child who is cautious will always be cautious and a child who is outgoing will always be an outgoing person.

The final aspect of our definition is character. Character in the sense of how we are discussing it can be defined as an account of the qualities or peculiarities of a person. Character, in constrast to temperament, can be shaped and taught. Examples of character are honesty, dillegence, laziness, decietfulness, caring, thoughfulness, and selfishness. A child doesn't really need much encouragement to be selfish but through indulgence this character trait can be increased. Children also can be naturally giving and this character trait can be increased as well through training. It is this aspect of our children that is most important to work on in their development. If a child's behavior is controlled, we can say he is well behaved but we know little of his character, but if his character is well developed, we can be assured that he will be well behaved, wether we are watching or not. If our child is passive in his temperament, by training him to be dilligent and responsible we can shape the passivity so that when he matures he will not be allow important matters to go unaddressed. If our boy is a take charge person, we can train him to be encouraging so that he doesn't trample on others in his eagerness to get things done. If he is more reserved we can teach him to be polite and courageous so that he can socialize well and form good relationships. In fact, the development of character has the effect of allowing our child to express his temperment in ways that are healthy, constructive and God honoring.

How do we teach character? We teach character by example, through lessons, through discipline, through opportunities and through encouragement. Do we demonstrate the type of character that we would want in our children? Are we purposeful in the development of our own character? Lesson are the things that we teach directly to our children, in talking to them, in what we point out in others and in society, what we read to them and what we didactically give to them. We also shape character by discipling our children. Is your discipline an effort to get your son to behave or is it to train your son? Our discipline needs to be goal oriented, we want it to accomplish more than the cessation of the current misbehavior. Because of this requirement to discipline, it is often more work than we would like. But in the long run, purpose driven discipline makes our jobs as parents easier, reactive discipline will only lead to frustration later on for both parent and child. We also need to seek oportunities to build character. Oporutinities to serve, exercise patience or to fulfill responsibility, when presented properly, appeal to children and help them develop the character that will serve them well in their future. Finally, we can shape character through encouragement. Our children will display good character qualities. When they do, we want to make the most of this opportunity to encourage the behavior and the character quality it reflects. By developing our child's character, we are taking a huge step towards parenting on purpose.