Читать книгу The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping our children thrive when the world overwhelms them - Elaine N. Aron, Elaine N. Aron Ph.D. - Страница 35

Interestingly, researchers find that whatever a family does do to influence a child’s personality, it affects each child differently, as if each is growing up in a completely different family. Some of this is due to the parents being in a different situation when each child is born, and some of it is that each child is different so parents respond differently, or conversely, the same parenting methods may affect two children quite differently, depending on their temperaments. Probably most parents are not “good” or “bad” so much as they are specialists, naturally working well with some temperaments more than others.

The implication is that if you have more than one child, one may thrive in your care, another may not do as well. But research also finds that a little understanding and training can affect that greatly—“goodness of fit” matters more than parent and child having the same temperament. A good fit is a family and school environment that supports and encourages a child’s natural way of behaving. In one family, a quiet artist who does not like sports will be considered ideal. In another, this child will be a huge disappointment. But there is always a good fit when parents accept their children for who they are, then adapt their methods to suit the child. Studies in which parents are trained to understand their child’s temperament consistently find that the children of these parents have far fewer problems.

One way to describe this book is to say it is essentially about what you can do to create a good fit between you and your child. Since each of you are individuals, this book will sometimes miss something important about one or both of you. That is why I am saying right here that it is smart to have a top-notch temperament counselor or therapist aware of temperament to whom you can turn while raising your HSC. That way you do not have to go looking for someone when you feel you’re in a crisis. You have a professional to help you with your taxes or when buying a house. Why not with parenting?

This book can, however, take you a long way with your HSC, because there is so much that HSCs have in common that most “child experts” do not know. We will begin with one of the big ones: To create a “good fit” you must learn to appreciate your child’s excruciating sensitivity to you, the One in Charge. Fortunately, although I did not know it, I had been forced to appreciate this reality even before I had my own HSC.