Born that way?

"She is completely hyper - she can never finish anything."

"He's painfully shy - he'll never make friends."

"She's so stubborn - she just never gives in."

Such everyday comments made by parents about their children may be said lightly, but do they contain an essence of truth which - if taken on board - would help parents socialise their children better? Do children have a fixed temperament which defines them throughout childhood and moulds their adult personality? If so, is there a way to work with such characteristics for the benefit of the child?

Educationalist Rudolf Steiner suggested that there are four basic temperaments which children can fit into in later childhood; although he didn't believe such temperaments were fixed and would remain the same throughout adult life, he suggested an understanding of temperament can help parents and teachers guide children as individuals.

The four temperaments Steiner describes are the choleric, the sanguine, the phlegmatic and the melancholic (see panel). While the names go back to ancient Greece, educationalist and writer John B. Thomson suggests their concepts are entirely contemporary. Thomson also notes that a child's temperament is usually a combination of two or three and stresses the importance of identifying the dominant one. "This can sometimes be done by observing which temperament is missing," he writes in Natural Childhood: A Practical Guide to the First Seven Years (Gaia Books). "It is not the aim to suppress or alter the temperament," Thomson writes. "We help the child by making her aware of what she feels inclined to ignore, through her temperament."

Dr Sheila Greene, senior lecturer in psychology at Trinity College Dublin, agrees that you can recognise temperamental styles in children. "Such temperaments are not necessarily fixed and it depends on how you handle the child and what experiences they encounter. Also, some children are less easily typed, while others have strong temperamental characteristics, " she says. "Part of getting to know your child is seeing how the child reacts to stress and novelty," she adds. The parent's own personality will also be a factor in how the child's temperament develops. For example, a parent who can't handle an extremely boisterous child will have a much different influence on that child than one who celebrates and rejoices in such boisterousness.

"Some parents can become anxious about children with a high level of activity and see it as something which has to be squashed, because it wasn't part of their own experience as a child. However, other parents who differ from their child yet show a sensitivity and maturity towards the child can work against their own personal style to enable their child's style to develop," Greene says. Such interactions, according to Greene, don't necessarily have to give free rein to difficult characteristics, but they can encourage seemingly negative traits to become more positive ones. "Impulsiveness can become something spontaneous rather than something dangerous or reckless, she says. "A child who is more withdrawn can be seen to be reflective, observant and participating in his own quiet way, rather than `retreating from the world'."

Child and adolescent psychologist and psychotherapist Sherry Doyle adds a note of caution. While agreeing that it is important for a parent to recognise a child's temperament and get to know their baby's personality right from the start, she also points out the importance of not overlabeling a child. "Sometimes children can become what a parent says they are," Doyle says. "They can grow into those characteristics and families have to be very careful. Often what is happening is that a parent sees or fears in their child a quality that they have seen in themselves and they think that by pointing it out, it will go away - whereas the opposite can be the case."