North American Ed - Coping and competence

1.2 Individual differences

In the scenario above, you read about three children, Sula, Ashraf and Jamel, all the same age, living in the same neighbourhood, having the same experience – yet they responded quite differently. Each child’s reactions and responses are based on his or her arousal and recovery to an incoming stressor. They have individual self-regulation patterns.

The late Sir Michael Rutter, formerly at King’s College London, had a profound influence in the fields of genetics and psychiatry for more than forty years. He points to the importance of recognizing each child’s individuality.

In the next clip (which also appears on the Brain Develoment page on brain architecture), Rutter explains the role of biology in understanding the development of individuals.

Responding to stress

All of us, including babies and small children, vary in terms of how we respond to stressful events, large and small. Each person’s ability to cope, to regulate emotion, behaviour and attention is influenced by differences in brain and body reactions to challenges and new situations. As explained in detail in the Brain Development module, our stress reactivity system is set early in life. For a quick review, see the following reading on stress biology, from p. 2.3 in the Brain Development module. The webpage that follows, from the Centre for Studies on Human Stress, provides a concise look at the biology of stress. See other pages on that website for other topics.

Dr. Megan Gunnar, professor and former director of the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, studies stress levels in humans by measuring concentrations of cortisol, a stress hormone that is secreted in saliva. Listen as Gunnar explains these stressors, and the difference between tolerable and intolerable stress.

In the following clip, Gunnar explains how she studies stress by collecting spit, and we see children playing “the tasting game”:

Having a caring adult nearby to help children cope and reduce their anxiety is especially important when children are in unfamiliar settings or going through frightening situations. In the following video, Dawn Kidder, a child life specialist at Children’s Hospital in Winnipeg for over 32 years, explains how a child’s relationship with an adult primary caregiver helps to reduce the child’s anxiety about a medical procedure. Watch a demonstration of the hug-hold technique.

In the next clip, Gunnar discusses some of the physiology of stress in terms of brain function and the importance of developing a healthy adaptive stress response.

In the next video, Kidder describes techniques that adults can explore with children to help them cope with with stressful situations such as undergoing a medical procedure. Kidder discusses potential coping strategies with a five year old boy to help him prepare for having a needle.

Temperament

Temperament refers to children’s emotionality, activity and attention. It can be defined as individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation (Rothbart, 2019). A temperamental bias refers to patterns of feelings based in a child’s biology and appear early in development (Kagan, 2019). Temperament is inextricably linked to children’s stress reactivity and to the development of self-regulation.

Earlier understandings of temperament grouped children into three broad categories: the easy child, the slow-to-warm-up child and the difficult child. Drs. Alexander Thomas, Stella Chess, and Herbert Birch studied children’s temperament extensively and identified nine dimensions of temperament that could be summarized into these three broad categories.

Temperament is an individual difference that influences how we react to situations, interactions and environments. Understanding temperamental differences has a tremendous impact on caregiving and teaching, as it helps to make sense of children’s feelings and actions.

Temperament research highlights that children’s behaviour and emotions are not entirely determined by their experience and early environments. From birth, children differ in their reactivity and self-regulation and follow different pathways to developmental outcomes even when they share the similar experiences.

While all individuals are born with a tendency towards a particular set of temperamental characteristics, the social environment influences the expression of these characteristics. The terms “goodness of fit” and “the match” are commonly used to describe the temperamental similarities and differences between parent and child.

In the following video, Dr. Joan Durrant describes the importance of parents and caregivers understanding “the match” between parents and caregivers and the children that they support.

In this next clip, Dr. Stuart Shanker describes ways to understand the temperament “dance”.

Next, view this clip of Greta as she tries hard to get her mother’s attention. As you watch, Greta and her mother note the various dimensions of temperament.