Child Temperament Chapter Summary

In David Rettew’s TED talk, “Child Temperament: How We Start to Become Ourselves,” he defines what child temperament is, where it came from, how it could be developed over time, and how parents should respond to their children’s temperaments (Rettew, 2015). Children contain different temperaments, such as being anxious, angry, or calm (Rettew, 2015). According to twin studies, 50-60 percent of temperament is genetics, while the rest of the percentage comes from other influences, such as from the environment (Rettew, 2015). The type of environment a child is exposed to could influence a child’s temperament by them adapting certain traits to test if they are a good fit for that environment (Rettew, 2015). There is a correlation between the environment

Dr. Rettew connects to class discussions and readings on shared and unshared environmental influences, evocative gene environment correlation, temperament, and the goodness-of-fit. Twins that with unshared environmental influences, such as different placentas, could adapt different temperaments (Berk, 2009). Also, twins that have been adopted into separate families could have different personality traits because they lived in completely different environments their whole life, even if they shared environmental influences of the same placenta (Berk, 2009). With an evocative gene environment correlation, a child’s genotype could draw in a certain type of environment, such as babies who appear more attractive will receive more attention (Berk, 2009). The type of attention a child gets could affect its temperament. Temperament is relatively stable at birth, but during preschool years the goodness-of-fit between the child’s temperament and the parenting style could produce favorable outcomes (Berk, 2009). For example, parents with a goodness-of-fit could respond to their child in a sensitive manner if they are frustrated or angry (Berk, 2009). Temperament has many other influences other than it being genetically, and Dr. Rettew highlights most of these