Temperament

The idea of temperament resonates with parents of infants and very young children who observe how their children respond to new encounters in [Page 1352]their world. Defined as an individual behavior style that is both biologically and environmentally determined, temperament is most often understood through the three types first identified in the research of Alexander Thomas, Stella Chess, and Herbert Birch in 1970 and maintained throughout their research into the 1990s:

• Easy children are positive in mood, adaptable, and moderate in their reactions, enjoy regularity in feeding, sleeping, and bodily functions, and have a positive approach to new situations.
• Difficult children are negative in mood, often irritable, slow to adapt to change, intense in their reactions, and often irregular in bodily functions, withdraw from new situations, and ...