Who Am I Raising?: Parenting Different Personalities

by NoSorry Parent Lisa

No Child is Exactly Alike

One of the best parts about having my kids grow into their young adult selves is watching who they are becoming. My oldest son has unshakeable grit, and I love watching this character trait lead him to success, even as it sometimes rubs people the wrong way. My second son tends to go with the flow, not minding if he is not getting top grades, generally having the smile of a peacemaker and the security of someone to whom others are naturally attracted. My youngest daughter is a spitfire for sure, since the day she was born! I know she will hold her own as she grows up, because she has never had a problem letting the people around her know just exactly what she thinks! They are all so unique that it makes parenting quite the interesting adventure. A lecture that might work for one would roll off the back of another. The disappointment that might floor one into paralysis might motivate another to rise to the challenge. No child is alike, and so therefore, no parenting approach can be exactly alike, at least not if you want to maximize effectiveness with your children! We need to look at who our kids are as we choose our parenting approaches.

The Raw Material That Makes Us Who We Are

When discussing our purpose at NoSorry.org, we spent hours researching just why women tend to make themselves subservient to the people around them.  And while these efforts have yielded plenty of useful information, it is nevertheless important to realize that this is not actually a problem for EVERY woman.  As a matter of fact, I was able to look at my own life and see this phenomenon for myself. While I grew up trying to please people and be generally likeable to those around me, subverting my own desires or opinions in order to keep the peace, my very own sister, who was raised by the same parents and with the same household rules, norms, and guiding principals, was very different. She did not worry about what people thought when she shared her opinions, because to her, her thoughts deserved to be given oxygen. She did not hesitate to scrap with someone who needed some scrapping. She fearlessly took on leadership roles in multiple areas of her life, and still leads groups of women even today! She was born strong-willed, strong-tempered, and with a firm sense of self. Same household, same conditions, and yet two very different women emerged. 

When we look at how we need to approach the raising of our children, it is very important to understand that their raw material is already there! It has existed since the moment they were born. Our role as parents, therefore, is to sand the rough edges of these personalities and tendencies. We are not going to change them, so we need to learn who we are working with, accept it, and see how we can best prepare them for the world, just the way they are!

Using Who They Are to Inform Our Parenting Approach

It is important to know whether our kids’ behaviors are stemming from a personality trait or from a particular situation itself. For instance, if we have a young daughter who does not wish to talk to new people, is this because she is shy in the moment, or is it because she is characteristically an introvert? If she is an introvert, this is a fundamental part of her personality, and our job as a parent would then be to show her how to balance this character trait with the ability to still make and retain friendships in her life. However, if she is avoiding people because of situational shyness, then there might be an underlying anxiety about the situation, and our role as her parents would then be to help her figure out potential strategies for managing this particular moment. We as parents need to figure out where this aversion to talking to new people stems from in order to know how to best help our child navigate the situation.

This can be seen in many different areas. Is our kid’s reaction to having their trip to the park canceled huge and overwhelming because she is a naturally more reactive person, or is she typically an easy going person, so therefore the unusual, uncharacteristic reaction is probably coming from a situationally-related place that should be further examined? If our kid does not care about his grades, is it because he has a personality that isn’t easily bothered by anything in general, or is it because something bigger is going on that has supplanted his natural striving for success, and therefore needs to be addressed differently? We need to KNOW our kids in order to know how to best parent them in each situation!

In all instances, our job is to parent. Just because we have a kid who generally does not care about academics does not give us permission to shrug our shoulders and give up on him! On the contrary, it means we just have to parent smarter. This is the intellectual part of parenting: we must continually evaluate and strategize, then evaluate the effectiveness of our implemented strategy, and then modify as necessary! If our kid does not care about school inherently, then it is our job to give him a reason to care! Whether it is positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, creating a “future pull” that our kid can buy into, or investing in additional resources, like tutors, to help move him along, we can choose from many different approaches to the problem. As their parent, nobody is better equipped to know which motivation is going to be the best at reaching the raw personality that makes our kids who they are. There is truly no one-size-fits-all approach.

Taking Parent Personalities Into Account

We as parents are ourselves very human. We have our own personalities that might affect our approaches toward our children. Some of us are riddled with anxiety, while others are very laid back, and still others have their own tendencies toward depression or aggression or ambition or laziness or perfectionism or control. We run the gamut, just like our children! Sometimes our personalities dovetail nicely with those of our children, whether it is because of our similarities with them or because of key differences that end up complementing each other. In other instances, there might exist a fundamental clash of personalities with our children that will probably always be there.

Our goal is to be able to be who we naturally are as humans, but also to parent our children effectively as THEY are. It isn’t always easy, but we as parents must continually attempt to overcome (or use!) our own fundamental differences with our children in order to raise them as best we can. We may never fully understand the motivations of a certain child, but we still need to give them the absolute best we have to offer in terms of love and support. Once we accept who they are, no matter how different they may be from ourselves, then we can figure out how to parent them intelligently and not reactionarily. 

Self-Confidence Can Look Different Based on Personality

Lastly, because at NoSorry.org we focus so heavily on raising the self-confidence levels of our daughters, I wanted to note that self-confidence can manifest in different ways based on personality. A self-confident girl might be the one who speaks up the most, but this is not always true. She may just be masking insecurities that exist due to her basic temperament. Alternatively, while quietness within a girl is often interpreted as lacking in self-confidence, it can instead be coming from a place of strength, for she might just be confident enough in her thoughts that she does not feel a need to share them for validation from others.

 Self-confidence can look like the daughter who tries out for the cheerleading team, but it can also look like the girl who knows herself enough to know that she absolutely does not want to be on the cheerleading team. It can look like the daughter that talks back when someone confronts her, but it can also look like the daughter who quietly moves on, feeling no need to respond as the words have already rolled off her back.  

Self-confidence does not always look alike. People demonstrate their self-confidence differently based on their personality traits. We as parents must first have an understanding of who our daughters are and what their baseline temperament is to then be able to tell if they are struggling with self-confidence, and all of that can then form our approach towards helping our daughters grow up to be self-confident women one day! 

Analyzing Our Children’s Temperament

I wanted to include this awesome list of nine primary characteristics that make up human temperament. This is a tool for evaluating your child’s basic temperament. Please remember, there is no judgement attached to any of these characteristics; they are morally neutral. For instance, having a positive or negative mood is neither good nor bad, it is just information! The purpose of the list is solely to gain a greater understanding of the raw material that makes our children who they are so that we as parents can then turn around and learn how best to approach parenting them. After all, they are not going to change, so we have to parent the children we have! 

9 Characteristics that Make Up Temperament

1. Activity Level - the level of physical activity, motion, restlessness, or fidgety behavior that a child shows daily
2. Rhythmicity or Regularity - the presence or absence of regular patterns for basic physical functions like appetite, sleep, or bowel movements
3. Approach and Withdrawal - the way that your child first responds to new stimuli (people, places, food, changes in routine, etc.)
4. Adaptability - how easily a child adjusts to change or a new situation
5. Intensity level - the level to which a child responds to a situation both positively and negatively
6. Mood - how positive or negative a child tends to be
7. Attention Span - the ability to concentrate and stay with a task
8. Distractibility - how easily a child is distracted
9. Sensory Threshold - the amount of stimulation required for a child to respond

Resources

Healthychildren.org “Understanding Your Child’s Temperament: Why It’s Important”

Martinelli, Katherine. "Helping Young Children who are Socially Anxious.” Child Mind Institute.

Wilson, Amy and Ables, Margaret. “Why Are Some Kids Shy?” What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. Ep. 456, 2/18/2026.