He refuses to brush his teeth, adamantly opposes wearing clothes, and falls to the floor with a tantrum when you ask him to pick up his backpack.
And that’s all before breakfast.
Some children experience everything in their lives with such intensity that their reactions understandably exhaust parents.
At the same time, other children move through their days with little reaction at all. These easy-going kids take life as it comes and rarely throw a fit.
Parents of intense children wish their kids could just take it easy for once, but alas—every encounter is fraught with passion with their own tightly-wired kids.
Several parents recently compared their very intense children. They wondered if there wasn’t one more strategy they could try which would magically turn their whirling dervishes into placid angels.
But a hard truth of parenting is that you have to keep doing the right thing day after day, often without obvious “success.” Even if you could do the right thing every time with an intense child, life may still be messy and difficult.
Over time your consistent efforts help your child build the skill set she’ll ultimately need for healthy adulthood. You’re teaching her to recognize and control her reactions and to eventually manage her responses. Without your support, her temperament would be a hindrance to her, but with your guidance, she’ll get a handle on how to use it as an asset.
Intensity can be a gift to adults who employ it to achieve success in their pursuits. CEOs and senators are mostly intense people who’ve learned to channel their passion into a work ethic that enables them to excel. It’s an intense temperament that leads a chemist to work all night in a lab to get a formula right, or a writer to hole up for days pounding out the story he longs to tell. The greatest advances of our civilization ride on the backs of intense folks who can’t rest until they change the world.
If your intense child has you questioning your own parenting competence, step back and imagine what he may one day achieve with all that passion. And then strap yourself in for the rest of your wild ride together.
