Parenting Vs Personality

It's an age old question that began long ago with Adam and Eve...I am almost certain! Anyone who is a parent has pondered this thought and would like to blame the Personality side of the debate. Those of you without kids think there is nothing to ponder and would gladly pin it all on the Parents! Here is your chance to set the record straight with my own little study in psychology. After reading this, please post your answers in the Comments section, where I will be closely studying and comparing the Parent to Non-Parent responses!

Before Harrison I was convinced that there were no bad kids, only bad parents. And what I couldn't do if only I could just get hold of some of those brats in the mall for a couple of days...I'd straighten them right out! Sure is nice to be child-free and have all the answers! Then June 2002 hit and in enters Hurricane Harrison, centre stage, Prince Harry~King of the Castle!!! Well wasn't I humbled!? I now know for sure God does have a sense of humour! It was like He was waiting for me to pro-create so He could show me "what for!" Judging all those innocent people, who like me only months or years before had all the answers too, but now stood there completely stumped by a preschooler. Blaming them for their child's tantrums as I stood by with all the answers, unwilling to share my infinite wisdom, watching them struggle, while we as perfect strangers mumbled nasty comments under our breath! What kind of parent would allow their child to act like that in public?

I now know what kind of parent...one just like me! I found out the very hard way that I don't indeed have all the answers. I am completely humbled by the experience parenthood has brought me, and am mortified when I remember how presumptious I was to even think that I had all the answers! There is nothing more humbling that finding out you really don't know a darn thing, and everything you thought you knew is wrong, and nothing you try works! That, to me, is the definiton of being humbled~and if parenthood doesn't do it to you, I'm afraid nothing will! So now that I was "one of them" (a parent!) it was increasingly harder to point a finger of blame, wouldn't that be hypocrytical? Besides, it didn't take me long to figure out that we needed to stick together and I would soon need as many of them as possible as allies!

Whether it was out of sheer desperation, or not wanting to feel any more guilty than we already do as parents by blaming ourselves, I set out to find an alternative to my young son's spirited behaviour! It couldn't all be my fault could it?! That is when I discovered the possibility of personality!!! And his was plentiful! Did I ever mention the time he was 7 months old and threw his first major tantrum? We were shopping (this never would have happened with a girl!) and he went stiff as a board in the seat of the cart, threw his head back and started to scream at the top of his lungs! An older lady passing by asked if he was having a tantrum. I answered, "it sure looks that way doesn't it?" After asking his age, she soothingly put her hand on my arm and in a sympathetic voice said to me, "you are in big trouble dear!" If only I'd known how deep of troube she meant! It only got worse from there, and from what I hear the teen years aren't a treat either!

And so the great parenting debate began. Parenting vs Personality. Nature vs Nurture. Call it what you will, but it consumed me, and I vowed I would not give up until I had an answer! Here I am 3 yrs later still searching for an answer that may never come, and arguing with people that personality does play a role in your child's behaviour to some extend! It's hard to find an answer when everything is still a question. Is he spirited because of the difficult pregnancy, the intense labor and the emergency delivery by C-section? Did I spoil him by picking him up every time he cried as a baby? Which I did only thinking it would make him cry less later since he would be secure knowing that his needs were being met. Was it sleeping with him in my arms due to my own selfishness, wanting to be as close to him as possible for as long as I could? Was it perhaps the one time I did leave him to cry it out in his crib for the first time at 1 yr old, as I sat bawling my eyes out in the other room, while his Dad tried to reassure me in vain that he would somehow survive the crying? (maybe Harrison would but I surely would not!) Then came my separation from his Daddy. This would no doubt scar him for life...great more guilt. Maybe I am a horrible parent and it's manifesting itself in my child's spirit and I've contaminated his innocent and peaceful soul with my own greed, insecurities and weaknesses? Yup...he's ruined for all eternity thanks to the lack of my parenting ability.

How could this job be so hard? It doesn't seem hard at the onset. How hard could it really be to feed a newborn every few hours, change their diaper a few times a day and put them back to sleep? If someone had told me that you have to feed them every 2 hours (not few hours!) around the clock, 7 days a week for 6 weeks straight, change their diaper a few times an hour (not a day!) and once they are born and wake up from that delightful sleep-like-a-baby snooze they only seem to do in the hospital, you can never get them back to sleep again...I may have reconsidered the position!!! If only it were that easy! I really do believe that's why it's only the people without kids that presume to have all the answers, because once you've been there, it becomes clear how hard it is and you realize you don't have a clue. You know better than to tell someone else what to do, or how to do it, since you yourself are still stuck on the steep learning curve! They are probably no different than you and are just trying their best under intense pressure, wondering what parenting has to do with any of it, when clearly it's all personality's fault!

This is when I investigated the effect of personality a little more deeply. Was my parenting making him more of a challenge, or was his challenging behaviour now affecting my parenting style? Parenting style...if only I had style I wouldn't be in this mess! Perhaps that is what I am lacking...style. Did I create him and all that he is and has become, solely by parenting alone? Or could it be that this little soul came to me, pre-programmed just the way God intended him to be, and I am merely here to guide him on his journey, the best I can, praying everyday that I have the courage and the strength to not let he or God down? Truely humbling it is to be a human doing God's work here on earth.

Please post your answers to my Parenting vs Personality questions in the Comments. Do you think that parents are to blame for their children's spirited behaviour, and that there is a quick fix or simple remedy that works without fail to keep their children from melting down all the time? Or, do you believe that children are born with their own agendas and parents are only along for the ride, struggling to keep up with their spunk and spirit and ever changing needs? And that perhaps some things, no matter how hard we try, we will never have the answers to?