Temperament and Children

The book presents an empirical model of commonly occurring individual differences in children that is derived from a large-scale research effort assessing parental and teacher perceptions of children in middle childhood. It examines eight characteristic behavioral traits, most of which have been widely shown to be present in infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged children. The book demonstrates the importance of considering profiles of these relatively stable individual differences for the educational, social, and emotional life of the child. It describes characteristic behaviors of children within each profile - emphasizing the assets and liabilities of each - and how they are perceived by their parents, teachers, and peers. Chapters explore issues related to the most developmentally effective management of children exhibiting each profile type.

In addition, the book addresses a critical need in child development, parenting, and teaching to understand the wide range of individual differences observed every day in school-aged children. Not only does this volume underscore that commonly occurring differences can be understood as being normal and do not suggest a pathology, it also discusses implications of the model in diagnosing pathology. The book describes what is known about the stability of temperament behaviors and profiles across the lifespan as well as the origins of these behaviors.

Key topics addressed include:

• Nurturing development of well-adjusted children.
• Causes of individual differences in children's behavior.
• Temperamental tendencies and profiles of children.
• Diagnosing psychopathology in children.

This book is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, and graduate students as well as clinicians and related professionals in developmental, clinical child and school psychology, social work, public health, pediatrics, family studies, educational psychology and counseling, and all other interrelated disciplines.

Roy P. Martin, Ph.D., obtained his doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin and has taught doctoral students in educational and school psychology at Temple University (Philadelphia) and The University of Georgia. His primary research interests have been in the areas of social/emotional development, temperament, and early environmental factors that affect social and emotional development. He has written widely on temperament and personality assessment.

A. Michele Lease, Ph.D., obtained her doctorate from the University of Illinois in clinical psychology with specialization in developmental psychopathology. She has taught clinical aspects of child psychology at the University of Georgia in the department of Educational Psychology. She has written extensively in the areas of peer relationships and their effect on educational and mental health outcomes. She studies aggression, peer influence, social status, and the formation of cliques in middle childhood.