Meeting Your Child’s Predominant Need

Meeting Your Child’s Predominant Need

How much impact do parents have on their children’s personality? Isn't a lot of who they are predetermined and hard wired at birth? The debate between nature and nurture continues to ping pong back and forth, despite the fact that science has shown that they are both contributing factors.  But, although parents don’t determine their children’s personality, they have much to do with how their child develops and whether they grow into the person they are meant to be. 

The blueprint for who we have the potential to become can be traced our physiology and genetics. The personality is hard wired into the functions of the brain in the same way that our left or right handedness is. Whether or not children emerge from childhood with the confidence and security to achieve their potential is attributed to their caretakers, their mom and dad, as well as other environmental factors that play a part -- environment, nutrition, friends, teachers and siblings, etc. A child’s brain and psychological development depends on whether they are raised with a secure attachment to their caregivers, allowing their brains Self-Actualizing System to develop. If this doesn’t happen, if they grow up with an insecure attachment to their primary caregiver, it causes the natural development of their brain to be thwarted. They then continue to live from their Self-Protective System, instinctively protecting themselves from those people who are meant to make them feel secure and loved.   

One of the things that stop a child from developing their Self-Actualizing System is when parents don’t recognize their child’s nature and personality. So if you are like other parents who have tried to do everything according to the parenting courses you took and the numerous books you read and you are still having behavioral problems, tantrums and other forms of acting out, it may have to do with a biological appetite that is not getting met rather than your parenting skills. Each child has a predominant psychological need that must be met based on the quadrant of the brain that they favour. This need is hardwired at birth as is the part of their brain that they favour. This need is the basis for their Striving Style and unless you know what it is, you are likely to frustrate your child’s need. This means that you can be doing everything right according to the experts and still frustrate their need. For example, if your child is a Leader Style, with a predominant need to be in control, you can frustrate their need to gain mastery over activities and their environment by telling them they aren’t old enough or strong enough to do something on their own. You can frustrate the need of your Socializer child just because you are an Artist with a different way of bonding.  Or you believe that there is something wrong with a child that needs attention all the time and shame your Performer child because they are constantly seeking recognition from you.

Fostering the Development of Children’s Striving Style

Your child’s natural development depends on their secure attachment and their ability to get their predominant need met. You can help your child meet their need by understanding how their brain is organized, the behaviors they use from their Self-Protective System when their need is frustrated and how to shift them to their Self-Actualizing System.  Meeting their psychological need and teaching them how they can get it met on their own goes a long way to building a secure base inside of your child for life.