Is there an ideal time to start getting to know your kid? The answer is a resounding yes — as soon as possible! Fears about your child being too young shouldn’t deter you at all. After all, as their parent, you’re going to be catering to their cries and whims for a long time. With time, all loving parents figure out things about their child that the child herself does not know, easy things like are they crying because of hunger or sleep.
But, as the seasons start to change and your newborn grows to become a toddler, there are many other bits of their personality you can get to know if you just apply a pinch of science! Here are three things you can do to learn some new facts about your child. And who knows, some of them just might surprise you!
Understand Their Temperament
It really is nature plus nurture, rather than one or the other. Still, signs of your child’s temperament, as it is called by psychologists, are visible pretty early on. A child’s temperament is the way she responds to her surroundings, the way she behaves in particular situations. Everyone is born with a unique temperament, and learning your child’s can help you address their needs more appropriately.
You can assess your child’s temperament by assessing their reactivity, self-regulation, and sociability. Temperaments are classified as either easy or challenging, but don’t worry, most children lie in the overall middle: challenging in some areas, but easy and super cute in others! It can also prepare you better for otherwise troubling situations, like when your child throws a tantrum for seemingly no reason. It can, most importantly, aid you in supporting your child and preparing them in the best possible manner.
What’s Their Favorite Color?
A child’s favorite color, ever-changing as it might be, might hold deeper insight than you would imagine. The meanings we assign to color, and therefore to someone’s color preferences, are often socially constructed. For instance, the color purple might not signify the same thing in all contexts and cultures. Still, from the perspective of color theory, the colors your child likes on any given day — and you could figure this out by noting their current favorite outfits — might signal how they’re feeling.
The color may be making your child feel calmer at the moment due to things it reminds them of (perhaps, for instance, their favorite cartoon character). Also important to keep in mind is that research finds some colors evoke certain emotions and visceral reactions universally. Red, for example, tends to signal danger and raise blood pressures. Therefore, if you want to keep your child calmer, try being frugal with red!
A DNA Profile of Their Future Self
Science really has progressed a lot since the old days. Now that we can sometimes figure out what our genes might say about our preferences, we’ve put that knowledge to use in predicting… you guessed it, toddlers’ behavior! Using a DNA traits test, you can figure out quite a few things about your child, such as the features they’ll have as adults. Yep, it’s time to throw out those apps that “age” your baby and make them look like something out of uncanny valley rather than a normal person!
The test will also give insight into your child’s nutritional preferences as well as needs, and the sleeping behavior they’re likely to exhibit. Honestly, when I first found out that it could tell me my child’s sleeping behavior, I was a bit skeptical. But we really are living a science fiction reality!
Get to Know Your Little One Better
While you may not yet understand your baby’s babbling just yet, it is still possible to get to know your child in other interesting ways. Most of all, though, enjoy this time with your child, and try not to fret endlessly over each little milestone. Like little Ki, each child learns to do different things at different times, and allowing them that pace (within reasonable bounds!) is an integral part of knowing your child.
Oh, and as far as the babbling goes? There’s actually research that finds that babies’ babbling is more than just gibberish, and it follows different rhythms and patterns in different situations! Maybe one day we’ll have a handy dictionary to translate the babble to our own language. Who knows what secret knowledge our toddlers might possess? Only time — and a little bit of science, of course — will eventually tell!