Nature vs. Nurture

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Every teacher has dealt with children who give up easily and others with incredible determination. I taught many elementary children (grades 2-6) who immediately would say, “It’s too hard,” if they couldn’t solve a problem within the first 30 seconds. In the same classroom, I had children who seemed to thrive on a challenge. If an answer were harder to come by, their interest level went up. This begs the question, are people born with these qualities, or is this learned behavior? Without getting into all the studies regarding personality traits and the nature vs. nurture debate, the short answer is it depends. That’s not much of a conclusion, but it’s the truth.

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I taught several second-generation students over the years and possessed a fair amount of anecdotal experience on this topic. While many people focus on the physical characteristics between generations (e.g., Barb has grandma’s nose. Max has his dad’s smile.), I’ve always found the more intriguing comparison to be humans’ behaviors and qualities.

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When it comes to personality, I believe it’s generally a combination of genetics and learned behavior. According to some psychologists, there are five big personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.) Individuals can fall anywhere on the continuum for each trait.

I certainly can think of examples where two generations shared these personality traits but not all the time. My experience has been that conscientious parents tend to raise like-minded children. I also worked with children who were worriers and had a lot of anxiety about things that many children wouldn’t be concerned with. After meeting their parents, I often saw that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. Of course, there are exceptions. One must wonder how much of that is biology vs. a child learning specific characteristics from their parents’ behaviors and actions.

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I would argue that qualities like extroversion are more determined by genetics. However, I’ve run into former students years later who have completely flipped the script and have become more introverted or extroverted. Was that predetermined to happen? My instinct tells me no. I taught several siblings, in which one child was far more outgoing or open than another. I can’t tell you the number of times I held a parent/teacher conference and heard something like, “Just wait until you get Johnny. He’s nothing like Preston.” I’d smile or laugh, but inside, I was thinking, I sure hope that Johnny isn’t getting that same message at home. How tough must it be to have the pressure of measuring up to an older sibling, especially when the second child might lack a quality that comes easily to the older one?

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From a parent or teacher’s perspective, children learn from us all the time, regardless if we are attempting to teach them a specific lesson. Kids watch and learn from the ways we handle obstacles in our lives. There’s a lot of truth in the axiom, “Actions speak louder than words.” How can adults preach healthy living to their children if they don’t live by the same standard?

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While nature may determine many personality traits, I firmly believe that we have the power to change. One of the positive changes I’ve made in my life has been that I’m much more of a doer than when I was younger. Instead of lamenting that I tend to overanalyze and procrastinate, I’ve learned the best way is to take on those unpleasant things. If something bothers me, I focus on how to change that feeling. That sometimes means having to take a difficult or troublesome step first, but the result is I usually feel much better afterward. The bonus is we often feel better about ourselves after we address a situation head-on.

What have your experiences been? Do you sometimes see positive and negative traits in your children similar to yours?

Note from Pete:

My plan for the rest of 2023 is to only write a blog post once a month (probably the last day of each month) unless I need to get something off my chest. I’ve made a promise to myself that I need to spend more time story writing if I’m ever going to get to the finish line with the two novels I’ve been working on. I’ll still pop in from time to time on the blogs I follow, but I need to do this for myself. Please understand that I don’t make this decision lightly because I’ve made so many blogging friends in the 3+ years I’ve been at this.