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What I'd like to talk about today
is making kids.

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Now it's not what you might
be thinking about, this is a family show.

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Rather what I would like to talk about
are those amazing, adorable,

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and sometimes incredible irritating traits

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that we call 'temperament'
or 'personality'.

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Some kids are very quickly brought
to feel anxious or angry,

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while other kids seem almost unflappable.

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Some kids love to be surrounded by noise,
and people, and activity,

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while others prefer some quiet,
maybe even some solitude.

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Some kids wear their emotions
on their sleeves,

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while for others you can't even
figure out how they are feeling sometimes.

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Where do these temperamental
traits come from?

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And what, if anything,
should we do about them?

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From twin studies, we know

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that about 50-60% of child temperament
comes from our genes.

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That sounds like a lot. That is a lot.

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However that still leaves a lot of room
for other influences.

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Such as the environment.

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For a long time, there was a debate
that went back and forth

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about whether it was nature or nurture
that determined behaviour.

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Now, for the most part,
that debate is over.

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And I can tell you that the answer
to the question

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of whether it is nature
or nurture is "Yes."

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(Laughter)

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The story doesn't end there.

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When you talk to parents,
many of them marvel

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about how unbelievably
different their kids are.

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They'll say, "I don't get it. They had
the same mom, they had the same dad,

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they were raised in the same house,
and I did the same thing,

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and my kids are nothing alike."

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Many times that is true.

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The question about whether we really do
parent our kids the same way

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is an interesting one.

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If you ask most parents, they say, "Yes,
we did pretty much the same thing."

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You ask the kids on the other hand,
and they will generally tell you

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they were parented completely differently.

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If you actually do observational studies
of parents and kids together,

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you will often find something in between.

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But things get even more complicated.

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There's a term that geneticists call

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"evocative gene environment correlations"

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and that's a mouthful.

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What it means when it comes
to child development

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is that the environment that a child is in
is not some random event

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that just descends upon them,

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but is associated or correlated with,
genetically influenced behaviour.

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That still sounds
a little technical, I know.

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I would like to argue that this is

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a very important
and very practical concept.

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For this Vermont crowd, I thought
of a metaphor that I think could work.

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That is that kids,
just like big mountains,

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have the ability to create
their own weather.

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Think about a child who was
temperamentally happy,

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and outgoing, and warm.

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And think about how the universe
tends to respond to those traits. Right?

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Those are the kids
that make parents look like stars.

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What about the child
who is a little bit more anxious?

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Or a little bit more irritable?

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How does the world often respond to that?

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Very often it's with more anxiety,
or more irritability.

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Then those traits can become larger.

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Then the snowball starts to grow,
and it starts to move downhill

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and what starts as small temperamental
differences can then grow

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into sometimes, full-fledged disorders.

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What do we do about that?

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We could blame the parents, right?

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Psychiatry did that for a while,
and it wasn't great idea, in my opinion.

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We could blame the kids,

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and we could focus all of our energies
on fixing those 'bad' behaviors.

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Or we could use this new knowledge
to see if we could figure out strategies

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that might turn that snowball
and have it move in a different direction.

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When I'm talking to parents,
the word I often like to use,

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especially when talking about

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parenting more challenging
temperaments is "override".

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"Override".

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When your little mountain is provoking you
into having that thunderstorm,

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that response might be entirely normal,
entirely understandable,

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but as well all know,
often makes things worse.

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In those moments, what often
can really help,

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is to recognise that you are in one
of those 'override' moments.

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And then take what's sometimes
a small but a very deliberate step

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in a different direction.

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Now, easier said than done, right?

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I know. I have been there.
I am still there.

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With practice, just like anything,
we can get better at it.

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I am also aware that when I'm saying this,
this may sound counter to what parents

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have been hearing for years and years.

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The great Dr. Spock said one of his main
principals was that we should parent

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in a way that is instinctual,
that feels natural to us.

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I think actually, that's very good advice.
I wouldn't want to contradict that.

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I would say there are times,
there are many moments,

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when the best response may be
the most unnatural response for us,

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if we want to move things
into a different direction.

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Two very famous temperament researchers,
Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas,

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proposed almost 50 years ago

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that temperament traits by themselves
are neither good nor bad.

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Rather, what makes them work,
or in their words,

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what makes them "adaptive",

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is the degree to which that trait,
and that environment, are a good fit.

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That theory, the "Goodness of Fit" theory
is still taught today.

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If you think of all of our ways,
all of our efforts

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to try and improve that fit,
you can boil them down

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to two things, I think.

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This is true whether we are talking
about parent guidance,

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whether we are talking
about school interventions,

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or whether we are talking about
individual therapy sometimes.

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You can try to change the child
to fit the environment,

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and/or you can try to change
the environment to fit the child.

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Although I have to say,
lately I have been impressed

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with a third strategy.

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Which is that sometimes you can back off,

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you can trust what you have done so far,

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and you can let that child's temperament
interact with the world on it's own terms.

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I have to confess that that third one
is a challenge for me.

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As my wife might say,
has caused there to be

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some "override" moments for myself.

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(Laughter)

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I bring that up because I think
when we talk about parenting,

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especially as a mental
health professional,

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we have to approach the topic
with a fair amount of humility.

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I've gone to many conferences, I've heard
many excellent parenting talks.

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I've left some of them thinking
that as a father,

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the very best thing
that I could do for for my kids

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is to figure out how that speaker
could adopt them.

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(Laughter)

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That's just not an option, is it?

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We are stuck with our kids,
and our kids are stuck with us.

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Children don't come
with instruction manuals.

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I think that's OK
because unlike a Christmas toy

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which has to be put together
in a very precise way,

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when it comes to kids, there is no single
final product that has to be assembled.

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I like metaphors and when I try to explain
what temperament is to my students,

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one metaphor that I really like is music.

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In particular, the key, F major, A minor,
that that piece of music is in.

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Because that key is with you,
you can hear it,

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still the possibilities of what that song
will eventually sound like remain endless.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)