Who is a spirited child

Risky playground antics? Lousy sleeper? By Cassandra Drudi April 28, Once I figured this out, parenting suddenly made a whole lot more sense—I just had to approach it differently. Boundless energy and enthusiasm in small humans is sometimes mistaken for wildness or bad behaviour. My kids do best, mood-wise, with lots of gross motor play. They need to climb and run and bike and kick and throw and catch and jump and wrestle—or their energy will find another far less productive outlet. My firstborn slept a maximum of 90 minutes at a time for the first year of his life—even at night.

Is the idea of taking your high-spirited kids to the grocery store or the mall enough to make you break out in a cold sweat? Even as toddlers, my kids would climb out of shopping carts and strollers, running away from me and making a scene. I once spent an hour and a half asking one of my sons to wear something other than pajamas to a party.

His persistence meant he spent the entire 90 minutes screaming and refusing. She spent the next week practicing the same song over and over.

By the end of the week everyone in the family was amazed at her ability to play the song which she learned entirely on her own. Spirited children often are perceptive. My daughter's perceptiveness has led to a curiosity that caused some interesting moments when she was younger and seemed to get into everything.

One time she grabbed the diaper cream without me knowing it. I only realized it when I found it smeared all over the couch. She's always interested in how things work and asks lots of questions or tries to figure it out on her own as was the case with playing the piano. Seeing her attempt new experiences has inspired me to try activities I might normally never consider — like an alternative fitness class or reading a book outside of my preferred genre.

When you're the parent of a spirited child you're going to encounter temper tantrums. Kurchinka devotes an entire chapter to the subject in her book and says, "All kids throw tantrums, but spirited children do it with much more pizzazz, finesse, and frequency. Patience is necessary with regard to her persistence, which does result in more power struggles as she gets older.

My patience has helped me in dealing in other areas of my life such as waiting for customer service or interacting with my other children.

At times this translates to a lot of crying — especially when my daughter was younger. I can now identity when she's feeling overwhelmed or over-stimulated and needs to be in a more quiet, less stimulating environment.

At preschool, your child is the one who wants to play chasing, hiding and dress up games all day long, when other kids like to draw, look at a book or have a nap. A trip to the playground is an activity that needs close monitoring as your child is always the one who wants to climb equipment for older kids, or tries to follow bigger children when they climb up giant trees.

At the end of the day, you are so exhausted that the mere thought of going anywhere, like, say, the gym, is a hilarious joke. When it's time to leave a playground, your child cries as if you'd told them they can never play again. Saying goodbye to a friend?