Understanding Temperament: Persistence

image via Flickr by Petr Dosek

A key goal in effective treatment for Attention Deficit Disorder should be to understand our temperament and the temperament of the children we live and work with.

Understanding the concept of temperament and applying that knowledge to ourselves as parents and teachers and to those around us helps us to better understand behavior…struggles, failures, and successes.

Understanding PERSISTENCE

Persistence refers to how long we stick with tasks regardless of their difficulty, ranging from very long to very short.

Some of us are highly persistent even in the face of tremendous difficulty; we keep going and going and going.

Others of us spend only a short time on a challenging task before giving up and moving on to something else.

The child with long persistence resists giving up and will practice a task repeatedly until he has mastered it. This same child may struggle to stop an activity when it is time to move on if he has not yet mastered or completed it.

The child with short persistence may stop practice before mastery, struggle to stick with longer, more complex tasks, and be ready to put down a challenging book long before the last page.

Download our Being Well Center | Temperament Worksheet designed to help you pinpoint where your or your child’s temperament trait falls on the continuum. Catch up on previous posts about Activity Level, Rhythmicity, Tolerance, Intensity, Mood, Approach-Withdrawal, and Adaptability.