I’ve made no secret on my blog that I’m sorta not a fan of labeling children. But I have to admit that is not entirely true. After all, I call my son gifted and that is a label.

I’m not a fan of negative labels and, more to the point, how easily our society applies them to our children. Society can be so quick to apply a label to things that fall outside of our increasing small definition of “normal”.

gag! That dreaded “N” word that no one can really define.

So when the question was raised if someone wanted to review a book called When the Labels Don’t Fit, I became the obnoxious kid in the class who shoots their hand up in the air with an “ooh! ooh!” and scoots to the edge of the seat, as if that makes all the difference in being picked.

It totally works because they let me review the book.

When the UPS guy showed up with the book, I sat and savored my first EVER free book from a publisher.

Look at me! Who am I? I am IMPORTANT BLOGGER that has been asked to review a book because my opinion matters! Go Heather!

*ahem*

I immediately began reading the book and it wasn’t long until I ran – SMACK! – face first into the brick wall of a questionnaire.

Very early in this book written by Barbara Probst, you are required to do a temperament questionnaire on your child and yourself, and this helps determine your child’s most salient traits, along with your own.

If you are a bozo like me and don’t know exactly what salient means, we offer no shame here at the Shake-Shake, only answers. I will tell you. Salient means most noticeable or important.

I did the questionnaire and (prepare to be blown away) I couldn’t pin Payton down. Are you shocked? I know I wasn’t. I couldn’t even figure out if Payton is an introvert or extrovert because he has both traits! I thought it was just me and my bozo answers on the questionnaire, but then Wally did the questionnaire too.

What did he get? Hello! Same. Damn. Thing. And I didn’t even hover over his shoulder while he took the questionnaire, questioning why he picked the answers he picked. He was in another room alone and we came out with the same frickin’ answers.

Hello brick wall. Don’t mind us while we bang our head on you.

Of the sixteen traits there are to rank in the questionnaire, only four followed the appropriate answer pattern. Just four. The rest of them, Payton shows behavior for both sides. No wonder I’m in a frequent state of confusion.

This is the life of raising an enigma.

It was then that I scarfed down an entire batch of chocolate chip cookies in a fit of emotional eating and contemplated shipping the book back to the author with a note saying something about how when the labels don’t fit, they REALLY don’t fit because we can’t even determine if our son is an introvert or extrovert. And then I’d end the note with an invitation to make a case study out my enigmatic child.

What good will this book be to me if I can’t even figure out my son’s salient traits? Well, apparently a lot of good.

Payton isn’t the only one in this house with tenacity (or it could be perceived as stubbornness, but we’re all about the positive perspective today!), and I persevered through the book.

I realized it doesn’t really matter if Wally and I can pin down Payton’s salient traits. I would go insane trying to figure out exactly what makes Payton tick. He is so fascinating from a psychological standpoint that I could spend all of my time trying to figure him out. All I can really do is look at the moment, see what we’re dealing with and deal with it in that moment.

What I like most about this book is that the author takes many behaviors common in eccentric/challenging/intense children, many which are associated with development disorders too, and changes the perspective of the behavior.

For example, Payton’s teacher keeps telling us he has trouble transitioning from one subject to the next if he hasn’t completed the work yet. Whereas I could look at this “problem” as typical behavior of one disorder *coughAspergerscough* or another, Ms. Probst explains this is a common characteristic of perfectionism in children. It isn’t unusual for a perfectionist child to want to follow work through to completion and become upset when they can’t.

Who knew the subjective judgment line was that fine? The “experts” can say Payton’s impulsive tendencies are due to a dysfunction of the brain, but they can’t prove it anymore than I can prove it’s from an innate sense of right action. They can’t prove I’m wrong because they can’t prove they’re right.

So see? It’s all perspective and I can make it up just as well as they can.

I also enjoyed the section in the book where the author discusses over-parenting, which is basically when parents are too involved with their children, worry too much over things they shouldn’t, help too much, etc. Not that I would know about any of that (*ahem*), but I did find the insight on that interesting from an outside party perspective. (*ahem again*)

If you are raising a challenging kid like me and don’t want to play the diagnosis game that is the current craze in our nation, I highly recommend this book. It shows how to change your perspective of your child’s behavior, and once you do that, it’s amazing how it trickles down through life. And yes, I speak from experience. Not that I’m an expert at only speaking and seeing the positive, but I have already seen the difference. If nothing else (and believe me, there’s more than just nothing else), this book has given me ideas of how to speak to Payton’s school about his eccentric behavior and that is changing how they view Payton. The trickle effect in his life is already in motion.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 6:59 am and is filed under Gifted Children, Proud Mommy Moments, This Mom Gig. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.