Parenting Your Kid: Personality Clash

You're a social butterfly, but your kid is a wallflower. How do you handle the differences?

While we sometimes expect our kids to be a "chip off the old block," it's quite common for them to have entirely different personality than we do. It can be frustrating when your personality types clash. Here's our parenting advice: It's important to respect your kid's unique personality and not try to transform him into a miniature version of you. Trying to change your kid's personality will make both of you miserable. You'll be frustrated and your kid will feel as if you don't like him as he is.

You teach your kid to be tolerant of the differences in others, so it's important for you to practice what you preach. In other words, if you love being the life of the party and your kid doesn't, let him go read a book in his room rather than forcing him to be social. Likewise, if you'd rather stay home reading and your kid wants constant companionship, try to set up some regular playdates.

Ideally, by accepting your kid for who he is, he'll learn about respecting others and accepting himself.