Study of Personality Characteristics of Children with High and Low Challenging Behavior Patterns

Challenging behaviour is a broadly used term which generally refers to behaviour that is seen as abnormal within the context of person’s culture. It can denote a range of behaviours such as self injury, aggression, sexualised behaviour and destruction of property and often refers to more than one of these behaviours that co-exist. When children show persistent social, emotional and or behavioural difficulties, they need to be identified early, so that the abusive temperament may not convert into challenging personality traits. Growth period of late childhood is the period when they learn to regulate their emotions, cope with sensory input, express their desires, and develop relationships with others. Immature identity and self structure often pose vulnerability in their behaviour pattern and the child develops emotional outburst like crying, throwing, biting and deny social rules. Social agents like family, school and other systems train them to navigate the situation. However behaviour of this age group of children when appear worrisome often defined as challenging. Failing of address the challenging behaviours at this stage may create personality problem. Research outcomes indicate that services that address challenging behaviours may receive the health approach towards personality development. The broad objective of the study is to understand personality characteristics between children with high challenging behaviour and low challenging behaviour group. The sample of 150 parents and guardians are included for identifying the challenging behaviour patterns in children by administrating Coolidge Personality and Neuropsychological Inventory for Children. Out of this 30 children affected with challenging behaviour (high challenging behaviour N=15 & low challenging behaviour N=15) were selected for the study. Children Personality Questionnaire by Kapoor & Rao was administered on both the groups. To study how much they differ in terms of their personality characteristics out of 14 factors, groups differed on 5 factors A,D,E,I and Q4 differed on 5 factors A,D,E,I and Q4 of personality characteristics. High challenging behaviour children reported high warm hearted (A), excitable (D), dominant (E), tender minded (I) and with high ergic tension (Q4) (t< 0.05/ < 0.01).