[jbergknoff]

Many great examples here, and my wife and I do many of the same things, but it's not always this easy. If your child is receptive to these things, like the children in the article, that's great. Our younger one is receptive and our older one is getting there as he ages. If we judged ourselves as parents based on just the younger, we'd think we were amazing parents making all the right choices. If we judged ourselves just on the older, we'd think we were completely ineffective at, e.g., fostering independence.

I just hope nobody's reading this and feeling bad about their parenting. The personality of the child is critical.

[ftio]

Before I became a parent, I was always a believer in 'nurture' over 'nature'. I believed that our personalities and our behaviors were mostly shaped by upbringing and environment and very little by genetics.

Now, as a parent, I've done a 180.

My three-year-old has a distinct personality that clearly draws on elements of mine and my wife's, but he's been exhibiting little behaviors all his own since infanthood that have become more fully formed as he's grown into a little kid. In the moment, we didn't recognize that those behaviors were 'personality', but with hindsight it's clear that that's what we were seeing.

We do our best to nudge him in the right direction (sometimes very firmly), but like the OP and like you, we've come to realize that our job isn't to mold or shape him (or anything that active) but rather to be a set of guardrails that help to keep him safe and a step stool he can use to flourish into a fuller version of the person he already is.