[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.