When thinking about baby temperament, we all know, all babies are different.

In a group of parents and babies, you will see one baby who will easily go to anyone in the group—the angel baby temperament. They barely grizzle when hungry or tired. Then there is the baby who cries 0-100 in 10 seconds because their feed is 5 minutes late or a dog barks.

That's the mystery of becoming a parent, you never know which attributes your baby will inherit to make up their temperament from their parents.

According to world-famous baby whisperers and psychologists, there are 5 main temperaments, made up of 9 different traits.

Knowing your baby's temperament will help you work out how to parent them, how to interpret their cues within context, and what sleep training approach is right.

Take our baby temperament quiz to know their sleep training strategy according to their temperament to guarantee your success when sleep training.

Take the quiz now.

The 9 traits that make up temperament are: 

• activity
• regularity
• initial reaction
• adaptability
• intensity
• mood
• distractibility
• persistence-attention span
• sensory threshold

Here is a description of the 5 temperaments

Angel Baby: Angel babies are generally easygoing and undemanding. They’ll go down to sleep easily and often independently from an early age. They are known for sleeping in long stretches of sleep around 6 weeks. They’ll often easily take a 2-hour nap. They’re adaptive and responsive to new settling approaches. Usually, you only need a swaddle and a quick shush or pat. Love white noise, but don’t need it all the time. Could be called the easy baby temperament.

Textbook baby: A textbook baby has predictable moods and is usually easy to calm down and settle to sleep. They might learn quite quickly to fall asleep independently but may take a good 20 minutes. They love a dummy/pacifier, respond well to swaddling, and side settling in arms or in the cot with a pat. They enjoy white noise.

Touchy baby: The touchy baby is a sensitive baby, they are easily upset by stimulation around them, such as loud noises, bright lights, fighting, dog barking, too much going on. These babies require a lot of support and reassurance to settle to sleep. They need a swaddle, plus a long wind-down routine in arms, to block out stimulations, white noise, and dark rooms and be careful with their awake windows as they’re sensitive to being over-tired and get very upset easily. Once upset they’ll take twice as long to settle even with all the tricks. They tend to cat nap more often than not. Could be called the sensitive baby temperament.

Spirited baby: A spirited baby is an active baby, on the go and bursting with energy. Often an early roller, and suffer from FOMO. They’ll often sleep well unswaddled from an early age, and hate being restricted in a front pack or car seat. They’re easily distracted and not in a good way, they need black out blinds and white noise to limit stimulation at sleep time.  Their FOMO means they often fight sleep, and need a bit of space before they’ll respond to your settling attempts. Will cat nap or take a good lunch nap. Could be called the intense baby temperament.

Grumpy baby: The grumpy baby often spends a big part of their day grumpy, grizzling or crying. It can be mistaken as colic or reflux, but no diagnosis. Grumpy baby’s don’t sleep easily, they grizzle, cry, and fuss even while you settle with swaddling, shushing, patting, rocking and a dummy! They’ll usually cat nap for a few months and cry upon waking. Grumpy babies suit a day routine as they help prevent over-tiredness and give lots of context to the cue of crying for parents to work with.

If you want to find out which sleep training technique will suit your baby’s temperament, take our quiz.

Knowing your baby's temperament is a fundamental philosophy behind our online sleep programs.

We ensure that we have strategies for all temperaments.

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