Understanding the Wood Child
Wood children are a force to be reckoned with! As natural-born leaders with lots of confidence and energy, there’s nothing shy or retiring about them. Wood children are wonderful friends, as long as they get to be at the top of the pecking order – and there’s always a pecking order when it comes to how they see the world. They are extremely charming and attract the attention of the people around them, easily convincing them to follow their lead (remember the way Tom Sawyer convinced his friend Ben to whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence?), but don’t take this to mean they are work shy! Wood children are dedicated workers once they’ve fixed their mind on a goal, and that goal is usually to be recognized as the best.
Because they have so much energy, Wood kids often excel in sports, particularly those where there’s a singular winner (swimming, racing, track and field, etc.). Playing team sports can be a little more challenging for them, but it can also be a great learning experience if the coach has the time, energy, and attention to devote to the Wood kid. They make great team captains who can unite the team to strive for a common goal.
Parenting a Wood child is a high-intensity endeavor because they demand your constant attention. Attention is so important to Wood children that it almost doesn’t matter whether it’s positive or negative attention they receive. You can scold the Wood child, try to persuade them, reprimand them, or praise them, but as long as they know your eyes are on them, they’re getting exactly what they want. And what they want will generally fall into two categories: attention and recognition. Even when they ask for material things, they want objects that will make people notice them, whether it’s a noisy drum at six or a flashy car at sixteen.
Developmental Stage
Wood children always seem to be on the move. When they’re young, they run and jump and climb rather than walk from point A to point B. If you tell your Wood kid that it’s time to leave the playground, first, expect them to protest! But when you are finally able to coax them towards the car, you can bet they’ll jump on every single slide, swing, and monkey bar they pass before submitting to the confines of a car seat. On top of that, it won’t be enough to have played on all the equipment, they will be calling, “Mommy! Mommy! Watch me! Did you see what I did?” the entire way out. This is great fun if you have the energy and patience for it, but a nightmare when you’re tired and just want to get home.
Wood children are a percolating mixture of being extremely attractive, charming, and relatable, and being impertinent, infuriating and making you homicidal. They haven’t figured out how to control their impulses, nor is it their priority. In this way, they are like bulls in a china shop (but at least they’re very cute bulls). If you try to stop them from doing what they want, they will turn into absolute drama queens. That same kid who will run unflinchingly on a twisted ankle will flop and cry out in feigned agony if they’re fouled in a basketball game.
There are delightful upsides to Wood children as well. When they care, they care with great fervor and not in the practical ways an Earth child might try to help. They can be sweetly gallant even as children, and will try to be your knight in shining armor with all sincerity. There’s a famous story told by Paul Burrell, Princess Diana’s former butler and close friend, about how a young Prince William provided comfort to his mother during her divorce from his father. When she lost the title of “Her Royal Highness,” Prince William said to her, “Don't worry Mummy, I will give it back to you one day when I am King.”
Wood Imbalances in Children
While any Wood child will strive to get your attention, a child with an excess of Wood will be purposely destructive and create chaos when they’re out of balance. There can also be a tinge of aggression that seeps out of a child with an excess of Wood. Their desire for attention can compel them to take outrageous risks, even to the point of endangering others; their egotism can be taken to new heights. If they’re on their high horse trying to “save you” and you tell them you don’t need saving, they will still demand to be praised for their efforts; if you don’t, be prepared for a tantrum of apoplectic proportions.
When they’re in leadership positions, kids with an excess of Wood are not good listeners; the only things that matter to them are getting their way and receiving praise and adulation. This can make them ineffective leaders in a couple of ways: on the one hand, they will happily pander to those who give them feelings of power or status, which can make them easy to manipulate using flattery; on the other hand, they won’t see anything wrong with making promises to people and failing to deliver, as long as they get what they want. Either way, they are unlikely to do what’s best for the group.
Children with an excess of Wood want to be thought of as the best, but they care more about the external validation of their greatness than the internal development of their skill and mastery. This is not a kid who is content to achieve a new personal best in a competition, they want to obliterate their competition. In school, if they’re not at the top of the class, they’ll try to draw attention to themselves in less productive ways, like by being the class clown or talking back to the teacher. They can become angry when they’ve worked hard to achieve or attain something and nobody notices or cares, which is the worst fate for an imbalanced Wood kid.
Wood kids usually end up with a deficiency if they’ve been neglected or humiliated, though being neglected (not being recognized) is far preferable to being humiliated (having their lack of power put on display for everyone to see). When they’re young, Wood-deficient kids can go into an imaginary world where they have magic or unlimited power. They have not yet learned to spin intrigues or to use other people as their puppets, so they indulge in wishful thinking.
If a slightly older child is Wood-deficient, they will look to align themselves to a leader they admire, someone with power and status. Unfortunately, because of their distorted view of power, they tend to gravitate towards bullies and tyrants. Then they become that person’s lackey, borrowing any reflected status or “power” they can from the bully.
Parenting Wood Children
Parenting can be one of life’s greatest challenges, but parenting a Wood child is particularly demanding because they’re always demanding something: demanding more, demanding better, demanding to be heard so that you know, “Hey, I’m here, too!” By doing this, they bind their parents’ attention to them, which is great if you have that amount of time and energy to give to them. But if you don’t create firm boundaries, Wood kids will completely run you over.
Since the Five Elements are rooted in Traditional Chinese Medicine, it helps to imagine Wood as bamboo: if you let bamboo run wild, it will sprout up wherever its roots can go, but it is possible to keep bamboo from becoming invasive if you trim its roots consistently. This is what it’s like with Wood kids: parents can encourage kids to grow in productive directions, but they also have to push back when they go where they’re not supposed to. This is the only way to keep them from being destructive.
Telling a Wood kid what the rules are in advance is as effective as putting a picket fence around your bamboo garden: it’s absolutely useless. The only way for them to understand is if you push back when they hit a boundary and hold a firm line. But if you set a positive direction where they have room to grow, Wood children will flourish beautifully.
Wood kids can achieve great things with the right support and direction; they’re extremely loving, very generous, and faithful to their friends, family, and loved ones. If you pay attention to a Wood child and give them the positive reinforcement they need, they will work hard, put in their best effort, and make tremendous sacrifices to achieve worthwhile goals that they can be proud of.
