Discover Your Natural Parenting Skill and Style!!

How many times have you heard the statement that goes something like this, “Raising kids is hard, nobody teaches you how to be a parent!”? You’ve probably heard that hundreds of times and perhaps have spoken it to others even more!

However as true as that may be everyone has an instinctive parenting tendency build in to them! It is true; because of your personality type you have a pre-determined disposition for a certain style of parenting. What incredible and joyous news that could be, should be indeed for all parents.

If you know your never changing personality type as indicated by the Free Myers Briggs Test you can determine which of four basic parenting styles is yours! Now, once you understand your personality type and have knowledge of which parenting style you instinctively embrace you can then determine your child’s personality type and get a wonderful idea of how your child would prefer to be raised!

“Prefer to be raised?” you may say, “I’ll raise my child the way I want not the way he/she want.” Yes, you may feel that way; however, if your child’s personality type is different from yours (and there are after all 16 different personality types) you could be trying to place a square peg into a round hole.

All of us as parents tend to raise our kids to be sort of like us. Well from a personality perspective that is fine if your child has your type or shares one or two of the three core components or levels of type. If, on the other hand, their type is different than yours raising them in a type unlike manner can cause damage to the development of their nature.

The three core components of type are how we see the world and become aware of things as Sensors and Intuits, and how we make decisions and reason through things based upon what we just became aware of, as Thinkers and Feelers, and thirdly how we prefer to get things done as we face the outside world as Judgers and Perceivers.

Sensors seeing the world in great sequential detail, in-the-moment, realistically, concretely in the here and the now. Intuits see the world in a conceptual, big picture, end result, future oriented kind of way struggling with what the sensors do.

Thinkers are people who are instinctively making decisions and reasoning with natural objectivity. Thinkers are more logical, up front, aggressive in decision making situation. Thinkers believe that only through confronting issues, arguing and debating will the best work and decisions arise.

Feelers are naturally subjective as they reason using the way they feel about the situation to guide them into the decision that maintains harmony the most. Feelers don’t like to argue, confront, debate because it feels bad.

Judgers are folks who need decisions because they are focused upon closure; they need rules, timelines, and structure. While the Perceivers are hard-wired to wait and see what happens; they are flexible, procrastinating, open to change, easy going folks.

Ok those are the basics of the three core areas as we look at parenting. What we are saying is that because one may be an Intuitive, Thinker and lets say Judging yet ones’ child may be an Sensing, Feeling and Perceiving the natural ways of seeing the world and reasoning about what they see and then acting upon that are completely opposite and visa versa of course.

Let me give you an example, what we typically do is divide the 16 types into 4 general groups called temperaments (a more general way of considering all the above) that looks like this: Intuitive with Thinking (NT); Intuitive with Feeling (NF); Sensing with Judging (SJ); and Sensing with Perception (SP).

Now lets take a brief look at how one of these four temperaments, and we’ll pick the Sensing Judgers, since they make up a larger proportion of y’all, would naturally and instinctively approach parenting.

The Sensing, Judging parent (the ISTJ, ESTJ, ISFJ, ESFJ) will have a more natural tendency to do the following:

• The SJ will tend to be more strict parents driven by a need to teach right from wrong.
• The SJ children “must” do things that reflect properly upon the family.
• The SJ parent is more naturally prone to use corporal (spanking) punishment, or at least, believe that they should.
• The SJ parent will be concerned that their child becomes socialized into the conventions and norms of community.
• The SJ parent is likely to be very concerned with “providing” for the child.
• The SJ parent can become somewhat overprotective in their pursuit of teaching and providing for their children within the right and wrong perspective.
• The SJ parent is more likely to believe that children should be seen and not heard.

My point is that if the child is also a SJ things can go more smoothly for parent and child; nothing is perfect as all parents will agree but a type match can be better, i.e. SJ parent raising SJ child.

However if the child is either a NT, SP and especially an NF temperament; we are looking at more naturally difficult time raising the child. Again you can get a more detailed analysis of this reality by going to the web site; but, suffice it to say the NF child especially can be practically destroyed from an emotional, psychological point of view by being raised in a SJ environment.

The solution is to raise the NF child as an NF person as much as the SJ parent can. Again the natural tendency would be and is, for the SJ parent to raise the NF child as if they were and SJ. Probably because that is generally speaking, is the only way the SJ parent knows how to act.

The NF, SP, and NT parent will have there own natural tendencies as parents which can be identified and understood and used appropriately for whatever type child one may have.

So, in summary, when we understand the natural instinctive ways we tend to behave in the role of the parent we can then more positively meet and work with any personality differences that may exist in our children. The more detailed and reality based SJ, for example, can learn that the NF child needs to be allowed to be the more general, conceptual, harmonious, less aggressive, less sports loving, more fine arts loving person that they are. This is true nurturing the very God created nature of the child.

It is not easy, to be sure, but it has tremendous pay off as the child grows in an environment that is more accepting of what he/she does and does not do because the very core of who the child is will be validated and loved.

Well, we encourage you to try it; go figure out what Myers Briggs personality type you are and then what your child’s type is and begin to nurture by the nature of your child rather than raising the child to be something they are not. This is true parenting skill.

You need to know your Myers-Briggs type however to make this transaction work. Go to Free Myers-Briggs Test.

Then enjoy the natural God-given differences that may exist between you and your child. Remember the knowledge of Myers-Briggs personality type is as solid as a rock!

Return from Parenting Skill Article to Article Main Page