I don’t know about your children, but I know that what works for one of mine doesn’t necessarily work the others. And I rarely recognize my own children when I read parenting books. Nurture by Nature: Understand Your Child’s Personality Type—And Become a Better Parent is one parenting book where I not only caught glimmers of my own children, but found some helpful advice on raising their particular personality type.
Personality Type was first devised by psychologist Carl Jung. The mother-daughter team of Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers expanded on his ideas. According to Myers-Briggs, there are sixteen basic personality types. We are all mixtures of extroversion vs. Introversion, sensing vs. intuition, thinking vs. feeling, and judging vs. perceiving. The book explains and gives examples of all those traits in easy to understand language.
According to the authors of Nurture by Nature, Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger, most children are identifiable as to type by age three or four. The Tiegers make an interesting claim, that being accepted for who you are is the key to healthy self-esteem.
Nurture by Nature asks the reader questions that help determine the parent and children’s personality types. There are short overviews of the types, then each of the sixteen types has its very own chapter. Each of the chapters goes into greater detail. The chapters explain what each type is like from birth to preschool, and the joys and challenges of raising this particular type of preschooler. The next sections covers school age children and adolescents. Again the sections cover what to expect, what works, and the particular needs of this type of child. A bullet point list is provided at the back of each chapter listing quick reminders of what works with that personality type.
I do think the book has made me a better parent. It’s given me better insight into their strengths and better empathy for their particular personalities. The book is great in talking about how our society favors certain characteristics over other. The types are not an exact fit for my children, but I do recognize them in the type descriptions.
I’d recommend this book to anyone seeking to understand their children a little better.
(Originally published 1977 by Little, Brown and Company)
Also See:
Connecting Personality and Learning
The Color Code – Dr. Taylor Hartman
How Much of This is Personality?