I have been introduced to a book, Personality Plus for Parents (Littauer,Florence), which provides insights and helps give a clearer understanding into the ‘Personality Type’ both you and your child belongs to. With this information in the forefront of your mind, you can instantly adjust your approach to situations and appreciate you have to target each family member individually to effectively manage a household. Once you understand and implement personalised strategies there is a higher chance of achieving positive outcomes and minimising draining days filled with battles and conflict – that easy!
My Husband and I now clearly understand ‘why’ we need to spend extra time motivating our Little Man who is naturally calm, relaxed and easy going and balance our Baby Girl who is a little firecracker – full of energy, strong willed and has loudly shared her very strong opinions since the day she was born. After reading this book we appreciate just how important ‘quiet, peaceful’ time is for our Little Man everyday and we are patient with our Baby Girl as she learns it is in fact her parents who are in charge, not her.
For those of you reading this who know my husband and I, this diagnoses will come as no surprise. In fact you are maybe laughing already and saying something along the lines of – ‘Peas in a pod!’
It is important to me to feel like I am unique and unpredictable. It makes me feel claustrophobic when I think of someone putting me in a box; yet this book so clearly has done it – I am mortified! The personality which best describes me, identified itself in the first sentence. Had Florence secretly interviewed me for the book without me realising?
Fascinating (and fairly unnerving) how we can all be divided up quite neatly into four groups:
- Popular Sanguine
- Powerful Choleric
- Perfect Melancholy
- Peaceful Plegmatic
Understanding yourself and what makes you who you are, is the other half (and just as important part) of this clever book. For although parenthood is so much clearer when you ‘Understand(ing) what makes your child tick’ as the tag line states, having insights into why each party, both you and your child, react a certain way in everyday situations, allows you to accommodate and respect each persons individuality. The book has a nice balance of factual information and real life case studies which help to further explain these theories.
All you have to do is allow some uninterrupted quiet time to sit down and honestly fill in the Personality Profile Questionnaire and tally up your score sheet. My Husband and I answered them together; it is interesting how we perceive ourselves differently to how others see you. The word definitions in the appendix help you if you are having trouble pin pointing an answer, or attempting to deny you have a particular trait or two….
‘Knowledge is Power’ after all and I’m all for building confidence and gathering information to guide me through mediating everyday situations within our family unit.
Keen to keep reading?
Stage Four – and it’s a BIG one!!
Other books I’ve loved?
Previous conversations
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