>>i am so amazed how in tune you are with your children, i often felt like my parents barely knew me beyond a surface level. i hope to be more aware of my children’s strengths and weaknesses and guide them accordingly.<<

A big part of being in tune with your children is taking the time to get to know them.  It’s much easier when you spend lots of time with them every day!

Several months ago one of my kids picked up a book from our shelf about the Myers-Briggs personality typing system.  It was given to me by my roommate when I was 17, since I had been so fascinated by it at that time.  This system consists of 16 basic personality types.  Then I learned about the eneagram (a complex nine point personality system), and when I combined that with the Myers Briggs system, it added significant depth to my understanding of personality types.

Dd15 (then 14) read through the book we had on our shelf, and took it to NY with her for her camp reunion.  She explained it to all the girls there and to others who weren’t there when she spoke to them on the phone, lol!  This has become a regular topic of table conversation since she has explained the basic info to her siblings (who have also found it interesting), so now when someone references a ‘type, everyone understands what that means.  It gives us more things to joke about, too!

When I’ve discussed careers with my children, I’ve tried to guide each of them according to what their strengths are.  I had been trying to find a book that broke down potential careers according to personality types and wasn’t having any luck, even though I knew it existed – I had picked it up and flipped through it about five years ago in the library.  Then one day dh came home from the library and without knowing I was looking for it, brought me that exact book – he said he thought it looked like something I’d like!

The book is called Do What You Are, and it categorizes careers according to the Myers Briggs personality types.  Finding a field that allows you to work with your strengths is most conducive to long term career satisfaction, and this can be a helpful tool is helping a person know what direction to look in.  So far I can definitively ‘type’ only my older four kids – though I’m pretty sure about ds7 I’m still unsure about dd9, since younger kids can seem to have one aspect and then reverse as they mature with time – and reading the description of each type was fun because it so much described each of them.

It was helpful for me to see some capabilities and tendencies that I was aware of in different children, but didn’t necessarily view them as strengths.  For example, ds16 has always had an interest in analyzing numbers (eg, baseball cards, stocks) – and I always looked at it more as an interest than an aptitude, so it wasn’t something I was significantly factoring in.  However, when I read about the unique ability of this particular personality type to analyze data (some of his ‘type’s’ career suggestions were stock analyst and investment banker), it helped me to not only see a tendency, but to value it.

(On an a side note, it was interesting to see my type listed very few careers in the health care field, significantly less than almost every other personality; I’ve often thought that the only thing I could imagine doing in that area was chiropractics, holistic health practitioner, or nutritionist, and every one of these was on the short list.  It explained that my type sees the body as holistic and is open to alternative ‘healing approaches. )

But don’t think that you have to read a book like this to know and understand your child!  This is merely supplemental; lots of love, time, and willingness to listen and really hear are the most important requirements.

Avivah