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Can Myers-Briggs testing make us better parents?
by Helaine Olen
February 26, 2007
This gambit works. No bath-related disputes until the night when I'm in charge and my laissez-faire bathing policy results in an inch of standing water on the tile floor. Generally, however, everyone in my house gets along better over the next few weeks. This is not surprising, says Marin County psychologist Madeline Levine, author of The Price of Privilege, about how pressurized upper middle class parenting styles are inadvertently hurting their kids. "A lot of marital conflict is embedded in different ways of processing information."
In fact, Levine is not as critical of Myers-Briggs as many in her profession. "It absolutely talks about how we get our energy, information and come to conclusions and deal with the world around us," she says. While she admits it's helpful with marriage, she's less sanguine about children. "To say that it is useful for parenting is pseudo-science," she notes. And she is absolutely adamant that I not try to figure out my children's types. "The job of a parent is to respond to a child right in front of them. Pigeonholing kids is going down the wrong path."
And that's exactly the path we take at our next meeting. Maybe some of the conflict at home is caused by the fact that neither Jake or myself — INTPs both — are willing to cry uncle?Using excerpts from the book Nuture by Nature: Understand Your Child's Personality Type — and Become a Better Parent by Paul Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger, we're encouraged to think about our children's temperaments and guess at their types in hopes of improving our relations with them.
Campbell issues a few caveats. Children do change, and their overall personalities do not fully emerge until pre-adolescence. Given their rapid development, new personality aspects can appear seemingly overnight. No mother should relate to a child as a type — they are an individual first and foremost.
Reading the book leaves me a bit doubtful. Are there really types of children who enjoy jumping in mud puddles and playing video games more than others? I decide to try and type Jake as an exercise. We are very similar, an observation that my mother has made numerous times when she has witnessed us debating a point. And when I look up INTPs in the Tieger book, I have to laugh. "Question Authority," is the headline, followed by a parent saying, "I've never won an argument with her. She's raised the act of hairsplitting to an art form."
I'm excited to discover that Michael Gurian, the renowned parenting writer, is a Myers-Briggs fan, something he explores in his upcoming book Nurture by Nature. "Children have a core nature," he tells me.
"If you're argumentative, and your son is argumentative, he likely comes by your nature genetically," Gurian continues, adding "Personality conflicts are more likely between people who are alike."
Maybe some of the conflict at home is caused by the fact that neither Jake or myself — INTPs both — are willing to cry uncle?
I speak to Campbell by phone for our final session. She suggests giving Jake choices within boundaries to reduce conflict — a trick, she says, to let INTP types think they are in control. This strikes me as common sense for just about any kid, yet I am not doing it. So I give it a try.
©2007 Helaine Olen and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Helaine Olen's writing has been published by The New York
Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Salon.com, AlterNet.org and
LiteraryMama.com, where she is an associate editor. Her first book, Office
Mate: The Guide to Finding True Love on the Job will be published this fall. She
lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. |
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