The majority of teachers in elementary schools in the US are SJ types. The majority are ISFJ or ESFJ. Here’s what we know about these teachers. Read more
This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She is a homeschooling mom in Washington state. She has five kids, ages 13, 11, 9, 5, and 2.
My husband and I live in different time vortexes. I live in the near future. More like the Jetson’s. My husband grudgingly lives in the 1950’s. I think he would be happier in the Flintstones era. This difference rarely effects our marriage as we care very little about the other’s passions. Read more
The governor of California just signed a law making it very hard for parents to send kids to school without vaccines. So, it turns out that if you want to send your kids to public school, you have to give up control over medical decisions. Read more
I stopped to check on my son’s computer because responsible parents know vaguely what their kids are doing online. But also, most of the time when I look at what kids are doing online, I learn something shocking. Read more
This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She is a homeschooling mom in Washington state. She has five kids, ages 13, 11, 9, 5, and 2.
I grew up an only child and until about six months ago I thought I was an introvert. But really, it’s my mother who’s a severe introvert, and my confusion came from how poorly she parented me, her extroverted child. If you’re in the same boat she was, here’s how you can do a better job. Read more
Melissa sent me an essay from the New Yorker titled I Switched to a Standing Desk and You Should Too. The guy writes about how the standing desk has changed his life and solved so many of his problems and everyone should do it. Read more
I am leery of people saying that kids need teachers. But here are three instances where I sort of like the idea.
1. Train kids for jobs that don’t exist.
Sixty-five percent of today’s kids will have jobs that don’t exist today. So there is little point in training them to do the jobs we can already do—after all, there will be an entire aging Millenial workforce to take those jobs. It makes more sense to me to train for jobs that don’t exist, and the best path to those jobs would be today’s teen tastemakers, since they will be the future high-spending (or not) consumers and ladder-climbing (or not) middle managers of their time. Read more
The name of the course is, Be Your Real Self Without Feeling Frustrated. It includes four days of on-demand video sessions and email-based course materials. Sign up now.
My driver, Carla, is an INFJ. I probably spend more time with her than I do with anyone else, so I focused really hard on being an expert on her type because the best way to get along with someone – an adult or a child – is to understand their type.
INFJs are complicated. They are creative and giving but it takes them awhile to trust someone enough to show themselves. Also, most of an INFJs life happens inside their head, so you have to have patience to let them process that way.
A great example of this is when Carla took care of my garden for a month when I was traveling. She’s an expert at peonies, but she didn’t tell me until later. After she had made the peony bed phenomenal and pointed out that I bought three rare peonies and didn’t even know it. She said she didn’t tell me at first because I wouldn’t have cared. And you know what? She’s right.
That’s another thing: INFJs are always right about people.
I know a lot about INFJs, but I love learning more, so I did some random googling and I read something a teacher said to an INFJ first-grader: “People have been trying to figure out the meaning of life for centuries, so you are not going to figure it out right now. Give yourself a break. Have some fun. You can think about the meaning of life when you’re older.”
The problem with that is thinking of the meaning of life IS fun for the INFJ. And also, they always function older than their years, so they don’t need to “wait til they’re older.”
It feels good to understand something like that. To put one more piece in the puzzle. But then I thought, I want to know more about my own kids. Every little thing I learn about my own kids’ personality type makes me a better parent. So I got sidetracked and googled ESFP. That son’s type is very hard for me.
But more on his type later. (Like when I do a course about why ESFPs get diagnosed with ADD when they just need to be in a dance class.)
My point here is that it is absolutely imperative that parents and spouses understand the personality types in their families. I’m convinced that marriages would stay together if people understood type, because knowing someone’s type makes you less likely to expect something of them they cannot deliver on. And knowing your own type makes you more likely to understand why your spouse can’t be as great at doing what matters to you as you are.
Parenting should be an exercise in being an expert on your kid’s type. It’s like parenting blind vs taking off the blindfold. That’s how dramatic it is to be an expert on type. So, this course is for INFJ types. And other courses are coming. And meanwhile, do a google search. Learning just one more thing about my sons makes me happy.
And, if you’re not sure about your child’s type, you can email me and I’ll help you figure it out. Meanwhile, here’s a link to the INFJ course.
This course includes four days of on-demand video sessions and email-based course materials. The cost is $195. Sign up now.
This is a guest post by Lehla Eldridge. Her blog is Unschooling the Kids, and that’s a photo of her kids with a Workaway visitor. Lehla’s family lives in Italy.
Workaway is a website that’s aim is to help people who are travelling to find a place to stay for free in exchange for helping their hosts. By creating a swap between the host and the traveller a fine balance is met which enables each party to benefit. Read more
Kate Keyhoe is a professor of American literature and creative writing. With her husband, she homeschools her daughter.
I’m supposed to be writing right now – not this, some bloggy letter to Penelope Trunk but really writing, as in poems or lyric essays or a think piece on the last avant garde art installation I saw. Read more