Personality Blends

People are rarely only one personality type. Most of us are a blend of two or even three temperaments, with one being dominant. If you look at the DISC wheel and find your dominant personality type, look to the left and to the right. Chances are your personality includes at least a few traits from each of those types as well. In some cases, it’s hard to tell which the main temperament is because you are almost evenly split between two. As a parent, if you’re not sure how to handle certain situations because your child is a combination of personality types, no problem, just learn about both. Your approach to the different situations I’ve discussed previously (homework, chores, bedtime, etc.) will be tailor made to your particular child. Let me give some examples of blended personality types:

Our five year old is an ID personality type. It’s an interesting combination. She loves to have fun (the I) and she absolutely insists that we all have fun with her (the D). I have seen my C personality husband playing a fake soccer game in the living room just so Annie could pretend she was a cheerleader. When I asked him why he was doing it, he said, “Annie told me to.” I understood immediately. Nobody wants to incur her wrath, so we usually just go along with whatever she says. Actually, she’s very persuasive (the I) and she makes everything sound really great so in the end you think you want to do what she tells you. It’s quite a gift. When it comes to getting her to help with chores, the D in her surfaces and she digs her heels in. I have to give her a choice of chores that she can do so that she feels she has some measure of control (the D). Then I may have to work alongside her and make it fun to keep her on task- - just like I would an I personality type.

My son is an IS blend. You might think they are a lot alike, both being predominantly I’s, but they’re not. He is very fun-loving (the I) but incredibly sensitive (the S). Which means when it comes to chore time for him I have to make it fun and work alongside him (the I), but when he does something wrong I have to be careful the words I use (the S). If it comes out too critical, it absolutely flattens him. It wouldn’t faze my ID daughter in the least, but him… different story.

You see how it works? Just blend the different techniques to match your child’s personality blend. I found a picture of our little ID that I thought summed it up pretty well. Look and see if you can pick out both the I and the D.

...worth a thousand words.

Three Year Olds

First off, you should know that all two year olds are D’s. They wield their emerging independence like a weapon, hence, “the terrible twos.” Three is about the earliest you can actually tell which way a child’s personality will go. There are plenty of indicators before then, but by the time they reach three they can walk and talk and interact almost like humans. So I love to watch three year olds and, as luck would have it, I teach a Sunday school class full of them.

It’s fun to watch them in a group setting. The outgoing, driven D’s will invariably jockey for position as the line leader and I have the hardest time getting them to let me teach the lesson. I don’t even remotely have the fun-loving I’s attention during the lesson, but when it’s singing time it’s a different story ( I’m sure we can be heard halfway around the building). The sweet, quiet S’s don’t give me any problems and are the ones most likely to be found on my lap. And the detail oriented little C’s take FOREVER to finish their coloring pages and are the first ones to tell me if I vary our routine in the slightest.

Which brings me to my favorite "DISC moment" of the month... a few weeks ago we were listening to a CD in class where a narrator described a scene and the children were acting it out. They were pretending to take a walk in the woods and the narrator said, “Look children! There is a little bunny hopping along the path. Can you hop like a bunny boys and girls?” at which point they all start jumping up and down. Except Andy. Andy is my D. I looked over at him while all of the other children were hopping around the room. Was he hopping? No. He had his imaginary gun pointed at the imaginary bunnies and was picking them off one by one. (insert sigh) Such a D.