Knowing myself and my family members helps me to understand our interactions and work towards peace and cooperation.
I have a master’s in education and a minor in psychology.
Personalities, learning styles, emotions, and motivations have always interested me. This interest has guided my work with my students and my family. It’s important to understand and work with differences for good leadership.
My kids enjoy taking the tests and discussing the results. We learn about each other and it helps us in our relationships.
Enneagram
The Enneagram of Personality has been widely promoted in both business management and spiritual contexts. The underlying structure of Enneagram is based on testable ideas about motivations and emotions. There are 9 types.
I’m a combo 1 and 5.
My husband is a solid 3.
Two of my kids are 7 and two of my kids are 9.
Knowing and working from this knowledge helps us with conflict transformation.
We first heard about Enneagram about 6 years ago when we attended a hippotherapy family camp. That whole week was the beginning of improving our family relationships.
Learn your Enneagram here or here.
MBTI
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) personality inventory makes the theory of psychological types described by C. G. Jung understandable and useful. There are 16 types.
I am INTJ (which is apparently unusual for a female).
My husband is ENTJ.
My kids are ENTP, ENFP, ENFJ, and INFJ (which is apparently the rarest personality type).
Having only two introverts in a household of extroverts can be stressful.
When my 7-year-old son took the MBTI quiz, one of the questions was “Would you prefer your son to be kind or smart?” He didn’t hesitate before saying “kind.” I am so proud.
Find your MBTI type here.
Another fun personality test is the Gary Smalley John Trent test from Making Love Last Forever. I’m a lion and my husband is a golden retriever. You can probably guess how that works out.
The Four Lenses Assessment assigns colors. I’m purple and my husband is green. There’s a similar FREE test: True Colors.
Learning Styles
As a teacher, learning styles have always been important in the classroom.
I taught English for over 10 years…and incorporating all the learning styles in a lesson could be challenging at times.
As a homeschool mom, I make sure to include different learning and teaching styles in our educational activities.
There are four main types of learning:
- Visual: The occipital lobes at the back of the brain manage the visual sense. Both the occipital and parietal lobes manage spatial orientation.
- Auditory: The temporal lobes handle aural content. The right temporal lobe is especially important for music.
- Reading/Writing: The temporal and frontal lobes, especially two specialized areas called Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas (in the left hemisphere of the two lobes).
- Kinesthetic: The cerebellum and the motor cortex (at the back of the frontal lobe) handle much of our physical movement.
Discover the Types of Learners:
Pure Flix offers a variety of wholesome content to supplement homeschool curriculum for visual learners, and check out these 20 activities for learning with Legos to use with your kinesthetic learner!
I am definitely not an auditory learner. My teen creates little jingles and parody songs all the time and she has a great ear to teach herself piano and guitar. I try not to fall into the comfort zone of verbal and visual teaching all the time. Kinesthetic lessons help us all to learn by doing.
Multiple Intelligences
I’m careful not to place my children into a box. Schools make it more difficult for students to shine in their talents and abilities.
Howard Gardner uses the word “intelligence” where other people have traditionally used words like “ability” and “aptitude.”
I know what my kids exhibit as their natural abilities. We work together to hone that and also improve in other areas, without shaming. We want to be well-rounded.
There are 8 (maybe 9) intelligences. Moral or Existential is sometimes included.
I love how these Intelligences further explain personality and learning style. My extrovert family members are interpersonal. Two of my kids are so naturally self-aware, intrapersonal, that it astounds me.
Emotional Intelligence
An often forgotten issue is emotion. We learn and teach to stifle emotion…but that’s not healthy. We are a shaming and humiliating culture.
In our home, we are learning how to be healthy with our emotions – in all their mess and discomfort.
Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to monitor one’s own and other people’s emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.
Emotional Intelligence gained popularity in his 1995 book, written by the author and science journalist Daniel Goleman.
Since our culture stigmatizes mental health issues, I feel it’s very important to help my children realize their emotional intelligence. We discuss and learn together.
Getting in touch with our emotions, recognizing and experiencing both positive and negative feelings is key to being wholehearted.
We have many wonderful tools to help us wholeheartedly teach our children well.
I use these tools so I know myself and my children. I want my children to know themselves and their abilities and vulnerabilities so they can grow into whole and healthy adults.
More Resources:
Learning and Teaching Styles and How I Use Them in My Homeschool
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