I have a master’s in education with a bachelor’s in English lit and a minor in psychology.
Knowing myself and my family members helps me to understand our interactions and work towards peace and cooperation.
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:
- Homeschool Curriculum Choices Based on your Enneagram Type
- How To Use Your Personality Type To Be A Confident Homeschooler
- Kidzmet Review
- Learning and Teaching Styles and How I Use Them in My Homeschool
- Students Keys Review
This great information that not only parents, but caregivers can use to help understand the person they care for. Thank you for linking up at Caregiver Connections!
Very interesting post. I’m familiar with most of the tests you mentioned, but not all. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Jennifer-Great content here! I’m a nurse and help adults with memory issues and often teach about brain dominance, learning styles etc. so I found this incredibly interesting. I too apply this to myself and my family and I think it’s time for some more assessments! Thanks for a great post, happy to stop by from #ChasingCommunity!
I love how you pointed out that you don’t put your kids in a box when it comes to these things. I think these tests are so interesting, but I find myself rebelling against the thought that I fit neatly into one or even two categories. They for sure help you learn how to interact with others, though, and teach you more about yourself!
Fun read to share, I will have to take time and see how it goes with my kids. Thank you for sharing on Oh my heartsie Girls Friday Features. Hope you’ll join us again!
Have a great weekend!
This was great! I’m a school social worker so this information is very helpful and interesting. Thank you for sharing!
Understanding personalities and learning styles can give our children confidence when they approach learning, social interactions, and even self-regulation. Thank you for sharing! I am interested in learning more about Enneagram as I am not as familiar with it. We knew our youngest was an auditory learner when she recorded herself speaking and played it back in order to successfully study. Then, at age 11 she showed an unexpected talent for violin and playing by ear. I did not make the connection until your graphic above! Thanks. #ThoughtfulThursdays
Those were fun tests to take! I appreciate you pulling all this info together here. Cool stuff to know and compare. I’ve really seen how the 5 Love Languages stuff from teh Smalley’s has helped me understand my kids and husband better and learn to ‘speak their language’ when I want to get through to them. thanks again!
Wonderful post for parents and teachers to review once more and share with their children.
Hi,
Visiting from Thoughtful Thursdays link up.
This topic is very important in today’s world, unfortunately our education system isn’t geared up for this for each student here in Australia.
Hopefully progress will happen.
Jennifer
I was blessed before I began homeschooling to have a friend who told me about Cynthia Tobias’s The Way They Learn book. It was eye-opening for me as I had never even heard of learning styles, but oh so helpful.
I find the personality tests fascinating.
Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much for putting together such a great list of these amazing resources! This is definitely a post I will refer to when seeking out ways to measure my kids’ personality types and learning styles as they get older. Pinned to my homeschooling board!
Personality inventories are so great for understanding ourselves and our families!
I love that you are gathering this personal information for your children so you can understand them more and help them in a way that speaks most clearly to them. I’ve only taken the Myer’s Brigg’s myself. Funny thing…I’m an INFJ too. I didn’t know it was rare until I read it here. When I looked it up it makes up only 1% of the population. Thank you for sharing with us at Live Life Well. :)
I find all this fascinating and have looked into some of these myself. Still haven’t settled on what I am in the enneagram but I’m getting closer. I sort of a combination of 2,7 9 :) My last myers-briggs said I was ENFP. Not sure if that’s correct, but it’s a start.
You’ve gotten me interested again and I may check into it more. Thanks for sharing at the #LMMLinkup! Blessings to you, Jennifer!
Thanks for sharing Jennifer. I’ve done many of these in college, work and as a leader in Bible studies.
This is a really great article! I love how you break it all down so it is easy to follow and then begin to use. I am very interested in learning how my daughter learns. She is getting frustrated in the classroom setting so we are considering homeschool as another option. Understanding learning style is going to be crucial as we make that transition.
This is wonderful!!! I did not realize how important learning styles were until I began homeschooling my son and we were struggling. When he was little I naturally made everything active, but as he got older I stopped doing this and went with a more traditional approach. It did not work for him and we had to make some adjustments. I am so glad that I did.
These are some amazing resources and I will definitely give some them a try to find even more ways to help him thrive! :)
Thanks!
Thanks for linking up with #LiveLifeWell
Blessings,
Amy
This is such an interesting and informative read. Really useful for parents. Thanks for sharing with #fortheloveofBLOG
I want to go back through this and take some of these tests and have my kids take them too. Thanks for sharing this great resource at Booknificent Thursday on Mommynificent.com!
Tina