So much of parenting involves reacting to our L.O.’s behavior, guiding, teaching, course-correcting, and disciplining. But what I know I often fail to realize is that it’s not just my L.O. that I’m reacting to, it’s also my personality that’s influencing how and what I react to.
I’ve been taking this Positive Parenting Solutions course by Amy McCreedy (which is amazing by the way) and within the first few lessons, she has you take a parent personality quiz because our parent personality impacts our child’s behavior – and honestly, our other relationships as well. And our parent personality represents our gut response, especially when we’re stressed, hurried or angry. She identifies four parent personalities: Superiority, Controlling, Pleasing, and Comforting.
I was excited to take the quiz (I have a love for personality tests of any kind…I find them so fascinating!). After I took it, I was incredibly surprised by the results – I for sure thought that Comforting would be mine. Turns out, it’s not and it actually was my lowest score. Maybe I don’t know myself as well as I thought – ha! I actually tied between Controlling and Pleasing. Here’s what that means:
Controlling: tends to like things done a certain way, needs to be in control, models organization and leadership and may invite power struggles.
Pleasing: may say “Yes” to make people happy but really means “No,” reminds kids about things they should remember themselves, finds it easier to do tasks for others to avoid conflict, and feels resentful and ignored.
I didn’t love the results but boy are they so true (for the most part). I had to keep reminding myself that these personalities are a reflection of my gut response. Now I understand where the power struggles with Mackenzie stem from – it’s not just her sassing back and being defiant, it’s also me contributing to that behavior when I’m fired up.
But not all is lost. With some small tweaks to my reactions (thank you Amy), the power struggles will ease up. Some simple changes she suggested include:
Controlling: Don’t correct the child if things aren’t done “your way,” give up some of your decision-making authority in areas where it doesn’t really make a difference, decide which things are the most important and let the rest go, relax, find ways to turn a “No” response into a “You bet!” meaning, flip it into a positive.
Pleasing: Practice saying “No” to every volunteer opportunity or request and your kid (I think I’m doing okay in this department although it’s still hard), and recognize that people love you and value you unconditionally – their respect and affection is not based on how much you do for them.
It’s funny…as I was writing this post, all I had to do was reflect back on the weekend and there were so many moments when my parent personality popped up. When we were playing with Play-Doh, I was directing her on how to use the cookie making machine and she wanted to do it herself. Saying “No” when she wanted to watch a movie before bed instead of flipping it into a positive and saying, “That sounds like fun! How about we watch a movie tomorrow after breakfast or lunch. You get to choose.”
I will say, when I’m not irritated or stressed, I find that my parent personality isn’t as apparent. Rather, I’m more aware of needing to give Mackenzie the freedom she needs to be independent by picking my battles and giving her options so she has the power to choose for herself. I find there are less power struggles when choices are given – this shirt or that shirt, mommy brushes your teeth or you brush your teeth yourself, go potty before we play with friends or don’t play at all, etc.
I’m still learning because my default is always to direct and tell her which clothes to wear, insist she goes potty right now, force her to brush her teeth – and it usually starts and ends with tears.
But at the end of the day, I have to remind myself that even though they’re little, they’re humans and all these little kiddos want is a sense of control over their environment and a little bit of power when they can get it. It’s just a matter of keeping that parent personality in check.
So, the all-too-familiar, “It’s not you, it’s me” line you’d hear during a break-up, actually rings true with parenting too.