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[NT] NT: what do you wish your parents had known about you?

MonkeyGrass

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I have a kiddo whom I suspect is an ENTJ/P. Even at 4, already a total servant of (her own immature version) of logic. She astounds me. She's incredibly well-spoken and assertive. On the playground, she's the one organizing all the other children into her own little army. There are a lot of echoes of dh's INTJ personality in her, except she's wildly extroverted.

I wanna know what makes her tick. What do you wish your parents had known about you? How do you feel you were misunderstood? What did they do that really communicated love to you? What did you need? :popcorn:
 

entropie

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I wish my Dad would have explained mistakes I did to me and especially why they are mistakes. He rather made me live in constant fear to be beaten up by him, if I do something wrong and that way I had to find out whats right and whats wrong through trial and error.
 

Fluffywolf

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There's plenty of things they don't know, but it is not in my interests, not of interest to me to tell them. So, nothing they need to know. :p

By the way, I was extremely extroverted as a kid too, quite introverted now. My introversion didn't visibly start to develop at all until I was 17 years old. Before that I was very extroverted. I don't think MBTI is accurate, if even possible, on younglings to properly test. I think it most obviously start to develop at an age of about 10. Before that we're a bunch of parrots and do the same as people around us do. For I/E at least.
 

MonkeyGrass

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Hmmm...about the parrot thing. Dh and I are both fairly introverted. :p But then, I was extroverted as a child, too, mostly because my parents valued extroversion. :muse:
 
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As a child, I just wanted more respect. I hated being thought of as cute. I hated when adults would talk about me in third person while I was right in front of them. I hated when anyone would let me win. I hated being doted over. I hated when I asked my dad about his work and even went so far as to try to copy it, because it looked so interesting (engineering diagrams, designs), he would just get mad at me and tell me to leave. If he had just taken a measly second to explain it, even though I wouldn't have understood most of it, I would have eaten it up.
 

Nighthawk

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I wish my Dad would have explained mistakes I did to me and especially why they are mistakes. He rather made me live in constant fear to be beaten up by him, if I do something wrong and that way I had to find out whats right and whats wrong through trial and error.

Same here ... I was often beaten for asking "why" I wasn't supposed to do something (defintely old school parenting). A logical explanation of why I wasn't supposed to do something would have probably worked out quite well. Of course, if there was no logic behind something they wanted me to do ... chances are, I would not do it.

Also, I considered a beating a severe violation of my physical being and still hold animosity toward my parents for having done so. Not saying you would do that though ;)

I would have liked them to respect my imagination a bit more, instead of ridiculing me for it ... sometimes in front of my peers. My father (ESFP) in particular was notorious for that. To him, the only thing that mattered was that I got an 'A' in PE. Arch-typical jock.
 

MonkeyGrass

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Also, I considered a beating a severe violation of my physical being and still hold animosity toward my parents for having done so. Not saying you would do that though

I'll bet! That sucks. :( I'm actually pretty passionate about non punitive parenting...but I do tend to get aggitated rather than calmly explaining things. She does actually insist on knowing the "why", and, having been brought up pretty old school myself, I have to stifle the rote "Because I SAID so" response. Hmm. Good thoughts.
 

CJ99

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I wish my parents were more understanding of my abstractness and (though this is going away now) complete antisocialness.
They always tried to get me to socialise and have lots of friends. Great because i could have people round whenever and still can but annoying because they didn't understand how i actually enjoyed being alone in my room, they thought i was just sleeping rather tha reading thinkng gaming and writing every so often.

What else. I wish they were more able to see when i want to talk and when i don't.
Fair enough making converstion but i don't really respond why then plaese stop trying. They always think something is wrong and then when i try to explain that i just can;'t be bothered talking to them they take it REALLY badly.
 

Fluffywolf

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I was rarely beaten but I am glad I was at the times I did get a beating.

They also regularly locked me up in the bathroom. Placed my head under a cold stream of water. Washed my mouth with green soap. Etc. :D

My father usually only needed to put two fingers in the air. Like a count. From one to three, but he always skipped the one and if you didn't stop before the three it was already too late. So when he put up two fingers, you better behave! Worked like a charm on me and my brother and sister.

Anyhow, the only times they punished me I had it coming. I was given full freedom otherwise to do as a please. I think it is important for a parent to be able to punish a child, when it is appropiate. But ofcourse, punished a child when it isn't aware of being wrong or punishing a child at the wrong time, or punish them for something sometimes but not all the time, etc. Those are all bad imo. Parents have to be consistent and reliable.

My father is ESTJ, my mother ENFJ. (I think)
 

MonkeyGrass

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Fair enough making converstion but i don't really respond why then plaese stop trying. They always think something is wrong and then when i try to explain that i just can;'t be bothered talking to them they take it REALLY badly.

digesting...thanks for posting this! I have crowbar tenancies, but remember what it was like to need space, too.
 

substitute

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the same thing I guess I wish everyone knew about me who thinks I'm unpredictable and difficult to get to know or whatever else... that, if you ask me a direct question, I always answer it as truthfully and fully as I can, and am never offended by simple curiosity, especially when it's clearly driven by genuinely wanting to understand. That's all you gotta do: ask.
 

MonkeyGrass

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the same thing I guess I wish everyone knew about me who thinks I'm unpredictable and difficult to get to know or whatever else... that, if you ask me a direct question, I always answer it as truthfully and fully as I can, and am never offended by simply curiosity, especially when it's clearly driven by genuinely wanting to understand. That's all you gotta do: ask.

Is it also important to you to have your answer taken at face-value? DD *hates* it when I read into her answer. (bad infj habit :doh:)
 

substitute

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Also, I considered a beating a severe violation of my physical being and still hold animosity toward my parents for having done so. Not saying you would do that though ;)

How strange - I found it... strangely amusing! I always felt like it was a sorta game of chance, when I did something I knew was forbidden or would get me a beating, I did it in the full knowledge, and if I got caught, you know, it's a fair cop, and I'd take it with a weird kinda combination of like, yeah, fucker, this hurts! and at the same time, just laughing inwardly at the situation, like fair enough, you got me this time, but you still don't know about the other stuff I did, and there's more to come!

I even remember some of the beatings fondly and still laugh to myself when I think of them, the reasons often are funny, and I hold no resentment at all. I'm glad they did beat me, it taught me about boundaries and I don't think any other way would've been effective with me at the time, I was just too oblivious to others and their feelings and stuff, for any kind of soft approach to work on me, I'd have just taken them for saps and played them even harder, if the threat of a beating hadn't been there.

Is it also important to you to have your answer taken at face-value? DD *hates* it when I read into her answer. (bad infj habit :doh:)

Absolutely. It is the single most frustrating, infuriating, insulting and exasperating thing that a person can do to me, to give their own value to the words I choose so very carefully to express EXACTLY what I mean.
 

MonkeyGrass

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Absolutely. It is the single most frustrating, infuriating, insulting and exasperating thing that a person can do to me, to give their own value to the words I choose so very carefully to express EXACTLY what I mean.

Wow, that's really good to know!
 

entropie

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My dad himself says nowadays that I am a very reasonable man and always was a very reasonable boy and that he had beaten me up far too often. But he came from a family which totally sucked and in which he had to fight for his ground and you know the beating was passed on. In my whole family, the last one who became an academic dates back 3 generations, therefore problems were most often solved with beatings.

It's just like that sometimes. At least I was a tough kid, with an unbendable will :)
 

substitute

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My dad himself says nowadays that I am a very reasonable man and always was a very reasonable boy and that he had beaten me up far too often. But he came from a family which totally sucked and in which he had to fight for his ground and you know the beating was passed on. In my whole family, the last one who became an academic dates back 3 generations, therefore problems were most often solved with beatings.

It's just like that sometimes. At least I was a tough kid, with an unbendable will :)

heh yeah, me too... and a high pain threshold!!

with my dad, it was more just that he came from an old fashioned Edwardian family, that's what just the way things were done then.
 

INTPness

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I think it's important to understand that your child will naturally be better than you (and her father) at some things. For instance, I was raised by an ESTJ step-father and ESFJ mother (only interacted with my INTJ father on occasion and it felt like a great, exhilirating release to spend time with him - I didn't want to leave and go back to sensor-ville). But, my point is that there were things at the age of 10 (and 12, and 15) that I just knew from reading, studying, pondering, experimenting, etc. - things that my parents had probably never even given thought to in their entire lives. That was my strenght - I knew things, I learned, I gained information. So, when I would discuss these things with them, they would argue with me and stifle my creativity and even make me feel like these things didn't matter in real life and only "weird" people spend so much time thinking about these things. They are about as "S" as you can get and I am very much an "N", so the gap was huge.

Looking back (now that I'm an adult), I understand fully that parents are the adults and they actually do know best. But, if your daughter is already organizing kids on the playground, maybe you should anticipate the fact that she might blow you out of the water (and just about everyone else in society, for the most part) at that particular skill set. You might at some point begin to dislike that part of her personality as she gets older (maybe it rubs you the wrong way, maybe it feels like she doesn't care about your way of doing things, etc.), but really try to understand that this is the area of her personality that is going to allow her to stand out and thrive in life. Nurture it. That doesn't mean she gets to be your boss or not respect you, but just subtly respect that and allow it to flourish.

Also, I think parents can also hurt children by telling them "You are just the SMARTEST, BEST ORGANIZER around. You're my little organizer." Or, "you are just the best student! So smart at school!" Positive feedback is great, but in my case (and other people I know), if you only heard positive feedback in one or two areas of life, then you can easily grow up thinking that you will only be successful by using those attributes. I grew up thinking that I had to get my Ph.D. and had to do something in academia, because all I ever heard was how smart I was in the classroom and with books, but in every other area of life, I was a lame-tard. But, it took my 10 years of adulthood to realize, I don't really give a hoot about academia. Am I capable of kicking butt in academia if I applied myself? Sure. Is it the thing I want to do in life? No.

So, find that balance. Know her strengths and her limitations as a person and allow them the strengths to flourish. But, let her know you love her for everything that she is, not just the things that she's really good at.
 

Totenkindly

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I wanna know what makes her tick. What do you wish your parents had known about you? How do you feel you were misunderstood? What did they do that really communicated love to you? What did you need? :popcorn:

My mom (ISFJ) communicated love by doing practical things for me and is a wonderful giver of tangible gifts; but she was incapable of understand me or talking to me on my level... I have always had to go into her world. Honestly I would have rather been understood.

My dad (ESTP) has drinking problems, treated everyone else better than his family, bullied people if he could and cut them out of his life otherwise, and always had to win / tell others what to do. He often was insensitive and clueless, and he is a poor listener. I still know he loved us in terms of his sentiments, and it hurts me to say it; but objectively I have to say as a father he has been awful.

I wish my parents could have understood me.
I wish they were just better listeners and comprehenders.

And then the times I did things they didn't understand, and they ended up not approving of me because they did not understand, they would have instead understood correctly... and I think they would have been pretty proud of me for the necessary risks I have taken, the courage I have shown, and the consideration I have tried so hard to give others in my life.

But they don't really get me at all, and at this point (they're in their late 60's), I don't think it's going to happen.

I've had to develop other relationships in my life to compensate for their inability to understand me. I have done pretty well, all things considered; and it has made me a sensitive parent with my children; but I'll probably carry that sense of alienation to my grave.

As far as my kids go, it's pretty amazing how they differentiate so young and you can see strong insinuations of the person they are becoming. My goal in life as a parent has been to (1) envision who they are based on what they are showing me and (2) then coax it out, empower it, and encourage it as much as I can.

I have an INTP kid who is just profound for his years and sensitive/kind to others; I have an ESFP kid who has gotten some focus in his life and is an achiever and will go places, exuberant and gregarious; and I have an INFJ daughter who is believing in herself and developing the confidence she needs to be a slim steel rapier, elegant and tempered.
 

MonkeyGrass

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I think it's important to understand that your child will naturally be better than you (and her father) at some things. For instance, I was raised by an ESTJ step-father and ESFJ mother (only interacted with my INTJ father on occasion and it felt like a great, exhilirating release to spend time with him - I didn't want to leave and go back to sensor-ville). But, my point is that there were things at the age of 10 (and 12, and 15) that I just knew from reading, studying, pondering, experimenting, etc. - things that my parents had probably never even given thought to in their entire lives. That was my strenght - I knew things, I learned, I gained information. So, when I would discuss these things with them, they would argue with me and stifle my creativity and even make me feel like these things didn't matter in real life and only "weird" people spend so much time thinking about these things. They are about as "S" as you can get and I am very much an "N", so the gap was huge.

Looking back (now that I'm an adult), I understand fully that parents are the adults and they actually do know best. But, if your daughter is already organizing kids on the playground, maybe you should anticipate the fact that she might blow you out of the water (and just about everyone else in society, for the most part) at that particular skill set. You might at some point begin to dislike that part of her personality as she gets older (maybe it rubs you the wrong way, maybe it feels like she doesn't care about your way of doing things, etc.), but really try to understand that this is the area of her personality that is going to allow her to stand out and thrive in life. Nurture it. That doesn't mean she gets to be your boss or not respect you, but just subtly respect that and allow it to flourish.

Also, I think parents can also hurt children by telling them "You are just the SMARTEST, BEST ORGANIZER around. You're my little organizer." Or, "you are just the best student! So smart at school!" Positive feedback is great, but in my case (and other people I know), if you only heard positive feedback in one or two areas of life, then you can easily grow up thinking that you will only be successful by using those attributes. I grew up thinking that I had to get my Ph.D. and had to do something in academia, because all I ever heard was how smart I was in the classroom and with books, but in every other area of life, I was a lame-tard. But, it took my 10 years of adulthood to realize, I don't really give a hoot about academia. Am I capable of kicking butt in academia if I applied myself? Sure. Is it the thing I want to do in life? No.

So, find that balance. Know her strengths and her limitations as a person and allow them the strengths to flourish. But, let her know you love her for everything that she is, not just the things that she's really good at.
Excellent! Thank you. :cool:
 
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