Nurture by Nature: Understand Your Child's Personality Type - And Become a Better Parent [Paperback]

Barbara Barron-Tieger (Author), E. Michael Ellovich (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1997

Every parent knows that children, even babies, have distinct personalities. Any parent with more than one child is probably well aware of how different from each other children, even siblings, can be. So it's only natural that the parenting strategies that work with one child may be less effective with another child. How can you be sure that your nurturing is well suited to your child? With this one-of-a-kind parenting guide, you can use Personality Type analysis - a powerful and well-respected psychological tool - to understand your child better and become a more effective parent. In Nurture by Nature you'll learn which of 16 distinctly different types best matches your child's personality; how this personality type affects your child in each of the three stages of development - preschool, school age, and adolescence; how other parents, whose experiences are recounted in scores of case studies, deal with a wide array of challenging situations you may encounter: reining in a preschooler whose boundless energy constantly gets him into trouble; communicating with a child who keeps her thoughts and feelings secret; understanding an adolescent who seems not to care that he is forever losing things (his homework, his baseball cap, his keys); broadening the horizons of a child who resists trying anything new or unfamiliar...; and how you can adapt your parenting style to your child's type - and get better results when communicating, supporting, motivating, and disciplining. Whether your child is a tantrum-prone toddler, a shy third-grader, a rebellious teen, or somewhere in between, Nurture by Nature will give you the power to understand why children are the way they are - and to become the best parent you can be.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Personality-type assessment helps parents learn about a child's individuality. Armed with knowledge of that individuality, parents can add understanding and acceptance to their unconditional love, gear their parenting to the needs of the child, and help the child develop lasting self-esteem and happiness. According to Myers and Briggs, inventors of the personality inventory scales that bear their names, there are 16 types of personality, each of which is characterized by preferences in interpersonal interaction, sorts of information noticed and remembered, methods of decision making, and degrees of structure found desirable. Tieger and Barron-Tieger offer detailed interpretations of each of the Myers-Briggs types as they flesh out personality assessment as a valuable parenting resource, stressing that how valuable will depend quite heavily on specific parents' insights, perceptiveness, and imagination. Some prior familiarity with personality-type assessment will help in making the best use of their advice, yet this remains a remarkable tool for relating to children. Kathryn Carpenter

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1st edition (May 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316845132
• ISBN-13: 978-0316845137
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 1 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,973 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "must have" book for any parent!, March 25, 2000

By 

Beverly (Utah) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nurture by Nature: Understand Your Child's Personality Type - And Become a Better Parent (Paperback)

I originally checked this book out of our library, but within a few weeks I bought my own copy. I'm amazed at how one book could change the way I look at my children (as well as my spouse and myself!). My husband and I are complete opposites (he's ISTJ and I'm ENFP) but tend to complement eachother's strengths and weaknesses. I was able to see how my ENTP daughter needed more space than I was giving her, and how it was important to save "no" for the big things. My ISFJ daughter has always caused us concern because of the way everything goes over her head. She also has a very difficult time making decisions. Through this book I was able to see more of her strengths and also am better able to deal with her "personality quirks"...it's been a lifesaver! My ISFJ daughter has always been slow to warm up to people, but quick at understanding how things work . She learned chess in one day (on her 7th birthday) and regularly gives us a run for our money! And lastly we have a little ESTP who is only 2 but has already learned the art of manipulation...I guess you could say she was born with it! But now I can use the tips in NURTURE BY NATURE to help with all of their different personalities. I bought this book only 6 months ago and have used it more than ANY other parenting/help book I have. You wouldn't believe how marked up it is! I could probably toss all the others! I only wish that I had found this 10 years ago! It's worth its weight in gold!

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile, February 9, 2002

By 

Ms Diva "cycworker" (Nanaimo, B.C. Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nurture by Nature: Understand Your Child's Personality Type - And Become a Better Parent (Paperback)

This book takes the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and applies it to parenting. The book is supposed to help parents identify their child's personality type, so that they can then parent them in a way that best suits the child's needs as well as the parents'.

I like the fact that the book shows that children are individuals, and that a one size fits all approach to parenting tends not to work. The book could really give a parent insight into a child who is vey different from the way the parent is (say, a very extroverted mom or dad who can't quite understand why his/her child would rather read a book or play with a chemistry set than go play with a group of kids). It can also help the parent understand why some discipline techniques that work really well with one child completely fail with another. The book talks about all these sorts of issues - school, discipline, overall behaviour, etc.

The problem I have with the book is that I think is difficult to identify some children's preferences, particularly in the more complex areas of a person's type. It's rather easy to tell if someone is an extravert vs. an introvert. Other things, like sensing vs intuitive, or judging vs. perceiving are more difficult to assess in a child. I found it hard to determine the type of the child I was thinking of. Where the book is more useful is knowing your own type, and looking at how your child might respond to it.

Although I'm not convinced that the Myers-Briggs Type Indictor is a valid instrument to use with children, I do believe this book can still give parents and other adults who interact with kids a good broad base of understanding of how temperment is displayed in children. For that alone, the book is worth looking at. I would reccommend getting the book out of the library and skimming a few chapters to see if you like the book and think it will be useful to you before you spend the money to purchase it outright.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic!, December 31, 1998

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Nurture by Nature: Understand Your Child's Personality Type - And Become a Better Parent (Paperback)

What a great book! I strongly recommend this book for all parents and teachers. Especially those involved with so-called learning disabilities like attention deficit disorder, which can simply be the manifestation of a child's natural temperament.

I was already familiar with the MBTI/Jungian theory of temperament before I bought the book and suspected my son to be an "ENTP" because of his apparent preferences for extraversion, intuition-imagination, logic and divergent thinking. When I got the book in the mail and opened it up to ENTP I immediately read it to my husband and we were in hysterics. We've been calling him "The Negotiator," and the heading under ENTP was "Everything's Negotiable." There were about ten full pages on the ENTP temperament, from infancy up through the teen years. I'm also an ENTP and it rang true. It was simply amazing how true it all was. I now feel a bit more prepared in that I have an idea about what to expect in future years.

Then we looked up ISTP, my husband's type, and read that. I said to him about certain parts, "you weren't like that, were you?" and he reply rather sheepishly, "well, actually, I was." Then he began to tell me stories I'd never heard before of him as a child. I just never pictured him hanging off the tops of cliffs.

All in all, it was incredibly valuable for me to identify that my son has pretty much the same temperament as me, and it was probably even more invaluable for my husband to read about the temperament traits of an ENTP, since my husband is of a different type and would naturally tend to have different expectations of his son. I think he understands him a little better now.