Customer Reviews

Personality Plus for Parents: Understanding What Makes Your Child Tick

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is EXCELLENT. Every parent needs to read it.
I have 5 children and this book has helped me so much to see
what makes my children different, and has enabled me to accept
them just as they are. Just one example-my third son has always seemed to be lazy. He is just not motivated to work. I used to worry that I was raising a lazy adult but this book showed me that he is a phlegmatic, and phlegmatics tend to be that way! They find the shortest way to do things and are unmotivated to get their work done. I now understand my little guy and why he is like he is-I can accept him as living according to his temperament. I could give several other examples.
This book is practical in that it lists the strengths and weaknesses of each temperament and gives ideas for parents on how to raise their children according to how they are. I loved that it pairs up the different combinations of parents and children.
I could go on and on but suffice it to say that I read the book in just a couple of days and learned so much that it's changed the way I relate to my children. I even learned much about me and also about my husband.
It's a fascinating, practical, life-changing book. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Now I'm off to read her book for adults, "Personality Plus". :)

I disagree with the reviewer below. This book explains why kids act the way they do, it doesn't excuse their behavior or give them a license to sin because of it.
I understand my children SO much better than before I read this book. They all know their temperaments and they can spot others' temperaments right away. This helps us understand people. It has helped me understand my husband where I didn't in almost 20 years of marriage. I understand my sister and where she used to offend me now I realize she just tends to be flaky. :)
I could say so much about this book. I truly think every parent should read it. I like the one for adults as well.
Last but not least this book even helped me understand myself.
To me this book isn't unbiblical. It helped me in all good ways. I know how to specifically pray for my children and them understanding why they are prone to do the things they do or feel the way they feel....it's all good. I can't say enough good things about this book.

This book is timeless in its content and applicable to all ages of parents/grandparents and children/grandchildren. The book includes a profile to help you establish the personalities of each child/parent and then offers natural characteristics of each personality and how they interact with one another. You will find the strengths and weaknesses of each one and how to work out the struggles that accompany those characteristics. I have personally used this book over and over to help me understand my own children and grandchildren. In addition, as a retreat speaker,a MOPS speaker, and a presenter at parenting seminars, this book is the focus of my presentations. After people buy this book and read it, I receive calls to have one-on-one conversations to help guide them in better relationships with their child/children. This book is truly a gift to parents in helping them understand how their child functions and how they can reinforce the strengths and help overcome the weaknesses. Read it and find a new relationship with your child/grandhild.

Florence Littauer has written a book that has the potential to transform relationships. Her knowledge of personality types and how to deal with them will help you better understand not only your children but yourself as well.

The author gives clear descriptions of the four personality types. Rather than stopping with a description, she goes on to share parenting ideas for each type of child. This is very helpful, but she goes further still! I found the most helpful sections to be those where the author spelled out how a parent with one personality type can get along with and bring out the best in a child of another personality.

If you have children you just can't figure out, this book will help you.

I have four children, and they all have different personalities. This book has helped me to identify which personality the children fall under, then what I can do about it to build up their strengths and help them work on their weaknesses. Because I am a "Perfect Melancholy" as I parent I tend to expect perfection, the book warns against that and advises to ease up on my perfectionism. This is just one example, but the book is awsome. I have shared it with my friends and we all have had a great time taking the personality test to see which personality we are. If you want to understand your children better please get this book!! Why does your daughter always talk, talk, talk? And why does your son like to take the path of least resistance all the time? I highly recommend this book from one mom to another.

If I was going to recommend a book for parents battling with their kids, this would be it! I wish I had read it before all the others. It explains so much about why my son does the things he does, and the best way to deal with his behaviour without totalling losing it with him. Great to be able to do the personality test for parents too. A must-have!

Having read Personality Plus and thoroughly enjoyed that, I bought "PP for Parents" as gift to my sister (and read it too).

I'm single, but I suppose the book is really helpful for parents to understand their children better. How many times we hear parents say "I wish you're more like your brother!"? Every child is different and each should be treated differently accordingly. This book explains how they differ, and guides us on how to more effectively deal with it. Parents could also avoid unnecessary or even damaging reaction/treatment to the differences.

Since the personality of an individual is innate, recognizing it in a child is easier. And critical. It is beneficial to start early in harnessing the potential - sharping the good side of it, and smothering the negative one. Make the best of the different personality.

Emotional health developed during childhood has great impact throughout a person's life. I think it would be a loss not to read this book.

It is insightful to find out we can tell personalities in babies. And knowing your own personality and how to interact with other personalities makes it so much easier to raise great grandchildren. Wish I knew this when my own children were growing up. It makes a big difference in the level of self confidence and self esteem as one raises children, especially during the formative years of birth to age 3.

I believe very strongly in temperament and was mostly interested in what the authors had to say about our differing personalities even within our small family of three. My small son is very even-tempered and sanguine and my husband is definitely phlegmatic. Always the perfectionist, I like to learn about the best ways to interact with my son (and why my husband's laid back attitude drives me crazy sometimes!). I do have one issue with the quality of introversion being a flaw. If you do any study of the Myers Briggs Type Inventory, a more researched study of temperament, introversion does not have a negative qualification about it. In fact, the opposite. Think Gandhi or Emily Dickinson. I think the tests at the end could be confusing and lead you in the wrong direction.

I tell you what, if you want a book written about personalities in good humor and great fun, Personality Plus for Parents just about says it all! Not only is Personality Plus for Parents informative and enlightening but it's extremely humorous as well. If Florence Littaeur decides to quit whatever she is doing right now, she should consider writing a fiction novel. I don't know about you, but I would DEFINITELY get one.

Back to the topic in hand...deciphering the personalities of our children. To be honest, I know exactly what kind of children I am raising. I know precisely what makes them tick because I am quite sure I didn't choose to stay home to raise them for nothing. I want to know them inside out, and that's exactly the situation right now. I know my kids very well. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THEM. Both my kids have opposing personalities, as different as Pluto and Sun can be. Their personalities clash like crazy and who would live on if they were to share a room. Jared is lazy and fun-loving beyond words. He's keen to learn and excited about almost everything. He's the kind of kid who gets excited about learning how to say `detergent'. Joshua, in the meantime, lives in his own world. He would rather brood about something and then dawdle on his Doodle Board. But this is not about my kids but my point is that before reading this Personality Plus for Parents by Florence Littauer, I wasn't so sure what to do with their behavioral differences.

But now, every time a kid, my kid (funny calling them `a' kid) misbehaves, her advice rings in my head. So, if you ask me if the book is good and useful or not, I'd say `Boy, is it ever!'

Like `Rich dad, Poor dad' and `Chicken Soup' series, there are many different versions made for different people. There's chicken soup for parents, there's chicken soup for gays, there's chicken soup for the Chinese mother, there's chicken soup....for say....clowns! Before I picked up this book, I read Personality Plus which was written for normal people, with or without kids. This book discusses the personalities of children, how to discover their personalities from very early on and how to deal with them so that we can help them realize their full potential.

I like it that there are loads of examples in the book, scenarios that you can instantly apply to what happens right in front of your own TV set. You read and then go, `Yeah, that like so happened just 5 minutes ago!'. And let me tell you, the scenarios and examples really helped me apply the methods she introduced to the book.

One thing is missing, though. A very strategic method of applying all her theories and advice on our children, individually. In Personality Plus, she merely explained how our children behave and how to deal with them, in general. But there's no definitive plan on how to curb future potential behavioral problems.

But apart from that, this book is not only a valuable friend and filled to the brim with information but it's wildly funny and entertaining as well.

So, for parents, whatever it's worth, go get it and read it in the bath tub and enjoy it.