I love personality tests. I’m actually obsessed with them, much to my family’s dismay. Knowing and understanding our own personality types and the personality types of our children can provide amazing insights to why and how we differ and to what motivates us.
Today’s high schoolers often lack motivation. As a result, they may underperform or fail to perform in school. Identifying how to reach such students and finding that source of motivation is a daily puzzle in my work, and the parents of apathetic students often consult me because they are struggling to inspire them. Personality tests can, therefore, be a good parental resource.
I myself have taken a wide number of personality tests: Myers-Briggs, Birkman, CliftonStrengths, and Enneagram, to name a few. I recognize that any tool can be used wisely or foolishly, perhaps even prejudicially if over-used or if used for the wrong purposes, but for parents, I believe the value that can be gained through such an assessment can be revelatory.
Our children may lack motivation for a variety of reasons. Perhaps schoolwork is more challenging for them than we know, or perhaps they are depressed or anxious. Maybe we are suffocating them with our rules and expectations, or maybe our children need more structure than we are offering.
Through a trusted personality test, we can help determine whether our children are motivated by feeling special, understood, capable, independent, valued, needed, safe, unrestrained, right, or at ease. Knowing their personality types can also help us identify their possible lack of motivation. A common misstep in parenting, in my experience, is to assume that our children see things the way we do or the way their older siblings do. These assumptions lead to frustrations.
We may think that rewards will motivate our children only to discover through trial and error that our children are not competitive. We may think our children will thrive if engaged in a study group only to realize that our children are introverts and prefer to work alone. We may think that if we tell our children how to best find success, they need only follow our lead, yet we may fail to understand their basic need to feel the freedom to independently discover their own path.
Through personality tests, we can gain a better understanding of ourselves first and how we interact with our children. Then, having our children complete a personality test, many of which are available free online or from a library book, can lead to a greater understanding of how to parent, teach, and guide our children. Importantly, it can also help them to understand and accept themselves.