Yesterday, I brought up a video during a conversation that had impacted my understanding of people many years ago. I was talking with my mother and sister. I’ve always had the feeling that we each found the other’s temperament a little ‘off putting’.
If you have 20 minutes to give the video below, it may help you to understand others better. That odd, ‘off balance’, feeling we can have even with people we love (and/or like) might have an explanation. [The video is quite entertaining too!]
People are FAR more than their temperaments, but our temperaments are quite a baseline measure of how we approach life.
The varying approaches of individuals are fascinating, often maddening, to us. It’s nice to consider that we aren’t just ‘doing it wrong’. We may be approaching everything with different expectations.
I think this guy (Mark Gungor) pretty much nails down the ways we vary by temperament.
I was a person from “Fun Country” sitting in the same room with my sister, from “Peace Country” and my mother, from “Perfect Country”. [BTW… I married a man from “Control Country”.]
If asked, I believe we would all admit that we’ve had moments when our understanding of each other was strained. Recognizing our differences at the elemental temperamental level gives me a better plan for making myself understood to them… and behaving more patiently while trying to understand them.
So, I ask, “Might our temperaments cause misunderstanding?”
I think so. Enjoy!
Tag: differences
Reena’s Xploration Challenge #252- Family Day Care: A Curious Adventure
Family Day Care* was my career choice for many reasons, not least of which, was the revealing nature of small children in group settings. Call me crazy but what many seem to define as a mundane, labor intensive, messy, job, was a fascinating and exhilarating adventure to me. I don’t ever remember not being curious about what makes people ‘tick’. Firsthand observation of ‘raw’ human beings was a golden opportunity and lots of fun.
Babies to Big Kids and girls and boys, all from endlessly variable homelives, made for a study of innocent, intrinsic human nature like no other.
Let me assure you, I have no doubt that boys and girls are different. Their concerns, socializing preferences, and strengths, are not absolutely or universally at odds but, after 46 years of observation, I’m convinced they’re not the same ‘animal’.
May I say, finding this out made me extremely happy because the two genders were obviously created to complement each other… and sometimes to keep each other in ‘check’. I can’t say I haven’t noticed exceptions to the gender tendencies, but those were not game changers, in my opinion.
There’s a thing known as “parallel play”. You can observe this most often in boys. Two boys can build towers of blocks or draw pictures while sitting beside each other never exchanging a word or glance. Men do this too. A father and son could replace a roof working side by side in almost total silence yet, if you asked them about the day, they’d probably tell you they had a great bonding experience.
Girls want feedback. They use language and eye contact far more than boys and feel shunned if they don’t get enough of it.
Girls are far better at manipulation and what I fondly call ’emotional torture’. My four-year-old daughter used to keep a group of larger boys terrorized by telling them mostly untrue things. A number of tearful complaints were about my daughter claiming she’d keep their jacket for herself or wouldn’t come to their birthday party. Those idle yet effective threats would not have as much power if used on other girls.
There are many more differences but those were the first two I thought of that seemed to be constant throughout the years. Keep in mind that these are little kids and as people grow, they become more complex and varied in their responses. I’m reporting my observations of kids at an elementary level because those differences seem instinctive when they represent a 46-year pattern.
So, my life was never dull and endlessly interesting during those day care years and my heart was always full. I would do it all again!
*Family Day Care is the caring for children in your own home. It differs from “baby sitting” by usually being licensed by the state and having a nursery school curriculum, safety trainings, and care with a professional attitude.
https://reinventionsreena.wordpress.com/2022/10/13/reenas-xploration-challenge-252/
SoCS- 8-6-22- Clueless Karens
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “wallpaper.” Use it however you’d like. Have fun!
This prompt was one I almost didn’t join.
“What am I going to do with that?”, I thought. Then a song started echoing in my head accompanied by a vision of the bold flower-patterned wallpaper from the 1950s and 1960s.
The song is Flowers on the Wall by the Statler Brothers. I hope you take a moment to enjoy it posted below.
Well, upon listening to the song lyrics, I found out that I have more to opine about.
Where do people ‘get off’ telling others how to behave?!
During the pandemic, my sensitivity to such things was understandably overwhelmed. When the nosy Karens pursued mask and vaccine ‘offenders’ as if they were terrorists, I wanted to scream into a pillow. (Just so ya know, your safety, in a FREE country, is singly your own responsibility.) Here’s an aerial view of Woodstock during the 1968-1969 Hong Kong Flu pandemic. What’s happened to us?
But I’d like to get back to the meaning that I found specifically in the song lyrics.
Have you heard people tell shy people to speak up? Or thin people to eat more? Or anxious people to just relax? I have. How about suggestions like, ‘homebodies’ should travel more, or ‘bookworms’ ought to clear their cluttered bookcases? The list is endless.
I can only imagine that that level of ignorance comes from a very narrow and self-centered world view. I’m sure these self-appointed ‘advisors’ most often mean well but their failure to grasp the concept of individuality is still maddening.
There are 7.79+ billion individuals on our planet. And here’s the shocker, there are the same number of viewpoints (aka personalities). [I’ve noticed that the people who truly grasp this concept, seldom see the need to compare themselves to others.]
Diversity according to culture, race, or any other superficial subgroup, cannot compete with that. Yes… I do secretly laugh at people who dwell on immutable or circumstantial diversity.
So, the benign prompt of “wallpaper” moved me into a rant. Who knew that was possible?
Time for a favorite saying as I cool off, “Mind your own business, folks, and one day you may have a business of your own.” LOL
Have your own kind of wonderful Saturday everyone!
Philosophically Speaking
I find myself shaking my head in disbelief after many (mostly political) conversations that I often initiate on Facebook.
It comes from a received comment that is totally unrelated to my initially expressed idea… which leads to other unrelated comments and so on. Such is life on social media but I’ve been perplexed by why it happens so often?
Then I realized that my comments are from a philosophical consideration, while others, want to deal in “facts” and polls and, sometimes, rumors.
No one way is superior to the other but, put them together, and no one gets anywhere but confused…sometimes angry.
Those who deal in philosophical terms are dealing with concepts and beliefs. They realize that they simply don’t know everything, and, also believe, neither does anyone else. So, to the philosophical person, data is not a part of the discussion. It may be worthy of a power point presentation but simply offers nothing when discussing principles and reasoning itself.
I admit that I am numerically impaired. I try to remember exact numbers and statistics but I cannot.(besides, I don’t trust them)
Because of my impairment, I’m really not interested in that kind of discussion, anyway.
There seems to be folks who are my opposite. I call them Fact-focused. I’d say they are, sometimes, quite philosophically impaired. You can recognize them immediately. They have “facts” and stats and find their truth somewhere among them. I’d want those people doing my taxes but I get frustrated with them in any philosophical argument because they are not speaking a language germane to my subject.
Furthermore, a philosophical person primarily asks only one question… Why?
A Fact-focused person asks many…Where, When, and How many?
To cement my self-labeling as a philosophical thinker, a fact-focused person would not have needed to understand “Why, am I not being understood?” as I just have … but I suspect they are searching, at this same moment, through data and sharpening their information for their next battle of wits. Problem is, we won’t be on the same planet when it occurs. Ugh!
Related articles
- Public Philosophy? (3quarksdaily.com)
- How To Think Like a Philosopher (with Daniel Dennett) (bigthink.com)
Girls will be girls…
I’ve watched small children for almost 40 years (as a Family Day Care Provider) and there are some “stereotypes” that, I must admit, are true.
Little girls and little boys are definitely “wired” differently.
This post is motivated by my anxiousness about the, soon to happen, summer school vacation. My 7-year-old granddaughter, her 6-year-old (girl) cousin and a 3 1/2-year-old girl, will be in my care every weekday throughout the summer. I am still recovering from the week-long Spring break with this trio.
Throughout my day care years, I was blessed by groups with more boys than girls. Don’t get me wrong, little girls make the better companions when alone. They are much more verbal and enjoy engaging with adults, a bit more. But, put them in a group, and there is competition without limits.
My scientific curiosity, about human behavior, always stems from Nature and, our similarities to animals. Females compete for the reason of propagating the human species. It is simply hard-wired into their nature, in my opinion. This further explains the many girls who find keeping “male friends” much more satisfying and less complicated through their early years. For me, the valuing of female friendships didn’t appear until after I was married with children. The “drama” created by groups of females always detracted from the uncomplicated “rough and tumble” play that I enjoyed most.
Many may feel this post is terribly sexist…to those who think this, I say, “Men and women are different. Instead of ignoring this, I suggest we embrace and value those differences.”
I am speaking from years of experience. Personally, it’s been a life-long study with irrefutable results.
The competitiveness of girls seems to be, grounded in, their superb awareness of non-verbal clues and their delightful social abilities. One example that I remember clearly:
A 4-year-old girl was sitting in a pout over not getting her way. I asked a 4-year-old boy to offer her some apple slices for snack. The girl turned her head away from the offer, since she wasn’t yet over her disappointment. The boy reacted with a shrug and happily kept the extra portion for himself. Then I asked a 3-year-old girl to make the same offer to the “pouter”. (There was “bad blood” between these two girls from other competitive moments but I hoped it might be the first step in getting them to be friendlier with each other.) The 3-year-old, happily offered the girl some apples. Miss Pout rolled her eyes and folded her arms refusing the apples. Without hesitation, the younger girl threw the apple slices in her lap and stormed away.
The boy was not at all insulted…even at 3, the girl who was offering the apples, knew she had been snubbed and, furthermore, took it quite personally.
I find the experiment quite interesting and don’t think a world made, from all of either reaction, would be fun. The boy’s reaction was far easier for me though! The girls battled daily after that and to my distraction.
Of course, these reactions can happen from either sex. Some boys are wound tighter and some girls are not as easily insulted. I am just offering a well-studied norm for your consideration. Actually, being aware of this tendency has allowed me to avoid putting girls “at odds” with each other and has reminded me to offer boys more “How do you think they feel?” moments too.
So my plans for summer are many well thought out activities. There will be well-defined consequences for extreme bickering and rewards for showing good-sportsmanship and sharing. Keeping decisions fewer and options greater may be my only salvation!
We Need Each Other…
There are many jokes about the many ways by which men and women misunderstand each other. They are ALL funny because they are mostly true.
If we avoid anecdotes pertaining to individuals in our lives and concentrate on what seems to be really basic differences, the discussion can be quite interesting.
As an student of human behavior with many years of observations of young children, I think the most striking difference in the sexes is how we deal with frustration.
Boys most often blame forces outside of themselves before blaming themselves. Girls are much more likely to react in the exact opposite manner. If you believe that this is true, it’s no wonder how women are often emotionally misused by their spouses. Women accept blame and Men tend to blame.
Seems so simple but I believe if we consider the natural role of the sexes, men=providers/women=caregivers, there is good reason for the contrast.
First, anyone who thinks human beings can be type-cast entirely is naive.
Second, if you are not willing to believe that we evolved from and are a specialized kind of animal, you need not read further.
Third, these observations are just that, and not intended to favor one sex over the other. In fact, this whole piece is intended for us to understand and accept that we are different yet equal.
As hunters and providers, males would be less effective if their nature was to wallow in self-doubt. Being headstrong and confident are the best qualities for hunters/protectors/providers. Women, as caregivers, would be less effective if they were unable to empathize and use emotionalism in their strategies. Tending to others requires a sensitivity and willingness to sacrifice their own comfort more readily.
Bottom line men and women, need each other. Their roles are not as clear cut in our modern times. I believe the striking differences in our basic philosophies are fading too.
Laugh we must, as our roles redefine themselves through further evolution!
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