A Parent's Guide to Grade Six, Seven, and Eight Children |
It's 9:00pm Sunday evening and the house has grown suspiciously quiet. The seeming serenity is shattered by a yell from your grade six child's bedroom. "M-O-M ! have you got any Bristol Board and some styrofoam balls ?" A moment of reflection before the reply. Is it Science Fair time of the year AGAIN?? After a short investigation you discover that it is indeed that time of the year again and the project is due tomorrow!!!
Not far away another student is putting the finishing touches to a similar project with all the enthusiasm of an Alabama hound on a hot day. The screams and panic occurred in this household two months ago on the afternoon the project was assigned and the serenity was shattered by shouts of "But I have to go to the library NOW !!! I have to get this project DONE BEFORE FEBRUARY !!!.."
Whatever scenario is part of your experience, the ensuing frustration and endless lectures on "being organized" and "why don't you do a bit today and ...."or " how can you forget a major project !" are re-enacted time and time again - even over generations, if we were honest with ourselves. Are these patterns of behaviour inherited ? Do we learn them from those who rear us? Or were we born that way?
According to Carl Jung, there is some evidence for the theory that we do come by these patterns of behaviour somewhat naturally. In his observations of people's behaviour, he began to see patterns in the way people prefer to perceive and to make judgments. He further classified all mental activity into four mental processes or functions which sort , weigh, analyze and evaluate whatever comes into our consciousness moment by moment.
Years later, Isabel Briggs Myers gave Jung's theory a conceptual framework and devised a questionnaire to check out these patterns of behaviour and created a personality type inventory which was to be later marketed as the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory which is widely used, particularly in business circles to create effective strategies for groups working together, planning and organizing for maximum efficiency and productivity.
So what does this have to do with frustrated parents and grade six science projects? Everything! Jung believed that we were born with a "predisposition" for one type or pattern of behaviours, which means that perhaps your child is just "being him/her self"! In other words, maybe they're just "that type"!
Do we leave them alone? Do we try to change their "natural way' of looking at things? Or do we hope they will develop a better personality type as they grow ?? Was I the same way or is this beyond my understanding ? Whatever your answers....stay tuned ! Next week : "Let me talk it out" vs "I'll get back to you" Dealing with introversion and extraversion in children.
© Bernadette Homerski, all rights reserved
