It has always been interesting to me that siblings can be so incredibly different. We dream of happy loving families…but it seems so hard when everyone is so different. It is such an important relationship in our life because we can learn so much about relationships in general from living with someone so different from ourselves.
I have always leaned towards helping my children understand their individual strengths and weaknesses and celebrate what is special about themselves and appreciate them in each other. Since we are all together, we might as well learn from each other.
Out of the two that live with me, I know one is a specialist personality and one is an adventurer/jack of all trades personality.
My specialist doesn’t like surprises, and likes to have a solid understanding of everything. She becomes negative and miserable when she doesn’t know what to expect. She doesn’t like new experiences, she doesn’t even like a new restaurant, or a vacation until she’s already done it and knows what to expect. She feels the most confident and flourishes once everything has become familiar. Only once she knows the routine will she engage and enjoy herself.
My adventurer/jack of all trades is exactly the opposite. He is bored and miserable if you ask him to keep doing the same thing. He loves new experiences, new information, and a new puzzle or challenge to solve. He wants to go somewhere new and different all of the time. He flourishes when he’s doing something he hasn’t already learned how to do.
Now that I know where my specialist is comfortable and uncomfortable I can help her to remember that she just needs to get through the first round of something before she will enjoy it. She doesn’t actually hate whichever new thing she’s doing, as she claims, she just doesn’t like surprises and “not knowing”. She switched schools this year and it’s been a really hard adjustment for her.
Now that I have recognized the adventurer/jack of all trades traits, I can help him better also. I know when he is learning something as soon as he understands something, he’s done and I might as well quit talking.
The specialist beats a subject to death, the adventurer drops it as soon as he gets it.
You can see how their very different personalities could cause frustration and fighting amongst them if they didn’t understand each other. It would be quite easy for one to simply call the other as annoying, or any other hurtful name, based on who they are.
Once you figure these personality puzzles out, you can begin to build respect with each other and for each other, and teach empathy as you go. It has taught the kids to become much more patient with each other and understanding when they are out of their comfort zones.
When we are dragging the specialist to a new adventure and she’s miserable, we understand why now, and we talk about it instead of labelling her as miserable (which we may, or may not have done before we understood why)… and she knows that if she keeps talking about the same thing over and over that we are likely to become edgy.
Nobody takes these trivial things personally anymore, nobody gangs up on each other or loses patience because of their differences. We can see beyond them and love each other because we understand now. We can laugh things off pretty easily knowing we are all just different and that’s ok.
It has made the coolest dynamic between the kids. They are still impatient with each other but they are never mean because they understand the why and who behind the actions. You have to help them figure this out because kids are happy to say they don’t know.
I am sure there are many other operating systems out there, do you know which one you are? Do you know which one your child is? I would love to hear about them.