Nurture by Nature: How to Raise Happy, Healthy, Responsible Children Through the Insights of Personality Type

By Paul D. TiegerBarbara Barron TiegerBarbara Barron-Tieger, et al.

Book Overview

"A remarkable tool for relating to children" (Booklist), this essential parenting guide shows how to use Myers-Briggs personality types (MBTI) to better understand and bond with your child and become the best parent possible.

Every parent knows that children, even babies, have distinct personalities. Any parent with more than one child is probably well aware of how different from each other children, even siblings, can be. So it's only natural that the parenting strategies that work with one child may be less effective with another child. How can you be sure that your nurturing is well suited to your child? With this one-of-a-kind parenting guide, you can use Myers-Briggs analysis - a powerful and well-respected psychological tool - to understand your child better and become a more effective parent.

In Nurture by Nature you'll learn: Which of 16 distinctly different types best matches your child's personality and how this personality type affects your child in each of the three stages of development - preschool, school age, and adolescence How other parents, whose experiences are recounted in scores of case studies, deal with a wide array of challenging situations you may encounter: reining in a preschooler whose boundless energy constantly gets him into trouble, communicating with a child who keeps her thoughts and feelings secret, understanding an adolescent who seems not to care that he is forever losing things (his homework, his baseball cap, his keys), broadening the horizons of a child who resists trying anything new or unfamiliar... And how you can adapt your parenting style to your child's type - and get better results when communicating, supporting, motivating, and disciplining. Whether your child is a tantrum-prone toddler, a shy third-grader, a rebellious teen, or somewhere in between, Nurture by Nature will give you the power to understand why children are the way they are - and to become the best parent you can be.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316845132
• ISBN13: 9780316845137
• Release Date: May 1997
• Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.5" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A Parent's Helper

I was introduced to this book by a good friend of mine - Thank you Shirleen! She knew that I was having trouble understanding my son who is 7 years old. When he was a baby I could feel his needs and wants instictively as a Mother. During this past year, I felt that he was developing into a boy, which I could not always understand and I felt myself becoming more and more frustrated with myself. I could understand my daughter 99% of the time, where she is coming from... But when it came to my son, I really felt helpless. I could not understand his logic and his moods and also his retorts to certain situations. This book helped me understand WHY my son does and says certain things and also helped me find solutions on how to deal with his feelings and weekensses and strengths. I highly recommend this book to any parent in need, cause there is hope.

If You Buy Just One Child-rearing Book, Make It This One

Parenthood takes a lot of patience and you'll find this book provides insights you need to conjure that patience and understanding of your little one. If children came with an owner's manual, I imagine it would read very much like this book, which is extremely helpful in understanding your child's personality, what you can expect from that personality, and how your personality affects decisions in child rearing. All kids are different, and the Tiergers do an excellent job of catagorizing personalities to help you make good decisions about how to best discipline and teach your child. You will avoid a lot of parenting mistakes, heartaches, and frustration with this new knowledge. You'll view your childhood in a new light. You'll have fun identifying the personality traits of yourself, your spouse, and family members. "That's why they're that way" will become a common thought as you delve into this book and find the personailties of your loved ones emerge.

A "must have" book for any parent!

I originally checked this book out of our library, but within a few weeks I bought my own copy. I'm amazed at how one book could change the way I look at my children (as well as my spouse and myself!). My husband and I are complete opposites (he's ISTJ and I'm ENFP) but tend to complement eachother's strengths and weaknesses. I was able to see how my ENTP daughter needed more space than I was giving her, and how it was important to save "no" for the big things. My ISFJ daughter has always caused us concern because of the way everything goes over her head. She also has a very difficult time making decisions. Through this book I was able to see more of her strengths and also am better able to deal with her "personality quirks"...it's been a lifesaver! My ISFJ daughter has always been slow to warm up to people, but quick at understanding how things work . She learned chess in one day (on her 7th birthday) and regularly gives us a run for our money! And lastly we have a little ESTP who is only 2 but has already learned the art of manipulation...I guess you could say she was born with it! But now I can use the tips in NURTURE BY NATURE to help with all of their different personalities. I bought this book only 6 months ago and have used it more than ANY other parenting/help book I have. You wouldn't believe how marked up it is! I could probably toss all the others! I only wish that I had found this 10 years ago! It's worth its weight in gold!

Fun to read and extremely enjoyable and helpful

Not only did I enjoy the information on personality types of children and how to best encourage and support them, I loved reading about my husband's and my types, as well. We had a lot of "ah-hah!" moments reading this book. I highly recommend it to any parent who wants to nurture and appreciate their child for who they are.

Fantastic!

What a great book! I strongly recommend this book for all parents and teachers. Especially those involved with so-called learning disabilities like attention deficit disorder, which can simply be the manifestation of a child's natural temperament.I was already familiar with the MBTI/Jungian theory of temperament before I bought the book and suspected my son to be an "ENTP" because of his apparent preferences for extraversion, intuition-imagination, logic and divergent thinking. When I got the book in the mail and opened it up to ENTP I immediately read it to my husband and we were in hysterics. We've been calling him "The Negotiator," and the heading under ENTP was "Everything's Negotiable." There were about ten full pages on the ENTP temperament, from infancy up through the teen years. I'm also an ENTP and it rang true. It was simply amazing how true it all was. I now feel a bit more prepared in that I have an idea about what to expect in future years.Then we looked up ISTP, my husband's type, and read that. I said to him about certain parts, "you weren't like that, were you?" and he reply rather sheepishly, "well, actually, I was." Then he began to tell me stories I'd never heard before of him as a child. I just never pictured him hanging off the tops of cliffs.All in all, it was incredibly valuable for me to identify that my son has pretty much the same temperament as me, and it was probably even more invaluable for my husband to read about the temperament traits of an ENTP, since my husband is of a different type and would naturally tend to have different expectations of his son. I think he understands him a little better now.