Family and Children and Personality: August 2009

Thursday, August 27, 2009

01 What It Is About

I have arranged the blogs from 01, 02 etc. in an order that you can start at the top and read down as if it was a book.

This series of blogs is about human nature in general, more specifically how personality works to affect individuals, family, groups, and nations. This particular blog is about families and how different families affect personalities.

I want to make psychology easier for those who have not already slaved over psych books. So I have used cartoons to represent key ideas. A review of these can be found in my blog site Psychotoons.blogspot.com. They are not the traditional jargon of past writers but the ideas are still there. I want this endeavor to be fun for me and you. Post comments or questions and I will review them. If you do not want them published please tell me so. The next post is the key to the key concepts. Remember, I will make it simple as it should be for adults and children. For this blog I will only go as far as the Nerd. You can read this and more about the basic personality types in the Psychotoons blog spot to the right.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

02 The Key to key ideas.

(See previous post)

There it is, my key. Don't let it boggle your mind, I will explain it. Our lower nature is our inborn selfish or self centered instincts. Our upper nature is the inborn altruistic or help others, even sacrifice self for others, instincts. Natures ultimate goal is to preserve the species or life in general, so it is survival of the fittest group capable of carrying on life in general. It is not survival of the biggest bully, but survival of the group.

The upper nature is ran by Mr. Do. He is the upper part of the brain that runs our bodies. That is unless Dragon from the lower nature does not rush in from the survival mode. If we are in a dangerous situation the Survival mode is the instinct to save us. First we Freeze and assess the situation, next we will Flight or get out of harms way, if trapped we will Fight, lie, cheat, steal, or even kill to survive. If it is activated or let loose without real danger it can cause lots of unnecessary drama and pain to self and others. Dragon is aggressive and will try to take over. Remember Dragon is selfish.

For more explanation read the blog Psychotoons.blogspot.com Biological Personality seen in the side bar.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

03 Families Form Children's Personalities

Let me see, where should I start? There are different ways to describe or define families, such as rich or poor, functional or dysfunctional. But since I am coming from a personality perspective I will way there are four basic family types reflecting the four basic personality types.

We have the nerdy or detailed and more to themselves family, the more emotional and dramatic families, the intellectual families, and the doers, action packed families. And of course a family can and most likely is a mixture of personality types.

But all families play out a common drama, the drama of power. We humans want to meet our needs and often misjudge the needs of others. It is a sort of built in faulty thinking, we can see the reason why we make mistakes and so are easy on ourselves, but it may not be so easy to see why others do what they do, so they must be messing up on purpose, consciously or unconsciously, to make life hard on others, or so we think.

This sets up a drama. There is a perpetrator and a victim. If there is a third party they will side more with one than the other, so they are an active or passive rescuer of the victim. What happens next depends on personalities, family scripts, beliefs, and situational pressures. The combinations are limitless.

Family scripts come from a past emotional history that the people in the present may no longer be aware of. So they begin to vie for power, take on the roles of perpetrator, victim, or rescuer from a long forgotten emotional stance in the style of their personalities, beliefs, and compounding situations of current history. I will give you a cartoon to illustrate, lots of them over time, but lets start with a nerd and a non nerd in the next post.

Monday, August 24, 2009

04 Step dads show us what not to do.

Step dads often do everything wrong. Our fairy tales are often about the wicked step mom. In old Europe woman often died in childbirth, the average age of death for woman was 25. So lots of children had step moms and they too often did everything wrong. If fairy tales to day were to become classic it would be the Bully Step Dads.

When a step dad becomes part of the family he wants to protect his love, the mother of the children. So he tell those unruly kids to stop and respect their mothers. Now, that seems reasonable but the war begins. Mother and child have a strong bond and mothers let kids get away with a lot. She lets them do it in their style and then shapes their reactions, with emotional reasoning, to a more acceptable behavior.

Will, men are more military. Respect your superior officers or go to the brink. This is where the child feels cut off from his mother, his only life line. He is a kid and can not just pack up and leave. He will fight to the death to reunite with his mother. He may do everything possible to protect their relationship by getting rid of the enemy. The war is on.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

05 Military versus Home

The military is the man's world, he world of testosterone. King of the mountain, the biggest, strongest, fittest man wins. Everyone respects that. No room for soft emotions. The military is about killing.

The home revolves around nurturing the weakest member, the small little one. The baby rules, his needs must be meet or he can die. A fair mother will raise all her children with equal opportunity to be all you can be. The youngest needs her protection against the aggression of older children or adults.

This gives the mother the right to the final decisions revolving around the children. She has a stronger emotional bond for safety for her and the children. If they are happy she is happy. If they are not she is in distress. Family styles that are military lead to war, war from the kids and from their mother. A mother can be a single dad. He will act very similar.

Dad's role is to protect everyone. He needs to put the mother feelings first or he is taking the kids from her. If he listens to her the kids will be happy, she will be happy, and he will be respected and listened to. If not the problem lies else where. Perhaps he is not respectful enough. Perhaps his views of what needs to be done is still interfering with the sense of safety needed by mother and child.