Ep #65: Adapting Your Parenting to Your Child’s Unique Personality with Kate Mason

What if your parenting decisions are based on the assumption that your children are the same as you? I mean that makes sense because we raise them and they come from us and so it makes sense. Except that it doesn’t because we all have different personality types. What if we could change our parenting behaviors and adapt them to the child that’s actually in front of us? Today I am talking with the amazing Kate Mason. It is such an honor to have her on the show.

And we had the most incredible conversation about personality types, these four different things that you can look at to kind of understand your personality and your child’s unique personality. And then understand how to work with them and how to find middle ground between your personality and theirs. This next half an hour could change your life and change your relationship with your child forever. It is so good, you can’t miss it. It’s coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

Amy: Kate, welcome to the show. I’m so honored to have you on with me today.

Kate: I’m really excited to be here.

Amy: This is so fun and I just cannot wait to talk about our conversation because we’re talking about personalities and finding our children’s personality types and our own. And oh, my goodness, this is going to be amazing. I’m so excited. But before we get into all of that, we talked earlier, because I was a guest on your show as well. And we talked about the fact that you used to be a school teacher. So I’m kind of curious, tell me, how did you get into what you do now?

Kate: Okay. So I actually lived my childhood in a street full of school teachers because my father was one and my mother had been one as well. And someone asked me when I was 15, what I was going to do and I said, “Be a school teacher.” Now, sadly, it wasn’t actually the passion of being a school teacher. It was the fact that our school teachers get 12 weeks off a year off school. And I watched all these people have all these holidays and someone told me that the rest of the people only have four weeks holiday. And I was like, “My goodness, I’m going to be a teacher.”

However, I did train to be a teacher and I loved it and I worked for 12 years until I had my son, Jack. And fortunately I was able to be a stay at home mom because we’ve got indoor swimming schools and my husband and I had started working on that business as well. So when I had Jack we were able to support me being at home, which was wonderful.

Amy: Yeah, it’s amazing. I love when people have the option to do what they feel works best for them and their family.

Kate: And it doesn’t always happen and there’s nothing right or wrong about it. But it was for me a really great thing because I wasn’t sure whether I could stay at home with a child as well. I kind of had thought, no, I’ll go back to work because I’m an extrovert and I like being out and about. And don’t worry, I’ve found everything quite easy to be out and about even with a child, so it worked.

Amy: Good. I know I go to the grocery store and get a little chatty with the cashier sometimes because I’m home a lot. I work from home. So I’m thinking, I need a little bit of my out time. So let’s go from that into talking about personality types and understanding, just kind of lead me in this. I am so excited.

Kate: Well, listen, this all started, my husband and I, I started going out with him when I was 19 and we got married when I was 26. And my sister-in-law handed me a book called Personality Plus, which was written by a woman called Florence Littauer. And it’s about temperaments. And there are four temperaments. Hippocrates created the initial four temperaments. And these temperaments are quite different. And we sat down and I read the book because my husband’s temperament doesn’t read anything because he can’t be bothered.

So I read the book and I read what he was out to him and we came out in the questionnaire at the front 38 out of 40 of the questionnaire, each, different temperaments. So then we looked at the reason why we were constantly arguing, we couldn’t disagree with each other. The first flush of love had definitely gone a long time before. And we realized that actually, oh, my goodness, the reason why I’m like this is because my head is in a totally different space to yours.

Mine was a very social personality type, didn’t really care much about really hard stuff and I still don’t. I don’t really want to know about the money and how the world politics is happening. And he’s got a very businesslike headset. And he needs to get things done immediately. And I’m kind of easygoing and so that was annoying the hell out of him. And in the middle of the night he would wake up and roll over and start talking to me about business or what he was doing the next day. So there was a lot of frustration and anger sitting in all of that.

And when we read it, oh, my goodness, because these are the things that attracted us to each other initially. I loved his get up and go. He loved the fact that I was friendly and I got on well with people. And then all of a sudden often you sit there and look and go, “Why did I marry this person or why am I with them?” So for me, the first part of anyone’s personality journey is to find out who they are. And temperaments was a really great one. You can be one of four or it can be three of a type and at different levels, sorry of temperament, different levels.

And what happened with that was then when my son Jack was born, I went back to my book. I had him at 32 and I had a look because by the time he was three, his toy cupboard was so neat and tidy. And my husband and I are not like that. And I went back and I had a look and this kiddy is sitting in there as a melancholic. And this child likes order and structure and he likes to know when we’re going where, what we were doing. And I wasn’t like that. I was like, “Well, I don’t know, we’re just going out today.”

So I started to build on that because now I knew what his expectations were and what mine were, were very different, even though he was only three, three and a half. So I started to work with that and I always let him know what we were doing for the day. And I did say to him, “There will be changes because I can’t do it exactly the way that I’m setting it out here.” But that is, he’s now 30 and we talk about this stuff all the time.

And then I had a daughter who was a mixture of my husband and I. So she was messy, loud and wanted things done yesterday. But then I went and did a course called the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. And I learned about, it wasn’t our temperaments. Our temperaments are our behaviors. It was all about the way we see the world. And I can quickly go through that for you in a minute, but I’ll just finish this because otherwise I’ll talk too long.

So once I got that under my belt as well, I thought, oh my goodness, this and temperament. And I also use love languages as well. All are things that people are so unaware of. It’s a little bit like your reading. There are so many people out there that you can reach and give them knowledge, and these were all known, well researched things that are out there and they’re often used in the business world, not in the parenting world. So I have utilized temperaments and personalities for my children the whole way through. They’re now 28 and 30. And they know who they are.

They have always known who they are in that sense of understanding themselves. They understand other people because they can read the other people and what they are. Everyone is unique. Let me just put that one in because I don’t want you thinking I’m boxing anyone. Everyone’s unique, but there are all these things that are similar. And when you can start to read those things then you can see the uniqueness of the person around it. But knowing and understanding those things helps you get along with other people and it helped me get along with my kids.

Amy: Wow, I love that so much. And I think I kind of organically, when you have five children, you kind of learn things along the way.

Kate: You do. You don’t need a book sometimes.

Amy: Well, I was kind of wishing I’d known it earlier. The book would have been really helpful. But yeah, my youngest needs notice. She needs to know things ahead of time. She needs to be aware. She needs to be able to plan for things and so I know that now. And I can say, “Okay, this is going to happen. It’s going to look like this.” Like you were talking about and just being able to give them some, where my son is just chill and he’ll just do whatever and it’s fine. But knowing those things matters because they’d have anxiety around things.

But then teaching them too that okay, I’m not exactly like that. So there does need to be that flexibility and I love that because it’s not wrong to be them and it’s not wrong to be different. But we are different, if we understand that we can communicate better and meet each other’s needs better. So it’s so good, yes.

Kate: It is. And look, there are four dichotomies for areas in the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and the first one is extroversion and introversion. It’s where you get your energy from. So, if you start thinking about energy, some people, my son says he’s an ambivert. That’s just because he likes to question everything. He’s an introvert and he’s been brought up by an extroverted mother. So he was pushed into many situations that he didn’t necessarily feel comfortable in, but I actually wasn’t aware of this. He was about 13 when I did the course for Myers Briggs.

I knew that I couldn’t push him because melancholics are usually a very introverted type of person. But knowing that it’s where you get your energy from, I thought my husband was an extrovert. He works in a people industry. He’s with people all day. But when he comes home, he’s exhausted. He has to lie down. He has to have time to himself. I used to get very upset. He’d walk in the house and he didn’t want to talk to me. He just wanted to open the mail, sit down, do nothing, just be in a space. When I discovered this, I realized that that was him re-energizing, he’d been worn out. The external world was too much.

And often we misinterpret, when we talk about this stuff we misinterpret our children too, because if I’m an extroverted parent and I know nothing about introversion and extroversion, I would be saying, and I did. I used to say to Jack, “So do you want someone over to play with this weekend or do you want to go to the movies and see, do you want to go and see this other person?” And after I’d done the Myer Briggs Indicator, he pulled me over one day and he said to me, “Mom, I am different to you. I do not need my friends. I see them at school and that’s enough. I’m good at home and I’m good by myself.”

Now, how important is that? That was amazing. And I sat there and thought, come on, Kate, get a handle. And so I never bothered him again. I had to accept his way wasn’t my way. But I think the whole world expects everyone to extrovert. And I think there’s a whole lot of introverted children out there who have been misdiagnosed. Where they actually probably just need their own space and energy. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t push them out because an introvert can’t hide under a rock, which some of them would really like to do. They’d really rather not be out there, but they have to because it’s an extroverted world.

So a lot of the time introverts are working against their preference and we can all extrovert and introvert, but they’re working against their preference all the time. So it’s more exhausting for those children to be out there. Some of them develop great social skills and are really good because my son is a fabulous socializer, really good, but exhausted by it. It doesn’t mean they don’t have friends. They usually have one special friend or they like small groups, but they’re overwhelmed in a party situation. Because then I had an extroverted daughter who wanted someone over every weekend. And every night I went to pick her up from school and she’d have someone coming home for a play after school, which I hadn’t even confirmed or whatever. They’d just jump in the car with me. And of course I loved that because that was me. So I loved the entertainment value and we had fun. We’d go and do stuff, and even today a couple of her best friends, one’s an introvert, one’s an extrovert, and they’re part of my family. And we all discuss this and how the childhood looked in that sense.

So for me, if you’re a parent and you’re sitting there and you’re relating to this, I think it’s really important to find out whether you’re an extrovert or an introverted parent. I actually wrote a book on this called Who is this Monster or Treasure in my House? I put treasure because even though we think our kids are monsters, sometimes they’re really treasures deep down.

Amy: I loved that.

Kate: Because I know that we all go, we might criticize our children. But when someone else does it’s like, “Oh, no, they’re precious.” So just to give people ideas on how to parent when they’re similar and how to parent when they’re different to you. Because the way you parent, a lot of it comes back to who you are and your expectations of your child. So a really important part of it, the next part of the journey and I suspect your mom and dad, might have been intuitive people.

So the next part of it is intuitive in sensing. So these people see their world from different angles. The sensing people see the reality, the day-to-day stuff, the concrete, what’s here and what’s right now. And my whole family are sensing types. We find it hard, not super hard, we can use our imagination. We can see a big picture, we can, but we find it hard. It’s a harder thing. We have to push ourselves into that space. Whereas the intuitive, which you might be too, is someone who just sees what’s happening and can put it into place.

And they visualize different things and they have concepts, different concepts in their head and they can move things around. So if you’ve got a sensing type child and you’re a big picture person, you might be thinking, why do I have to explain to this kid every detail of what’s happening. So the big picture embraces it from the top. The sensing person needs to start at the bottom of the stairs, and so does the sensing learner. So as learners, and I’m this too, when you start off with something, they need to know the very, very tiny first step, and that helps step them up the stairway to learning.

The big picture child can see it all anyway. So if you give them a project and you say to them, “You have to do dinosaurs.” Their head’s off and oh, my God, I’d love to do something else. Why can’t I do animals in the wild? And I would say to people, “Let them choose what they want because they’re going to produce something amazing because they’ve already got in their head where they can see themselves going.” So in life we don’t recognize that and that’s a very hard thing to recognize.

Often the schooling system is sensing. And so that’s why when your parents didn’t have you all in school all the time, what an amazing chance to bring the intuitive side into things and all of those different ways of learning that you could use. So the sensing system often loses the big picture learner, and they often are off somewhere else in class because they’re not focused on what’s happening in that classroom. And it’s actually for someone like me, it’s really hard to think how to engage them because that’s not the way I learn.

So teaching people strategies of how to include the big picture learner and how to teach and look, it’s really hard these days. Teaching’s changed so much from when I was a teacher in that sense. But just a general understanding and an understanding of your kid. If you’ve got the kid that’s constantly cutting stuff up, making capes for themselves out of sheets. And in fact a little bit quirky, the sensing people go, “Well, that’s a bit quirky.” And it’s like you say about your family. We were the odd ones out. We were different.

But to teach your child to cope with difference and not to feel outside of that realm is really, really important. So just getting a general understanding that there are some people out there that really see the world differently from you. And to ask the questions, “What do you love? What can you see about this? How do you like to learn?” All of those questions are really important, particularly as they get older. And intuition and sensing often is something that you don’t pick up until a little bit later in a child. I find extroversion, introversion fairly early, but that’s quite different.

So the other thing that we talk about is thinking and feeling. Now, everyone can think and feel, and logic and it’s all about rational thinking and feeling. Now, thinkers think with their logic and feeling people think with their values. So I’m in a family full of logical thinkers and I recognized this quite a way back in the piece, which was really fortunate because I would be a ball in the corner, sobbing, I think if I didn’t know about this. Because the comments that thinkers make, that they don’t think they’re hurting anyone because they’re very logical and critiquing in their comments.

They will ask questions. They want to know why. Why did you do that? I might come up with some idea, someone will sit there and go, “So where is that from? How can you prove it? Why are you doing that? No, that’s wrong.” So they pick to pieces an argument. They love it. And if you’re a feeling person, you’ve actually come at it with your feeling. You’ve gone, “Oh, that’s really sad.” “Why, well, why is it sad?” So what’s really sad about it?”

The thing for me is that I’m always grateful that I have got that thought process in my life because sometimes feeling people go into a ball of mush and are so caring about people. And they can’t pull themselves back to get a logical outlook on what’s actually happening in a situation. So I always say to people that you need both, it’s really, really important. And that if you are a feeling type that gets caught up in your emotions and you can’t make a decision. Go and talk to a thinker and ask them to put it into perspective for you.

We have a business and one time years ago a lady came and she was going through her purse and finding money and popping it on the counter. Now, my take on that, poor lady, she doesn’t have enough money and maybe she’s really struggling. And so when she went through, I said to my daughter, “Maybe we should cut her fees or let her off.” So she looks at me and she says, “For goodness sake, she was just finding some change in her purse. She says she’s going to come out and buy $10 worth of lollies.” And she said, “And thank goodness you’re not running the business because if you were we’d all be broke.”

Well, fair comment, fair comment. So I think when you’ve got children, looking often at the words that they use is really important. Thinking children are often looking for more practical stuff. They don’t like you overwhelming them with emotion. My family feel quite sick if someone says, “You’re the most beautiful person in the world. Thank you so much for what you’re doing.” They’re like, “Ugh”, gag. But they do know how to respond to someone like that because I have taught them how to do it and they’re very, very good.

And as a feeling type, our response to a thinking person’s conversation is often hurt, that we’re often hurt. As adults, I deal with a lot of people in business scenarios that think someone doesn’t like them because they’re using logical critiquing language with them. And I say, “No, it’s not unkind.” And I will say to thinking people, “Could you perhaps put it a little more softly?” And they go, “What’s wrong with it? Nothing wrong with it. Why do I have to do that?” So there’s none of this putting yourself in someone else’s shoes business.

Because I actually asked that at a conference I was at once, I was talking and I said, “So you need to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.” And the majority of the audience were thinking types and one put up his hand and he said, “So should we manipulate them then?” Breaks my heart really, feeler that I am. And I said, “Well, I think Kate, you’ve got the wrong audience here.” So I said, “Yes, manipulate is fine. If you want to get something out of someone, maybe you can manipulate them.” And I go home and I tell my family, “I can’t believe they thought we were manipulating people.”

And all three of them were sitting at the table and nod their heads and go, “That’s what it is, isn’t it?” There you go. So a lot of the time as adults, you’ll hear feeling people say they feel. You’ll hear thinking people say they think. Then remembering that one’s a concise language, one will be more about appreciation and values and just more empathetic, and caring. Doesn’t mean thinkers don’t care. You can zip into one and the other fairly quickly, but there’s a difference.

So my kids know and understand that and they can pick people a mile off who are that different person and they know how to approach them. They’ve learned, they know how to have a conversation with that person that will bring the best out in them. So really great thing, I mean, when Cass was little, I used to say to her when a new person came to school, “So did you take them and have a play with?” She’d go. “No, because what if it turned out I didn’t really like them, then I’d have to get rid of them.” It’s their call, true. So that’s the third dichotomy.

And the fourth one is judging and perceiving. So judging types always say when I’m talking to adults, you love a calendar, a diary. You love to know what’s happening tomorrow. You write lists, really long, long lists and you tick them all off because you want to make sure that you’ve done everything on that list. The perceiving type of personality goes with the flow. They’re really flexible. They really don’t care about lists. I write lists, about six a day and I lose them all, and I might find them in a week or so.

And I go, “Wow, I did all of those things.” But the things that I didn’t do obviously weren’t important enough. So does it really matter? No, it doesn’t. The people that write the lists go, “Oh my goodness, how could you not do that?” So it starts very young. My son has always been a list maker and an organizer and I said to him when he was 16, “So Jack, where do you keep your list? Because you don’t write one.” And he said, “Mom, it’s in my head and every night before I go to sleep, I tick off my head list.” And I said, “Well, what if you’ve missed something?” He said, “Actually, I feel quite stressed.” But he said, “I just make sure that that’s the first thing I do the next morning.”

And in year 12, in our year 12 here, they used to write essays and I would, before they handed them up, I would read them, proofread them. And one year he gave me, well, the year he was in year 12, he gave me one. And I said to him, “That’s awesome, hand it in.” He said, “Well, I can’t.” “Why is that?” He said, “Well, actually we haven’t been given the topic in class yet, but I did know what the subject was.” So he said, “I wrote the essay because I had three more that I have to do in the next few weeks and I thought this one’s the best one to get out of the way.” And he said, “So I can’t hand it up yet because we haven’t been given it.”

And I’m like, “Where did this child come from, is he really mine?” Whereas my daughter, she was always the last minute. And let me tell you too, perceiving types work best at the last minute. But they do realize when they’re going through school that exams do need a little bit of prior learning, so Cass learned that by failing a few and that’s okay. So learning also how to teach that and understand that and as if you’re a “J” parent and you’ve got a perceiving child that says, “I’ll do it tomorrow. Yeah, I’ll get to it.”

To understand that you cannot actually push that study style that hard. It’s good to be organized, good to do a bit of work each night. They’re going to do their best work at the last minute anyway. I talk to adults about this all the time and they just go, “Yes.” I’m going to slam it as I come in screaming, right at the last minute they get it. But the trouble is sometimes perceiving people can be late.

And so my daughter, she had a boyfriend who was in university and he stayed at our house and he hauled out his computer about 12 in the afternoon and said, “I just realized that I have an assignment due tonight at 12.” And I looked at him and I said, “Oh, my goodness, you’re never going to finish it.” And he said, “Well, look, I’m going to try.” And he said, “We’ve had it for about five weeks, but I forgot about the email.” So he sits down and slogs at it all day and 11:30 at night I’m still up and he pops the computer away. And I said to him, “So you’ve finished?”

He said, “No, but what I’ve worked out is that I lose 10% for every day I’m late. But I’ll probably lose 20% if I hand it up the way it is today. So I’ll start tomorrow and I’ll finish it tomorrow and I’ll just lose 10% instead of 20.” And is that awesome or is that bad? And I went with awesome because I thought, how cool. I could never think that myself, even though I am a P and I’m last minute and all the rest. I could never do that myself.

So my son was in a house of P, perceiving types. And we had to try to be on time and to do things for him as much as he had to try and go with the flow. And so he would say to us in later years, we’d agree to go to the movies, and he’d know we’d have changed our mind by the end of the day. And he’d send us a text and say, “Mom and dad, just letting you know the movie’s at seven o’clock tonight. I’ve booked the tickets. And you are not getting out of it.” And I’d be like, “Okay, we’re in.” So he had his own strategies to make sure that we’d turn up on time.

So it’s all about not knowing yourself. And so there are 16 personality types associated with that. And they don’t box you either, but it gives you a headset on yourself. And what I say to people too is, there’s so much self-flagellating and lack of self-esteem these days and not knowing who you are and where you’re coming from. That this kind of stuff, it’s researched and it’s out there in the world. It’s everywhere. Big businesses use the MBTI and temperament practice all the time to get their people working together as a team. But we don’t use it in our parenting life because it’s a very expensive process.

So I try to make mine not expensive so that people can come and see me and use that process. Aren’t our home relationships the most important thing, they set us up before work? And if you don’t love yourself, how can you love other people? You have to be really good about yourself and solid in who you are. So it really gave me the freedom to be able to go, “You know what? I am a person that doesn’t like being on time. The things I’d push myself for, that I know I have to be, I can.” But the rest of the time I’m okay, I can go with the flow.

I don’t have to be the one on the committee at school because I know I’d mess it up. I would never be there on time. But I don’t sit there and go, “I really should have tried to do that.” I make my decisions based on who I am and what feels best for me.

And I think a lot of the time people out there in the world are being, well, particularly with Instagram and things like that, are watching other people and putting themselves in their shoes instead of looking at them from their own viewpoint and going, “Do you know what? That’s okay, you can have a beautiful, neat, tidy Instagram looking house. But mine’s a bit of a tip and you know what? That’s alright because I know where everything is. I’ve got everything handled. It’s all good.”

And I just think that teenagers, everyone really need to know and understand themselves so they can go, “You know what? I don’t have to go out to big parties at night or if I do, I understand why I’m exhausted by them when I’ve made the effort to go.” Extroverts, don’t judge the people who are quieter than you, who don’t actually need to do what you do to get their fun and their energy. And it would be a really different world too with your reading. It would be a really different world if people could just see that. So that’s my story.

Amy: Oh, my gosh, I just want to put this on repeat and listen to it three times. I love that because there’s so much understanding there. And I love starting this conversation young so that as children are coming up that they are familiar with the language. They may not know all of their details yet because we might figure out more of who we are as we grow. But recognizing that there is differences, that there is language around it. And I think I’ve even had this challenge sometimes where I’m like, “Well, you want friends. Well, here’s how you have friends. You go do this, and all of these things.”

But then maybe that doesn’t fit them and they’re more of, I need three friends, not popularity contest kind of friendship. And so how do we help them recognize? And then too, if you have more than one child, I think sometimes they feel like there’s this comparison. Well, this person has so many friends and I’m more of I just kind of want to go play by myself. And then as parents were like, “Did I break one of them and the other one’s fine.”

Kate: You’re so right, that’s exactly true, yes, go on. Sorry.

Amy: So just understanding of this language and that it’s okay. And also then the understanding that they have, I try to really work with respect with my children. And so I tell them, “I respect you and I will always talk to you and treat you with respect and I want the same back.” And so I can say, “This is how my brain works but I want to try to meet you where yours works. And we’re going to have to negotiate something in the middle.” And I just love that language that’s available when you understand this concept and can start working your way up.

So that they have that as they are getting older, get into junior high, high school and beyond where it’s so much trickier if you don’t already have that knowledge of who you are. And I love the Brené Brown quote, what you said reminded me of it, that you can really never belong anywhere else until you belong to yourself. And so just understanding who you are and then you can start to fit in everywhere because you know where you fit and you can just be this person and you can be a part of the group as your person.

Kate: Yes. And feel comfortable in it and not threatened. And in fact, I think the more you love yourself, the more people are attracted to you. I think because if you’re good in yourself, it makes you really attractive because you’re not really judging anyone else because you’re quite happy as you are. And I think as they go through school, like you say, the friendship groups are so important. I ran a personality profiling with my daughter’s friends when they were about 15/16. I just thought I’d trial it so we got together and just had fun.

And all of the ones who I knew were introverts came. They all came across as extroverts when we kind of did the instrument. And they came to me afterwards and said, “I’m not really an extrovert.” And I said to them, “That’s okay and I know.” But at that age, they feel the need to be in the crowd. And I think they need to know that that’s okay too. And you can fake it till you make it but do understand that you’ll be exhausted and you might only really just want one friend.

But to make sure that they get that respite and the downtime and that it’s okay to do that because their extroverted friends are not going to be doing that. Because I find it really hard to sit at home even, I’m 62 and I thought I’d get better at introverting as I got older, but I’m not. I actually love being out. And my husband’s an introvert, because I think often you are with your opposite. And he’s an introvert and he’s starting to wind down in his job. And with the days he has off, he says, “What are you doing today?” And I say “I’m out.”

He’s going, “You’re not going to be home?” “No. I’m sorry.” I just said to him the other day, “You’ll have to find something to do.” But yeah, different ages, different phases.

Amy: It’s so true. We’ve been having this conversation lately with one of my kids and we are calling it emotional budgeting.

Kate: That’s a great name.

Amy: We just call it emotional budgeting and I say, “Okay, we know you have to be able to do these things. You have to be able to go to this concert to perform, you have to be able to do this. So these other things are optional and we just have to do emotional budgeting. What do you have enough for? We’ll do those things. And the other ones, you can go in your room and have your alone time.” And we do emotional budgeting.

Kate: Yeah, that is a fantastic term. I love that. That is really, really good. And you’re obviously an exceptional mom. I mean just even having that conversation, that never came naturally to me as a mother when I was younger. I had to learn stuff to do it. I think you’re very natural at the conversations that you have. I just think that’s amazing. It is budgeting, it really is. And sometimes the extrovert over-budgets and ends up with so many social commitments. And my husband’s always saying to me, “You shouldn’t do so much. You just shouldn’t do so much.” So there’s budgeting and there’s over-budgeting.

And the other thing is as they go through, study style is really, really important because in those later years when the parents expectations are really high these days. There’s a lot of high parental expectation. And the child isn’t studying the way that they would study themselves. I actually found I worked with parents and a child once, and the greatest problem in their relationship was they were both really easygoing and they thought that was great, that they would let their kid do whatever he wanted to do. And that he could arrive at school whenever he wanted, whatever he wanted to do.

And he said to them, “I hate it. You never get me to school on time. You never turn up to meetings on time.” You miss out on things that were really important to him, such as parentage interviews. And so they were in shock because they thought they were being the most amazing parents out because they were doing what they would like to have done to them, with him. And so they actually had to jig their life around and start being on time. So I got them to make a list of what was the most important things that he wanted them to be there for because they can’t totally turn themselves inside out in that sense.

And so they did and things really picked up because he was feeling much better. He wasn’t as angry. So those things as teen years when those hormones all come in, it would be really great to have all those things lined up before you hit the emotions. And things like you’re talking about, talking to them and asking them. And everyone that I talk to on my parenting podcast, all these wonderful people that I talk to, it’s curiosity. And sensing types aren’t really that curious. And I don’t think that many parents are curious because we’re all about telling our children what to do.

And even now, even now at, my son’s 30 and we helped him get his first house together. So we feel like we have ownership over it. And my husband’s temperament is, tell everyone what to do. So he said to us the other day, he sat us both down again and he said, “Listen, what I would really like is when you come to visit me at my house that you don’t pick on anything as you come through the garden and into the house.” He said, “Could you please just sit down and ask for a cup of tea?”

I feel like, oh, no, because the first thing my husband does is walks in the garden, “Oh, there’s weeds, Jack, Jack there’s weeds over there. And you could put your cushions, that picture would look much better on that wall.” So we forget, we forget, we sit there and we’re just commenting our own narrative.

Amy: But the communication that you’ve built with your son, where he can say that to you and that shows that you’ve listened, that you’ve talked about these things, that there’s respect there. And I think that that’s what we have to do, because the reality is we are not going to all have the same personality types as our children. We’re going to have these different things that you talked about. And as you were talking through it, I’m like, yeah, and I’m going through my children and I’m thinking, yeah, yeah.

If we understand it, then we can be respectful of each other and find somewhere in the middle. And I think that that’s what life is all about. And what a magical, amazing thing if we can teach that at home, starting when they’re really young. And because then they can use that at work. They can use that in relationships. They can use that everywhere they go for the rest of their lives. So what a gift, that we’re not all the same even at home. So we can start learning early how to do this skill and move forward with it as we go. It’s beautiful. It’s amazing.

Kate: Thank you. And it is and look, I love it. It’s my passion. I sit there and I said to someone, “When I die, I’m not sure everyone’s going to get upset at my funeral because I think most of my conversation, never stopped talking about personalities.” But still, I’m like you, being passionate about yours and the wonderful stuff that people learn from you that they’ll take with through their life. I just think life is a learning experience. And I’m going to learn. I’m going to learn till I’m 100, whatever.

I think that’s the most important thing, for people listening is to know that learning is constant. We find out new things all the time. Even now, listening to me. I’m learning that actually I need to be a better listener. I read a book called How to Talk So Your Child Will Listen, How to Listen So Your Child Will Talk. I’m not sure I’ve got the title right way around. Brilliant book. And I only read that three years ago because my son would walk in every night from work and he’d say, because I’m a bit of an optimist and he’s a pessimist. And we have these battles.

He says to me, I look forward too much and I’m always disappointed. And he said, “Mom, I’m never disappointed because I go out with an empty bucket anyway.” He says [inaudible]. And he said, “Now, I have a much better time than you do, mom.” So he kind of would come in from work and I’d say, “How was your day?” “It was terrible, I had a terrible day.” And I would go in as parents do, “No, it couldn’t have been terrible. You must have had some good moments in your day.” “No, it was a terrible day.”

And what I learned from this book was to go in with, “That must be really tough on you. How hard it must be. So what was the worst part? Do you want to talk about it?” And what would happen is, he’d start talking about it. And then he’d say, “But actually it wasn’t all that bad.” And he would tell me about an incident he had with a child. So that’s my biggest learning was not to tell a child how they should be feeling, to hear about it.

Amy: Yes. I feel like we could talk all day long, but we have to go. How can we help people get to your book? Because I know I want to go look at this book. And tell us how we can get this and so that people can start teaching this and working with their kids early so they don’t have to wait as long as you and I.

Kate: And so it’s on all of the book places, it’s Booktopia, Amazon and it’s under katemasonauthor.com.au. I think is my, excuse me, I think that’s because I don’t know. I’ve never bothered to really remember my stuff. And it should be, if you can add it on the show links to the show. If I haven’t sent it to you, I promise you that I will. So please check the show notes, everybody because as a P, I kind of look at it all and I go, “Yeah.” And my website is thepersonalitycoach.com.au. And you’ll find all of my book stuff on there as well. It’s all on one spot.

And honestly, if someone wants to learn about themselves, I can do Zoom interviews, Zoom profiling. I’m in Australia, just a different , so to speak. So I’m really happy to help anyone that would be interested in learning more about who they are and who their kids are. And even who their partners, because let’s face it, I’ve been 42 years married and it’s a lot of work and knowing about the other person is really good.

Amy: Yes, it is and it affects everything.

Kate: It does. It does. So yes, I’ve really enjoyed being with you today. Thank you so much for having me on.

Amy: It has been such a pleasure to talk to you. And yes, we will have all the links in the show notes. So go get her book and you can find her on her website. And probably I’m assuming on all the socials and learn more from Kate.

Kate: Yes, under katemasonauthor on Insta and I’m on Personality Coach on Facebook and I’m trying TikTok so it’s a bit stressful.

Amy: You got this, I believe in you.

Kate: Yeah. Thank you so much. Just let me tell you the worst part about those kind of things now is that when you get older, your neck drops and it’s really hard to get a good shot of yourself. All these people that just hold it up and they look fantastic. For us, at 62, it’s a lot harder work. So that’s my dilemma.

Amy: Well, we’ve got to get used to getting uncomfortable, I don’t know. I know.

Kate: That’s right, absolutely. We all do. I just hold my chin up high.

Amy: I love it. It’s amazing. Thank you so much for coming on and I hope we’ll get a chance to chat again some time.

Kate: That’d be wonderful. Thank you for having me.

Don’t you just love all the fun things we’re learning on the show together? Well, we wanted to give you a chance to practice a little bit of it at home. And so we made you a special freebie just for being a listener here and you can grab it at planningplaytime.com\special-freebie. That is planningplaytime.com\special-freebie. So what this freebie is, I’ll tell you, is an amazing alphabet activity that you can start using with your kiddos and it is based in play and is so fun.

You can use dot markers with it, you can use Q-tip painting, you could use circle cereal. There’s all kinds of options, but you can print it out today and get started. Just head over to planningplaytime.com\special-freebie and we’ll send that to you right away.

Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website planningplaytime.com. See you next week.