The Sorting Hat Exercise: A Seminar in Personalities for Parents and Children

We are currently at Suzuki Camp #2. I flew in Sunday night from a conference in Colorado, (I could spend a whole month of blog posts on being a mom at a conference on education) and have been trying not to work, but grades are due tomorrow and there are those emails to respond to for journal editing, etc.

Anyway, today there was a special session titled “Personality types: How they affect practicing with your child.” I had planned to go by myself, but after joking with Emery that I was going to learn some secrets about being a parent, he decided he wanted to go with me.” In a story best not recounted here, Victor wound up going.

Basically, our teacher (who based her presentation off several research studies and presentations—it was like being at another conference session) asked us (the parents) to group ourselves according to their personalities: Artisan, Idealist, Guardian, and Rational. I turned out to be a Guardian. I love lists, charts, like helping people (which I do incessantly and probably annoy people with it) am sensitive to negative criticism, and knowing what the exact steps are for praise.

I was certain Emery was an Artisan—they don’t like endless repetition, enjoy stimulation, and like to show off.

I was wrong.

He and Victor are both Rational—they like asking questions, don’t respond well to charts, and ask “’Why’ in order to have the reason” (just demonstrated by my son who asked my husband why he was setting up the music stand). That explains why when the instructor went around the room, I expressed frustration with my practices with Emery and Victor smugly said he had no troubles.

How could I have been so misled?

Of course, this information would have been helpful 5 or so years ago, and I guess I already knew some of this stuff (he was never motivated by the infamous one hundred days of practice chart), but it’s nice knowing now how to proceed. And, it’s nice that Emery was there because he kind of understands why I do things they way I do.

And, of course, we now have our inside jokes, especially about Victor who thinks the whole session was a Harry Potter sorting scene and is calling me a Hufflepuff and who said to me a few minutes ago

“Guardian doesn’t mean appreciated.”

Emery's comment: smugly SMUGLY!!!!! she's right about that.BUT she forgot to say i learned stuff too!