6/13/24 How to parent your highly inquisitive child better
What is the purpose of this podcast?
Live intro with hook - Hello my lovelies. Today we’re wrapping up our series about Parenting by Personality, and this week we’re talking about the highly inquisitive, Cautious child. This is the child that strives for perfection, who can become quite agitated when things don’t go as planned but who can also do extraordinary things in this world when they learn that failing is not failure and is part of the journey. Not an easy task, to be sure, but it can be done.
Before we dive in, I want to make clear that what I am about to share are personal experiences from my life and what I learned along the way. Your situation may be different, and this is no substitute for medical or mental health intervention if your situation warrants it. This podcast series is designed to help parents understand themselves and their children better based on their personalities. It is not intended to diagnose or treat any mental or physical condition. If you suspect you or a family member is at risk of physical or mental harm, please seek proper medical help immediately.
For those who are new to the podcast, when I talk about personalities, communication and relationships, I use the DISC personality model of behavior and refer to people as D or Driven, I or Inspired, S or Supportive, and C or Cautious. You can find links to take your own Personality Assessment in the Show Notes.
Now, let’s talk about the Cautious, highly Inquisitive child. These children are reserved and task oriented. Unlike the chaotic nature of many children, these children actually enjoy order and after a bit of training when they’re young, they happily put things away because a tidy, organized space makes them feel safe and happy. In many families, there will be children who are chaotic with their toys and rooms, yet this child stays organized. In fact, the most stressful thing for them is to share a room with a sibling that is untidy and disorganized, but comparing them with their less tidy counterparts is an exercise in futility because most of the other personality types do not even aspire to the level of organization of the Cautious, Inquisitive child.
The Cautious child may not tell you outright that they are stressed by a mess, but there will be signs from mild frustration to a full blown meltdown if things are messy and disorganized or if someone messes something up that they have created. If you have a toddler that melts down in the middle of a room full of toys for seemingly no reason, that could be your sign that you have a Cautious, Inquisitive child that is overwhelmed. At older ages, they may react strongly to a sibling that draws on their paper or touches their food or leaves a mess in a shared bedroom.
Because that’s not my personality type, I didn’t see this in my own children until my mother in law suggested that I limit the number of toys my children could play with. When my husband and his siblings were younger, my mother in law would only have a few toys each for her children to play with. She had bins of toys that she would switch out every few months, and the play never got old even when the toys came out for the third or fourth time.
Honestly, I thought it was silly at the time, but I was amazed at how well it worked with my children and how much easier the messes were to clean up when we had a limited number of toys. In our house, our children loved to build things, so we always had some type of blocks, Legos or those cardboard bricks that seem so simple, but seem to also spur children’s imaginations. That may be one of the best gifts I ever purchased for my grandchildren, and I have my mother in law to thank for introducing me to those amazing toys and ideas. If you have children or grandchildren who are chaotic, try these ideas and see what happens. You might be delightfully surprised. And, I put the link for the blocks in the show notes because I honestly believe every child should have access to at least one set of these blocks. Last weekend, my 5 ½ year old granddaughter ‘furnished’ her pretend home with the blocks and built herself a swimming pool. Her 10 month old brother had great fun knocking down towers of the same blocks.
A few other things that are important to know about the Cautious, highly inquisitive child - They are not huge fans of surprises because it makes them anxious. They much prefer to know what to expect and the more detail you give them, the better. They are gifted thinkers and are great at analyzing. If they are more toward the task side, they love data and understanding the workings of things. If they’ve got some people orientation in their personality mix, they enjoy figuring out why people do things, whether as an academic exercise or as an eventual profession.
These children aspire to excellence and rarely take anyone’s word for anything without some way to validate it, hence the inquisitiveness. They are generally risk averse, especially if it involves going against the rules, unless they think the rules are stupid, in which case, they will ignore them or complain about them until they get the input they need as to why the rules are the way they are. While mostly risk averse, if they have the D personality trait in their mix, they will take calculated risks, but that calculation is imperative.
They thrive in structure as I mentioned before and like to do things the right way. This is the personality type that even at a young age will argue with authority when they think something is wrong and will continually bring new data to the table to prove their point. So how do we parent that effectively? Let’s talk about it.
First we’re going to talk about a Driven parent with an Inquisitive child. I normally start with in balance parenting, but in this case, I am changing up the situation because for the D parent, this child can be the most challenging because they challenge you with facts, facts and more facts, and when they think they’re right, which is honestly most of the time, they are tenacious about it.
The D parent tends to be large and in charge, and when that authority is challenged, they do not like it one bit. The tendency with the D parent is to counter attack, but with the Cautious, Inquisitive child, that can backfire big time because when a Cautious child feels attacked, they withdraw and can shut down, and getting them to open up again can take days, weeks or even months, and when the trust is broken, it may never come back.
That’s not to say that the Driven parent and Inquisitive, Cautious child can’t have a great relationship because they absolutely can, starting with the C child loving details that can escape the Driven parent. That gives the Inquisitive child the opportunity to share knowledge with their parent, and nothing makes them happier than sharing knowledge and being appreciated for that. Yes, you may have to stem the flow of information at some point because the C child may have more information than you need or want as a Driven parent, but when you put parameters on the C child, make sure that you appreciate their effort and their output because both are important to the Inquisitive child.
For the D parent, when you do have to discipline the Inquisitive child or tell them no, be prepared to explain why. Yes, you are the parent, but using, because I said so or issuing an ultimatum as reason enough for your decision is not enough for this child and can turn to deep resentment. I cannot tell you the number of times I had to explain to my children why they needed to brush their teeth and go to bed, and I’m still not sure that the message got through, but you do what you can, right? And again, I understand that you’re the parent, but when you understand your Inquisitive child needs information to feel safe and secure, it’s easier to understand that they’re asking questions to find that safety and security, not necessarily challenging your authority.
For an Inspired parent, you share some of the same challenge as the Driven parent because details are not your forte either, but you can turn fact finding into a game, and that can serve both you and your Inquisitive child well because you can be genuinely excited about the information your child finds as long as the discussion doesn’t get too far into the minutiae of whatever subject you’re researching because at some point, you know you will stop listening.
My youngest son is deeply into gaming and spends hours listening to informative videos on YouTube. At one time, we worried about how much time he did that, but what we’ve come to understand is that he uses YouTube as a tool to understand so many things. Recently, he made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, and not only did he research the recipe, he researched the science behind all of the ingredients and why they were combined at certain amounts. He also found a recipe where he made the dough one day and cooked them the next, and he loved that because it didn’t take up too much of his day. He’s fairly new to cooking, so that kept the overwhelm at bay while he was learning so much about cookie baking and combining ingredients.
Remember earlier when I talked about rotating toys for my children? During that process, I learned a couple of really cool things. One of the cool things I learned is that when you have fewer toys, your children find it easier to play with everything and truly enjoy themselves. Another thing I learned is that toys are much easier to manage when there aren’t so many of them and you can create a simple cleanup routine that keeps children from being overwhelmed. I learned that nearly all children thrive from at least some level of routine and order, but for the Cautious, Inquisitive child, it’s absolutely necessary for them to thrive. As a free spirit mom, that was difficult at first, very difficult, but even I started to thrive from having a balance of routine and free time to take care of business and to have fun as well. And when I say routine, I don’t mean hours of routines that made me want to scream and run away from home. It merely meant a few minutes in the morning and a few minutes in the evening to set myself and my family up for success followed by fun. Pretty cool, huh?
For the Supportive parent, you love to nurture, and this child is not a child that necessarily enjoys that. If they tend more toward the Driven side, they will avoid your hugs and snuggles even as babies. If they tend more toward the Supportive side, they will enjoy your nurturing but on their own terms.
I’ve talked before about what it was like to be a happy, people oriented, morning person in a home of task oriented, non morning people. I am so glad I learned that my children and husband needed me to tone that down in the morning when all they wanted to do was quietly get to work and school. During the summer, my kids would often read in bed to give themselves some extra time in the morning before facing their very happy mom.
When they took that time, they were ready to ease into the day, which usually consisted of 15 minutes of tidying up the house and then doing something fun. We often went to the library, the park, the Zoo, the local amusement park, or swimming with some of our favorite people. After the fun time, my children would generally head for their bedrooms for a bit of quiet time to decompress before dinner, so they could be social at the table.
As someone who loves to be social, I had to learn that my children needed that downtime to recharge after social time whereas I was supercharged after having fun and spending time with my favorite people, and my youngest, who still lives with us will occasionally ask if we mind if he eats dinner in his room, even when he isn’t hanging out with his friends online.
I’m so glad I learned about this because to this day there are Cautious types of people I’m friends with that will introduce me as their one outgoing friend because I am fine with them disappearing when they’ve had enough social time. I just ask that they tell or text me so I know not to look for them if we’re at a social occasion.
If you’re a Supportive parent that has some of the Cautious personality in your mix, you and your child would do best to create a list of rules of the house that you both agree on, including the consequences for not following the rules. That will keep both of you accountable and take the emotion out of enforcing the rules, because they’re printed out and agreed upon. It helps the Supportive parent enforce the rules, and it helps the Inquisitive child to have a set of rules that isn’t based on how their parent is feeling that day, which makes them feel safe and secure.
Now let’s talk about the Cautious personality parenting the Inquisitive, Cautious child. This can be an interesting dynamic for sure. You both like to deep dive into subjects and when you share interests, it can be the best of times.
I know a mother daughter duo that both love to sew and they bond over everything from purses to quilts and all the ways to make them. I know a grandmother and grandson duo that love baseball and can chat about players and stats for hours. I have two sons that can talk about gaming and politics for days and connect at least weekly online.
In a parent child duo, it’s extremely helpful to find something that you have in common to talk about because it will create a deep bond so that when you find things that each of you are interested in that the other might not be, you don’t frustrate one another with the subject the other has no interest in.
In my case, my youngest has a deep interest in gaming and anime. I have little to no interest in it, but my son loves it, so I know more about certain games and anime than I would care to know. My son knows that I don’t love the things he loves, but I love him, so I listen while I’m doing other things so we can have that bond, and now that he’s learning about cooking and baking, we’re deep diving into that, which is something I can definitely enjoy more, but again, as that more people oriented person, I really don’t care why we use certain amounts of certain ingredients, and my years of experience with cooking let me experiment and substitute at will rather than having to look things up. On occasion, though, it’s nice to have conversation about why we use certain ingredients as a substitute, like me having to substitute for avocado because I’m allergic.
The other thing that the Cautious parent with a Cautious, Inquisitive child needs to be aware of is how to structure the household. As I mentioned before, the Cautious child, like the Cautious parent, needs information to feel safe and secure. When rules are set it helps immensely to explain why each rule exists because you both love to live by rules, so if you agree on the rules, life will be so much better for everyone involved.
If your child doesn’t agree with your rules, you may have a mutiny on your hands, especially if you have multiple children and they have leadership skills. As I said with the Driven parent, you are most definitely the parent and you can do what you want, but if you want a peaceful household that runs smoothly, and as a Cautious parent, I know that’s what you want, it behooves you and your child to have a discussion about the rules and have them agree to the terms of the rules and the consequences if the rules are broken. It speaks to both of your needs to have as many details as possible in place and can be yet another bonding experience to create the rules and the consequences together.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
So we’ve come to the end of this series about the complexity of parent and child personalities. Did you see yourself in one of these situations? If you’re like most, you’ve seen yourself in several of them, and you might be wondering how to deal with your own child or children.
That’s why I suggest that everyone get a personality assessment. There are multiple versions of the assessments for adults, children and teens, and if that sounds like a lot, it can be overwhelming, which is why, I would suggest that you book a 15 minute DISCovery call so we can figure out what would be the best plan for you moving forward.
You may have a question that we can solve in that 15 minute conversation. We might schedule something more, but I assure you that whatever we chat about, you’ll have some next steps to improve your relationship with your Driven child no matter what age they are.
So, go to the Moving Toward Better homepage and sign up for your DISCovery call and let’s chat soon.
As always, if you like what you’ve heard, please share and subscribe.
Until next time, keep moving toward better, whatever that looks like for you.
Love you all!
Show Notes
The Inquisitive, Cautious child is a delight when they are being a rule follower and behaving. They can be a nightmare when they disregard the rules and do what they want because they think your rules are stupid.
They want to know everything about everything and get frustrated when you don’t share their need for details, sometimes to the point of melting down, but there is so much hope and happiness when you understand your Inquisitive, Cautious better and can parent them with confidence.
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