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Train up a child in the way he should go is a familiar biblical admonition. But for us parents, how do we know the way our children should go? In this live presentation, Florence Littauer helps us to deal with that question by defining and explaining four basic personality types. And the better we understand those temperaments, the better we will understand our children and ourselves and others as well. Now, as we join Florence in speaking before a workshop audience, she's describing her experience with her own children. and how she learned to deal with their temperaments.
You have come here today to find out about what to do with your teenagers. Now, that was a new topic for me as of the last few minutes, but I am very grateful to tell you that I have uh given birth to four children, lost two by death, adopted one, and ended up with three. They all are over 21. So, I feel that I have some qualifications that I can speak on how to raise teenagers and have them get to the end of the road and still be all in one. piece. And so I think that this morning I'm going to share with you some areas along this line. Now let me just share quickly what I said last year and I'll just do it in a an immediate summary. I was talking about four different personalities and I want to review them for you quickly so that I can refer to them as to who your teenagers are. I shared with you last year that the sanguin person is the kind of person who is outgoing and their main purpose in life is to have fun. Now you may have some children like that whose main purpose in life is to have fun. Now should you not happen to be the funloving type of parent. This child has probably grieved you deeply. And you probably wonder when in the world is this child going to shape up. Now, my two brothers and I have grown up as as penguins, ones who wanted to have fun, have a good time. My flaggmatic mother, flegmatic, is the type whose main aim is to have peace. Let's just keep this thing calm, cool, and collected. Let's not cause any troubles at all. And so, my mother grew up with three sanguin children shaking her head and sighing over us during the entire time that we grew up. And as she did that, She would look at us and say things such as they'll never amount to a row of pins. Now, do you young people down front? Have your parents ever said anything like, "There's no hope for you. You're never going to amount to anything. Unless you shape up, there's just no hope." He's he's kind of nodding at me. She's saying no. So, I think maybe her mother bribed her, but the boy is being honest. And so, we know that there are some of us who grow up that way. My mother's sighing over us. Is there any hope that we're ever going to mount anything? My one brother who is a comedian in Dallas and who has made more money than both my other brother and I put together and has been extly successful. My mother went to hear him a few years ago and saw him on what he was doing on the radio. And when she came away from that, she said to me in her true flaggmatic, low-key nature, not ever understanding the sanguin humor of her children, she said to me, "Do you think that Ron will ever grow up and get a real job?" Sometimes we as parents do not understand the nature of our children. And so, as I raised my children, it was a great help to understand the different personalities. So the sanguin is the fun-loving one, wants to have fun. That's my daughter, Marita. She wanted to have fun from the time she was little. Sat up in the crib, big eyes, looking around, wanting to have a good time. The karic is the one who is the leader. Right from the beginning, that little child stands up in the crib, holds on to the bars, looks out, and says, "I wonder how long it'll take me to take this entire house away from mother." Now, that child knows that he's going to be in control, and is ready to grab control at any moment. That's my daughter, Lauren. Right from the beginning, she was in charge of all the rest of us. And I can remember when she was in nursery school that the teacher called me up and said, "We never have to worry if I am absent from school because Lauren could run the entire nursery school by herself." Now, at four years old, she could have truly run the nursery school. The melancholy person is a deep, thoughtful, introspective one who wants everything to be right. Where the sanguin's aim is to have fun, the kyeric's aim is to have control, the melancholy aim is to have it right, and the flaggmatic to have peace. Now, just quickly breaking the down that way. It will give you a perhaps a way to look at your child a little differently from what you might have before. Now, I adopted a son when he was 3 months old, and the case worker said to me, "He seems to be such a serious baby. He's never smiled. He does not seem to show excited interest in anything, and he lies in the crib looking as if he is analyzing all the rest of us." Now, that's the melancholy. He was melancholy at three months old, and he has been melancholy his entire life. And then the flaggmatic. I did not get any flaggmatic children. Now Fred and I, and some of you have seen Fred up here with me this morning. Fred and I have been married 32 years and we're both half kyic. I'm the sanguin. Let's have fun with the kyeric. Let's get control of this thing, but have fun while we're doing it my way. And Fred has I want to get control of this thing and we will have no fun while we're doing it my way. So we have had opposites in as parents in raising our children. And so naturally with both of us being half, we did not uce any little easygoing flaggmatic children, the type that just sit around and smile a lot and just do whatever you tell them and behave well. We didn't get any of them. And so we had the sanguin marita karic Lauren and melancholy for our Freddy and then gratefully my daughter Lauren married a flaggmatic and that helped me a great deal because now I can say I do have one in the family but we had to marry a man in in order to get one and so he is a flaglematic. He is a gold coin dealer and a stamp collector and you pretty much have to be a flaggmatic to sit around all day and those little stamps in those little books. So, we have some of each touch. Now, as we are raising our children, in Proverbs 22:6, it says this, and you've heard this verse before, but I'll look at it a little bit differently today from perhaps from what you've seen before. Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old, he won't depart from it." Now, we always, we parents take solace in that as we go through the terrible teens by thinking that if I can hang in long enough, this kid's going to shape up. Now, what we what I take that to mean is that if We can train up the child according to his personality and nature, what he should be. Then when he gets old, he'll have some identity. I have spent the last year studying the areas of teenage suicide. And I have written a chapter in a new book, Lives on the Mend. I have one chapter in there that I've written on teenage suicide. In doing this, I have talked to many teenagers and I have found out the reasons that they have difficulty with their parents and the reason that many of them get led into such depression that they get to the point of killing themselves. In doing this survey and in talking with them and in writing on it and in speaking on it, I've come up with some reasons that I want to share with you today so that you can prevent this happening in your particular family. Now, one of the keys is when they get to be teenagers, they don't know who they are. Now, we know that basically teenagers are somewhat confused. I mean that that we can take that forever and ever. It's been that way. Teenagers are somewhat confused. But I find today that they are more than confused. They absolutely do not know who they are because throughout their childhood, mother has told them who they are going to be and father has told them who they are going to be. And quite often mother and father do not agree with each other. In fact, frequently father and mother split up and then we get new father and mother or one or the other. And then the whole thing becomes entirely confusing. So that by the time the child is a teenager, he has no idea who he is, what his selfidentity is. He has no self-worth. And because of that, as many have told me, I got to the point where I didn't know who I was. I didn't think I amounted to anything. I was not an individual. I was just an extension of what my parents were trying to make me to be. And finally, I just gave up. Now, many teenagers today are giving up. They just don't care. We heard a television report this morning on the Today Show and they were talking about teenagers who get into Satan worship. And as they were talking about this, they said, "These teenagers just don't know who they are." Now, how can you as parents help these children know who they are? Now, gratefully, we all go to Christian churches and so that they are getting some sense of selfworth and identity within your Christian church. However, we learn that the majority of what kids take with them into their teenage years came from their parents, not from their church. And as I have talked with them, I found out that the majority, and this is close to 80% of the teenagers, I found a quote on this, that close to 80% of the teenagers do not think that there is a life after death. Now, this includes your Christian teenagers, that 80% of them do not think there is a life after death. 80% of teenagers that that commit suicide have some kind of a drug or alcohol or both, which is called poly abuse, that they have problems in these areas. 80% of them are involved in these things and these children think that when they kill themselves they're going to be on a perpetual drug high. Now they don't have any idea that there is a life after death. So one of the things that we as parents can do is realize that it is our personal job not the churches but our personal job to make sure that each one of these children has a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not just that they'd prayed some prayer one day in a corner with you or just before they went to bed or as Fred led my daughter Marita to the Lord the night before she had her tonsils out when he said, "If you should die during the operation, do you know where you'd go?" Now, that was an interesting approach and she did pray with him at that time, but just having them pray with us at some emergency time is not does not mean that they have any real knowledge of the saving grace of the Lord Jesus. And so, we have to be sure not to trust it to Sunday school. Who knows who the Sunday school teacher is? It might be you. And nobody knows who that teacher is and whether or not that teacher is going to teach them anything. And So, we have to be sure as parents that we first place know that our children know what it is to be a Christian. That they understand what it is and what's going to happen to them after they die. That they really are steeped in a living example at home of what a Christian parent should be. So many times when I talk to Christian teenagers who have tried to commit suicide, they will say, "If you lived in my house and saw the way my parents behave when they're out of church, you wouldn't believe in much either." Now, I've seen a lot of kids who've had this feeling that mother and father to preach a good story, look good in church, are on a lot of committees and do good things, but you should see their behavior at home. So, our first priority is that we have got to set a Christian example for how we behave in the home. We have got to have a loving spirit in the home. These children have got to know who God is, who the Lord Jesus Christ is, how they come to know that they will live ever after, and how they can be sure that when they are committed to the Lord Jesus that they will live and have life ever. Some of them do not even understand something as simple as John 3 16 and that God so loved them that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth on them should not perish but have everlasting life. So if we do nothing else, we could at least teach them that one verse. Now, as I have been raising my children, I have found out that aside from their knowledge of God and their understanding who the Lord Jesus Christ is, committing their lives to him, wanting him to direct them, that the second thing that I have to do for my children is to let them understand what their individual ual personality is and how they're going to make the best of it. As I was here last year speaking on that particular topic, not necessarily as applying to children, but speaking on the different personalities, I was sharing with you how you could identify who you are. Now, I find as I teach a group called class Christian leaders and speaker seminars where I teach teach Christian people how to become effective leaders and speakers that I find as these people come that even though I have the cream of the crop of Christian leaders that I still will find that we've got troubles right here in River City. I find out we've got every trouble known to man right there in my group of Christian leaders. So we because we're Christians here in this room, I can no longer assume that because you're sitting here and have come to this that you therefore have no problems yourself. That you know who you are and that you are settled in your position in Christ and that you also know individually as a personality what makes you the way you are. I've learned that's not true. And so we have a three-point outline we start our class with which is I first must know myself. So know that I can understand others before I can go out and help anybody. And so we start right off with knowing myself. We start with the concept of the different personalities. There are many ways you could do it, but I have found in my experience in speaking on this subject for 20 years that this is the most effective and simple tool that I can use. It's only a tool, but it does help and it communicates effectively. So let's say let's take some examples and I'll use me as an example. Let's assume that you have got a family and that some of you perhaps are not exactly clear on your own identity. You don't know why you are the way you are. You're not sure what has happened to you in life and you do not know really whether you have any strengths or whether you have any weaknesses and you're not quite sure of who in the world you really are. Now let's start there. Let's ask yourselves this morning just in quick. Are you the kind of person that innately way inside of you not according to circumstances but way inside of you given your choice on looking at any given project that comes along in life would you really like to inspire everybody else to do the work and let them do it? Would you like to just have fun and say, "Oh, think of the colorful things." Oh, I know how people could do this, not me, hopefully, but I know how those other people could do this and get involved and they could do it and I will inspire them and I will lead them and I will charm them into doing the work. I will have the creative ideas and I will have fun, but I will probably not show up on the day of the work. Now, that's a sanguin. They they want to have fun, but they don't remember too much the details of things, and they don't always show up when they should. Are you the caleric that looks at the job and says, "Okay, I can see how this should be done." Now, if you four people right here would walk out that door, and you three would out over there and you take up the offering, we will get this thing underway. Now the karic looks at it that way. They grab hold of whatever happens and they charge forth with it. That is the leader kind of personality, the keric, the one who wants to have control. If you are the melancholy that when you look at any given project, you say to yourself, now uh if we think this over and if we make a chart, now Fred's answer to every problem in life is make a chart. If you can make a chart, he's got right there a whole packet of charts. cards. Make a chart. Now, if your answer in life is to keep 3x5 cards in your in your jacket and have every single thing in the world lined up in perfect order, as Fred does, if that is your aim, you are probably a melancholy. And if you don't care about any of the things I've said so far this morning, you're probably flaggmatic. They frankly don't care. And so, uh, as you can somewhat see yourself in that, you will realize you'll realize that we all have strengths and we all have weaknesses. Sanguin's greatest strength is that they can talk anywhere at any time on any subject with or without information. And as Fred has said about me and might be appropriate this morning, that ignorance has never kept me quiet. And so that is the thing. The caleric is the one that can take charge of anything whether or not they've ever read the bylaws. They don't need the bylaws. They create them on their own. And so they take over anything at any time. And the melancholy's greatest aim in life is to have everything in perfect order. This is why melancholies are more depressed than other people is that nothing ever gets right. Uh because they married sanguins who haven't any idea what time of the day it is. And so it makes it very difficult for them. Now, marriage-wise, which is what we looked at last year. You can see the conflict marriage-wise. You can see that the sanguin usually marries the melancholy. The fluff marries the substance and then they go home and have trouble with each other forever after. We met a couple here last night and uh he was very melancholy and she's very sanguin. And so he said he came home yesterday noon to pick her up in St. Louis, I think it was. Wasn't that fair? They had a drive from St. Louis to here. He came home yesterday noon to pick her up. And when he got there and she was supposed to be all packed and ready to go. Now the melancholy came home at exactly the minute he said he would come home. He was there on time, perfectly. He expected, even though he's been married to her for years, he expected that somehow that day she was going to turn melancholy and be ready on time. That's what he hoped. He hoped that's what would happen. But unfortunately, when he got home, he said she was tea standing in her tennis clothes painting the refrigerator. Now, this is a very sanguin thing. She'd come in from tennis and she'd rented one of those things you spray the refrigerator with, and it seemed like the time to do it. Now you see those of you who are melancholy are probably already in a depression over being married to such a woman and those of you who are sanguin are saying why not I mean if that's the day it hits you then why not do it now you see there are tremendous marriage problems and you throw a few children in the middle of this where mother is wanting to flit around and have happy times and father is depressed over the fact that mother hasn't got her act together after 30 years of marriage and when you put some children into this you can see how stirring this up is going to cause a lot of troubles if you marry a karic and a flaggmatic the karic I want to take charge and the flaggmatic who says says, "Well, go ahead. I don't care." But then underneath is is disturbed and has that iron will that after a while, I'm not going to do it your way anymore. Now, you can see the controversy and the possible problems in marriage. Now, let's translate it into children. How do we get along with our children? Now, with my daughter Lauren, she was my first and she's kyeric with some melancholy and she did pretty much what we said. She took charge of things. And so, when I told her to move, she moved. She wanted to move. So, she marched to the same beat of the same drummer that I did. And So we all marched through life and we got things moving and we got a lot accomplished. Now Marita came along. Marita just wanted to have fun in games, but I wanted to have fun and games too. So that was all right. We had fun and games together. Now as we were having fun and games, the uh the group of us, then I had these two children that were real problems for me because each one was born with irreversible brain damage. And as uh this became apparent, I even in my sanguin happiness, I became depressed because I know longer could have fun. I've realized in life that as if we have and I'm going to quickly just put the a chart, this is a sanguin chart. Fred would have done it better, but this is a sanguin chart that if you have a sanguin person whose aim is to have fun and you take fun away from them, then they will become depressed. Now, this goes for your children. For those of you listening on tape, Fred is now repairing uh my chart to make it a little bit better. Now, if you if you look at this and I'm just sharing with you how children get depressed because I think this is important for you to know that as you take each child that you have at home and as you give this some thought and my personality plus book tells you about this that as you give this some thought that when you find out what their functions are and what their aims are in life and you take that aim away from them that will make them depressed. Now, you may have a child at home that's depressed. You may not know why the child is depressed because they've got their own room. They've got an outside entrance. They've got a big closet. They've got plenty of clothes. And they've got you for a parent. And shouldn't that be enough? And so you can't understand why in the world this child, this teenager, is depressed. So let me just give you a quick inkling of this. The sanguin's aim in life is to have fun. So when do they get depressed? When what? They're not having fun anymore. When home is a drag. When everything is negative. When parents are constantly telling them what they can't do. and what's awful about them and why aren't you smart like your brother and why can't you get ahead and why don't you do this and when this kind of harping comes across to a sanguin they will withdraw and become depressed. Now there's two things they do about that. They either stay in the home and get depressed or they run away not necessarily for good but they run away to the lady down the street or to the group of dopers down the street or to the uh the Dungeon and Dragons group down the street or they run off to something where they can have fun. And so I can guarantee you that if you have a sanguin child and there's no fun at home and everything is so miserable and so negative and so such a bunch of rules then they will become depressed. Now the keric if their main aim in life is to have control and you know if you've got one of those children Dr. Dobson's made a lot of money off of those children strong willed child that if you've got one of those at home the keric that wants to take charge that's going to run everything right from the beginning and then somehow you give this child no authority over anything and make him your doormat and tell him he's going to do it your way no matter what and he has nothing to be in control of, he will become depressed. Now, how will he handle it? He'll either stay home and be depressed or he'll go out and beat up his buddies. And I find many times that the co suppressed caloric child at home has very bad peer relationships. So, if you've got a strong willed child and he's out having problems with his friends and you get reports from the teachers on that, you can probably be sure that this child does not feel that he has anything in life over which he can be in control. And so, what your answer is in that area is when you have a caloric child, he has to be given something to be in charge of. It may be the dog. It may be his room. It may be half the garage. It may be the backyard. He must have something where he is in control because a caloric child as he's growing up who has no control, nothing to be in charge of will become depressed. Now, the melancholy I've already mentioned, gets depressed more easily than the rest because their aim is to what? Have everything perfect. And if they want to have it perfect, how many of you here today have ever had every single thing in your life fall into line on one day and life was perfect? See, not many of us get to that. And so, if life is never perfect, perfect and the melancholy needs it perfect, then you can understand why they have problems and get depressed because they want it perfect. Those of you who are melancholy realize that you will only get along in life if you lower your standards and that if you try to make your sanguin children to be melancholy like you, you will have trouble. One lady came to me after a conference like this and she said to me, she said, "I have got a son who is in the mental hospital today." She said, "He's 14 years old. He's a twin." And after she had heard me talk on the different personalities, she said, said, "Now I see what the problem is. Let me share with you that problem. She had a child who was innately sanguin. He has a twin brother who is melancholy, a twin, even more competition." So that this boy, the melancholy, has gotten good marks, done everything right, keeps his half of the room perfect. Now this boy, and no one has understood at all that there was any difference in their personalities. The mother has brought them both up exactly the same. They're both hers. Shouldn't they be the same? And so she brings them up the same. This child never could get his bed made, never got his half of the room in order. So for their entire time, this one has been the perfect child for the parents. And this one has been a problem. Now, what happens to a sanguin child in 14 years when he's been told 25 times every single day in front of company that he is the problem. He is the one we can't seem to figure out or straighten out. But here is our perfect boy who smiles nicely and looks sanctimonious. Now, what happens to this child after a while? What happened to him was one day nobody understood him. Nobody understood this boy. They could not see why he wasn't good like his brother. And so one day came that the sanguin boy went into that room where he and his brother lived together. He took ripped everything of his brothers off the walls, pulled the drapes off their hangers, emptied out all the drawers, and had an absolute temper tantrum to the point where they could not calm him down. He screamed and screamed and screamed. They dragged him off to the hospital. They put him in a mental ward. Now, this boy is at that point, and this is not too long ago, this boy was at that time in a mental ward. Now, let's let's translate these figures into the psychiatrist that's working with him. Almost all psychiatrists are melancholy. Why? Because who else could get that far that long? And who's that deep? And who cares that much? And so it's got to be pretty much a melancholy that gets into being a psychiatrist. Now, as the the melancholy psychiatrist deals with this child, what is the melancholy, assuming he does not understand any of these personalities, which most of them consider this to be trivial and too easy, and heaven forbid we should do anything that we could learn from and be easy. And so therefore, they look at this from their deep melan point of view. And what's his answer to this little sanguin child who can't keep his room? What's the the answer for the melancholy to tell him to what? Make a chart. Make a chart. Get this thing pulled together. Now, what's the child lived under for 14 years? Charts. Has he done well under charts? No, he's never done well under charts. Now, you see here are two parents with two children. They have exactly opposite personalities. They put them in the same room. They've expected the same pattern of behavior out of them. They have raised one who is, according to them, a prized child, a model and they've raised one who is now in the mental hospital having a melancholy psychiatrist treat him and try to get the boy pulled in order. Now, as I talked to her, she said, "I see now that not only should he not be in the mental hospital, but I see that having a melancholy trying to get him pulled on a chart and to get organized is the last thing that that boy needs." Now, as we talked with her, I began to show her what this boy needed differently from this one. And you don't have to be a psychiatrist to know that the first thing you had to do is get this child out of that room. Isn't that right? You got to get him out of that room. He's got to have a room where if he has things hanging out of the drawers, it doesn't matter. And mothers, I want to share with you in raising my children, I learned that the reason bedrooms have doors on them is so you can shut them and don't have to look in there. And so just shut them and don't worry about it. Some of us are driving our kids to distraction over neatness, especially a sanguin child whose joy in life is being bubbly and bright and having fun and not worrying about being perfect and detailed conscious. One other mother came up, a couple came up to me one day and they said, "You have just saved our son's life." And I said, said, "What do you mean?" They said, "Our son is flaggmatic." Now, the flaggmatic's aim is to have peace. So, how do they get depressed when things aren't peaceful when they are facing controversy when they have parents that are arguing? This makes the poor flegmatic child just retire into depression because he cannot face controversy. He wants peace at all price. And when his parents are having controversy around him, this drives him crazy. When the parents are fighting, the sanguin will run away to fun. The collaric will try to get them shaped up. The melancholy will withdraw in a depression, worry what to do with them. and the flaggmatic person will just be torn up inside because of the contention in the home. So as we understand these we can see the difference. So this couple said we have a flaggmatic son and they he said we are both caloric. The woman was like me sanguin collaric man was like Fred melancholy collaric and so the two of them were very strong and they have a flaggmatic child. Now just from the little bit we've done this morning if you know that you are a caloric parent that you are strong and in control and you've got a flaggmatic child without knowing any of this information in your behavior patterns yourself, what are you usually trying you, the leader, what are you usually trying to do to this child? What are you trying to make him try make him into a leader? Make him get going. Make him move. I have a brother who's ace academy and he was the head chaplain there. He had a young boy come to him. This was a melancholy boy who was a freshman at the Air Force Academy. A very talented musical type uh person and he did not want to be at the air force academy and he came to my brother and he said I don't like it here I don't want to be here I I'm not fit here and then he told about his father was obviously a caloric colonel in the air force and he said from the time I have been a child my father has been handing me guns he has been having me march around rooms he has been training me for the military and he has told me since I was a child that I will be a colonel in the air force see the father was not taking into any effect whatsoever the train up a child in the way he should go The father was training up the child in the way he wanted him to go. And this may sound like an extreme example, but if you examine yourself, you'll find out that many of you are trying to bring up your children to be something that they really aren't. Now, this this boy told my brother he did not want to be there. My brother wrote a note home at Christmas time to the colonel father and said to him that I think this boy should withdraw this. He should go to a different college. He's musical. He's artistic. He does not fit at the Air Force Academy. Would you allow him to withdraw? Now, just from what we know already, you picture yourself and As you learn these these feelings, you can picture almost anybody once you know what their temperament is. That if you picture that boy, melancholy boy going home with a letter in his hand saying, "I want to withdraw from the Air Force Academy." And if you picture that going home to this keric father, what is the caloric father's reaction bound to be? Is he going to say, "Oh, that's wonderful. You can withdraw." No. What's he going to say? You are going to go back there. You are my son. I am not going to have a son who's chicken. You get back to that academy and you make yourself do the things correctly. Now, you see, This man is functioning only out of his own knowledge, only out of his own personality. And he has absolutely zero idea that there's anybody in the world that cannot be just like him if he were to tell him how to do it. And so he sent the boy back. He sent this melancholy boy back and he came back to my brother and he told him what his father said. He said, "My father told me that I was chicken, that I I was weak, and that one of the comments he made, which many of his parents make that's disastrous, is what will my friends think if my son doesn't turn out to be what I have in mind for him to be? Now, at the time my brother called me to tell me this story. This boy had just shot his head off in his room. He'd committed suicide. Now, you and I can see why that boy committed suicide from my telling you that story. And yet, you may have a child at home that you don't understand at all. You may have a child who's not like you, and you have worked your head off to make that child to be like you. Recently, within the past year, I have done a study of Fred's family and background. I decided that it would be easier to use Fred's than mine because they're more peculiar. And so, uh, As I did this, as I came up with this, I want to run this by quickly for you because I feel this morning as parents that you may be interested in seeing how you got to be the way you are and what in the world it is you're doing to your children that is causing them to have no self-identity, no self-worth when they get to be teenagers and end up in depression or killing themselves. Now, I've given you a quick lesson on the different personalities. Sanguin have fun. Karic have control. Melancholy have it right. Flegmatic have peace. Now, we've seen that. We've also seen that when you withdraw what each one of them wants, they become depressed. So, we've got that much under control. Very quick lesson. Now, we're going to look what what happens when we try to make people over. I've shared with you the Air Force example. I've shared with you the the parents that came to me with the flaggmatic son. They said, "You've saved his life because we've been trying to make him cheric like us." I shared with you the parents that have the sanguin melancholy twins and the sanguin is in a mental hospital because the poor boy got to the point where life was such a dragon, so miserable and so heavy laden upon a boy that wanted to have fun that he just went berserk. And they've locked him up. And a melancholy is trying to show him how he can improve. Now, we're going to look back here quickly at a family tree, and you might want to do this when you get home on your own personalities. Fred's grandmother, let's start there. He had a grandmother who was kyeric and sanguin, and she wanted everything her way, but it was going to be fun. And you will have fun. They were German. You will have fun, I tell you. And his grandfather was keric melancholy. And you will do it my way, and it will be serious and deep, and it will be right. So, we have the two of them married to each other. Now, the reason that I started doing this particular study was the fact that my husband's mother who is in my opinion a straight keric who could run the United Nations they let her loose with it and this woman could run anything when she walks into a room you just rise just you you know you better stand up right off and so here is a strong woman and yet when she has come to our seminars and taken our personality profile she comes out to be flaggmatic I thought my goodness one day I said to Fred your mother has less idea of who she is than anybody I've ever met in my life and that's the way I felt this woman just seemed to have no idea as to who she really was and I wondered why. One day I started thinking about her background and I realized that she had a caloric sanguin mother, a caloric melancholy father and that she was caloric. All right. Now when we've got this kind of a setup and you are functioning in a household and you've got a mother who says do it my way and have fun and you got a father that says do it my way and have it right and you're sitting down here as a caleric who wants to run it your way in order to survive in that kind of a family. What does this caleric child have to adopt? in order to just get along for survival. What do they have to become? They have to become flaggmatic. They have to play an okay, it's all right with me type of game. And so I realized that the reason that Fred's mother when she takes the test comes out to be flaggic is because of the fact that she takes it as a child. She takes it in respect to her parent who held her under, who never gave her any permission unless she almost begged for it and who was totally under their control. Now, if we look at this quickly, we've got two two caloric parents with a caloric child. This child is having to wear a flaggmatic mask. She's having to just okay everything's fine with me when it isn't fine at all. Now for 21 years she sat under that kind of control. They taught her to run the house. She ran everything. She she raised her younger brother and she was very much in control but also under their total domination and sublimation. Now when a strong caloric who has been repressed, now be thinking this in your own children. When you have a caloric child who is constantly repressed, who is not child to have an original creative thought who is in control of nothing. That when that child is held under for 21 years and they then marry a flaggmatic, which is what they're naturally going to marry because they want somebody that will be submissive, that when they marry this flaggmatic overnight, what do they do? They get married and they what? Take control. They take charge with a vengeance. They don't just take charge a little bit. They take control because that caloric within them, that nature of running things has been held down so long that when they get out of there, they go crazy. This is why a lot of kids when they go away to college have total changes of personalities. Parents say, "I can't understand what happened to him. Why he's absolutely different. It's because he got away from you. He finally is out there able to function in somewhat of his own true personality." And it may be totally opposite from what you have been trying to make that child into. So again, we have to train up these children according to the way they should go, not according to what we dreamed up in our own mind should happen. Now, she married a flaggmatic. That's Fred's father. Fllegmatic father. Fle Fred doesn't remember his ever saying anything much. And so we have a strong caloric mother, flematic father. They produce Fred, caloric and melancholy like grandpa. Very much like grandpa. The older he gets, the more like grandpa he gets. And uh grandpa lived to be 97. So Fred's going to be around for a long time. And so here's the caloric melancholy Fred. Now Fred didn't see much of his father and his mother kept him pretty much under wraps. She said to me one day, she said, "He's the most difficult child I had." And I said, "Oh, really?" She said, "Yes, because I had real trouble making him do what I wanted him to do when I wanted him to do it." And that's the slogan of scholarics. Do what I want you to do when I tell you to do it. And so, uh, she had trouble with him because he resisted her. But as he got older and got into high school and college and was still at home with his mother and his father had died, he realized that to keep peace with his mother and to get along at home that he had better play with her flaggmatic. So, when I met Fred at home, when I saw him with his mother, he seemed to be so submissive and so willing to do whatever she said and held her chair for her and smiled all the time. And I thought, my here is this nice low-key, easygoing man, I thought. And so I had seen what turned out to what was really a flaggmatic mask on him to get along with his mother. So he married me. Now before we got married, the sanguin of me showed more because naturally I wanted to be fun in games. Fred was so sad and so I wanted to be I wanted to be funny and so my sanguin showed the most. But actually I really had underneath there I was truly caleric. I wanted it my way. Now we got married Now, do you see what disaster this heads right into here? The same as grandpa and grandma. When two collarics are married to each other, they have two choices. Either they fight all the time, which is grandma and grandpa chose that one. They fought all the time for 97 years. And the other choice is one of you plays flegmatic. Now, Fred had played flaggmatic long enough with his mother, and he was not about to play it with me. And so, on the day we got married, I was so surprised that we went, Fred went from being what appeared to me to be an easygoing person, even though I did not know these terms at the time, and he became a very strong doineering husband. We got home from our honeymoon. He said, "Now I'm going to put you on a training program." I said, "What do you mean? What train?" The sanguin in me says, "What do you mean training program? I'm already perfect." I thought I was. And he said, "You think you're perfect, but you don't really know." And so he put me on a training program because he dropped this flaggmatic mask except when his mother came to visit, which time he got very docil. And so, uh, and he took over and he told me what I was going to do. All right. Now, Fred and I, we produce Karic Lauren. Now, that's just like Fred's mother. We produce caloric Lauren. We don't know any of these things that I'm telling you this morning as we're raising Lauren. We don't realize that the fact that we are making her do everything we say that she should do all the time. That Fred became her personal mentor, that he watched over every part of her life and trained her and taught her how to do everything and get herself on a chart. Little did we realize as we were raising her that this complete subservient attitude that we made her have was anything wrong because she did things right and she behaved well. And I realize now as I look back on it that to get along with two cheric parents. One who said, "Come on, Lauren. Let's do it my way and have fun." And the other one who said, "Come on, Lauren. Let's do it my way and be serious." That this tore her up and that she to get along with us had to put on a flaggmatic mask. Now, what is she going to marry? She marries flaggmatic stampasting Randy. And so, we've got over here a flaggmatic husband. Now, what happens when she marries that husband? She's been under our control and playing flaggmatic for 21 years. So, when she marries Randy, what did she do? She took charge. She took over. And that poor fellow hadn't said a word in 10 years. And so Randy went totally under control. Now we have seen all this as we suddenly this this revelation came to me that this is the problem. And now they have two little children. One is Kyleric Sanguin. Little Jonathan. He's just adorable and cute and funny as can be. Just love him. And little Randy, he's kyeric melancholy. Very much in charge, but he wants it serious. So I've got these two grandchildren here. Duplicates of this duplicates. to this and when you look back over Fred's entire family, what is the picture that we get here that I'm trying to communicate to you this morning so you won't do it and that is that what has happened in each generation right down the line in Fred's family is that we have one caloric trying to make the next caleric flaggmatic trying to keep them under control trying to keep them under wraps trying to make them into what they want them to be instead of into what it is that God made them to be in the first place. So I could not challenge you strongly enough this morning in this area to realize that if you've got a child who wants to have fun, you let him have fun. Encourage his sense of humor. Encourage the things that he does that are bubbly and bright and outgoing. This does not mean he shouldn't have some sense of order in his room. But don't worry about the room because you see when he goes, he cannot uproot that entire room and take it with him anyway. You're going to be left with it. And I tell you, the day Lauren got married, I cleaned out her bathroom and redid the whole thing within a matter of hours after the wedding. And so, you will have that room someday. But while they're there, let them live in it. Any old way they want to live within reason. And so if they want to have fun, let them have fun. If you've got a kyeric child, realize that if you stamp out his individuality and his creativity, if you make him be just a model child right after you, if he is in control of absolutely nothing in life and you are the great leader, you are causing that child to play flaggmatic. And when he gets away from you, watch out. If you have a melancholy child, do not put him rooming with another sanguin uh in the family. You would be better to have a 15year-old and a 2-year-old together that were both melancholies. and a 15 and a 14 who were melancholy and sanguin. And so realize their personalities in a room is much more important than their age. And so if you have a melancholy child, realize that child wants order, wants structure, wants thing pulled together. And if you're a sanguin mother, try your very best to at least show up on time to pick him up from school because otherwise he'll be in a deep depression. Now, if you have a flaggmatic child, this one will sit on the corner for hours. Doesn't really care. It's okay with him. Just sit there, bounce along, and anything that comes along the easygoing allpurpose child. Now, that's a quick summary. All right. Now, let's go to an example from me. Let's look at this. I have a melancholy, a melancholy adopted son. Now, this melancholy son is deeply melancholy. Now, I have some advantage in that I am an adult, that I have had five children, that I had raised, fully raised two as he was coming along. I'd had two before him. And this child has many reasons to fit the prototype. of the suicidal teenager. Number one, he was rejected by his birth mother. Now, right off there, even though you may say, "Well, that was a long time ago." Of course, it was 21 years ago. But psychiatrists tell us that we still have within us the emotions that have hit us from the time some say before the womb, before they were born. And so that there are memories emotionally within them if they've been rejected. So, he was rejected by his birth mother, stayed in the hospital for a week, and then was pulled away from the people that were caring for him there. was in a foster home for 3 months before I got him and therefore had another rejection feeling emotionally within him even as a baby. So I have a child who has a rejection feeling way underneath in his spirit. Now then he is under two do two of my daughters who are both so strong, so outgoing, so positive, running great races all the time that he looks like he's standing still even when he's moving. So this is a problem. They are both very aggressive and have gotten great marks. He's gotten poor marks. They have succeeded in everything they've tried out to do in life. He has not succeeded at much of anything. He was just adequate in little league, just adequate in soccer, just adequate in these things. And everything they touched, they were the stars. They were right up on top immediately. So, he has many of the reasons why teenagers get depressed. He also has a sanguin mother, me, who when he is miserable, what do I want to say? In my nature, I want to say, "Come on, Fred. There's nothing that bad. Cheer up. Let's be jolly like me." Now, you see, that does not necessarily do a lot. for a depressed person to have someone little Mary sunshine standing over the pit saying come on let's get out of there and cheer up and so this does not necessarily go well and so I and I'm sharing this with you as a parent that I have had to modify my behavior to suit his because I have the knowledge I am the one who's the adult I am the one who is able to stand here and look at this whole thing objectively I am the one that God has put in charge of this child I am responsible for him because of all those things I cannot remake his personality and if I did make his personality. I wouldn't like what I got when I got through. So many of you men marry a wife, a melancholy man marries a wife who sanguin, marries her for her sense of humor and her fluff and her lightness because you need it because you're so depressing. And you bring her home and you the minute you get her home, what do you decide you got to do with this cute fluffy thing, make her miserable like you. And so you start making her over, start getting her in there. You try to make her like you, get her on organized and on a chart. And I want to tell you that even if you do remake another person to be like what you want, you will not like the results when you're through. with it. I have seen so many I could give you countless case histories of marriages where the melancholy man marries the sanguin girl takes her home makes her melancholy makes her melancholy and depressed and she had puts on a flaggmatic mask. That's all right. Whatever you say. And then after a while after he's got her totally made over to the way he wants her to be, looks at her and says, "You aren't the fun you used to be." No wonder she wasn't the fun she used to be. She's been living with him and that has stamped out all the fun out of her that they might have ever been there. And then he divorces her. And what does he always run out and marry?
Another thing when he goes out and gets another one, tries a whole thing all over again. One lady just told me last week, she said he married exactly what he told me was wrong with me. He went right out and married the same thing all over again. And then he came back one day when he was bringing me my check and she said he looked at me and he said she's so much fun and she hardly knows what day it is, but it's so cute. She said she almost threw up. I mean, she said she could hardly stand it. I mean, how could she even stand that kind of a thing? You see, so many of us are trying to make over all the rest of these people and make them into what we want them to be. It's sort of like crossing a poodle in a schnowzer. You end up with a cute little But what in the world is it? And this is what so many of us are doing to each other and to our children. We are taking schnowzers and poodles and we are making mongrels and then we're not sure what we have. Now I had to realize and I'm giving you this as to my challenge. I had to realize that my son was melancholy. I had to realize that I had to adjust to him. One day he drove into the garage and I had just finished doing all his laundry. And those of us who are sanguin mothers, we know that when we have done any little menial task in life, what do we want everyone to say about it? Oh, that's wonderful. You've done a great job. So, I want that. Now, another sanguin might do that, but I have a melancholy son. He's not going to do that. So, he drives in. He looks up. I soon as he gets out of the car, naturally, immediately, I say to him, "Look what I've done for you, Fred. I want credit." Sanguin want credit. So, he looks up at it. And I've trained them well. I've taught them one phrase to say at points like this. He looked at me, said, "Noble mother." So, as he said, "Noble mother," I thought I was very happy. So, I stood there and I smiled as he looked at the shirts. But he went right straight towards the house. Now, you mothers know that if I've done all this work, sacrificed my time for this child, Well, the least he can do is what? Carry these shirts in. And so I said to him, I looked at him and I said, "Fred, maybe you didn't notice that the shirts were hanging here and I'd like you to take them to your room." Now he's melancholy. He has a plan going in his head. And he says to me, "That's not on my mind just now." Now, the caloric part of me wants to rise up and say, "What do you mean it's not on your mind just now? I didn't ask you what you thought about. I just told you to do it." But because I have learned to adjust to him, because I have learned learned that I'm the one that has to change, not him. I swallowed and said, "Okay, Fred." He went in the house. He did not take the shirts. I stood there and I looked at the shirts. And it was this the Lord spoke to me and he said, "Florence, does it really matter if that boy takes those shirts into the house right now? Does it matter?" I thought, "How many things in life I've made my children do that really didn't matter?" And he said, "Oh, it doesn't really matter." And I thought, "No, it really doesn't matter." And as I stood there, I decided, "It does not matter if he takes the shirts in right now. It actually does not matter if he ever takes the shirts in. It does not matter if comes out every morning and grabs a shirt off of that rack and goes out with it. And then I realize it doesn't even matter to me really if he lives in the garage with the shirts. It does not matter. And yet, how many of us parents are making cases over things as simple as that? Carry in the shirts right now because I said so. Now, I've had to learn to adjust to the boy. Not that I want any child undisiplined, but that I have to adjust to him. A year and a half ago, I had an opportunity to speak in Europe and go on a trip throughout all of Europe and my way was paid for. I've taken my daughters everywhere you could imagine. But I've never taken my son Fred anywhere. Why have I not taken him anywhere when I've taken my daughters? Because my daughters both have enough caloric in them that when I say climb the stairs to another cathedral, that they will climb the stairs to a cathedral. And I didn't want to take Fred because when I say run to Fred, he slows down. And so I didn't think we could get along for three weeks in the same seat in the airplane, same seat in the bus, the same situation. I didn't think we could do that. So I didn't want to take him. But it was as if the Lord kept saying to me, "Florence, you got to go out and practice what you preach. You tell these other people how to take care of their children, how to adjust to their personalities. Let's see if you can do it for 3 weeks." So I took him along and when we got to a cathedral and when I would say, "All right, Fred, it's time to go and look at another cathedral." And he said to me, "I don't feel like looking at another cathedral." That instead of my innate nature, which would be, "I didn't ask you if you felt like it. I just told you to go. You realize how much I paid for you. And the more cathedrals we go through, the cheaper it is per cap. cathedral for me to pay. Now, as as we went along, I was able to let him sit in the bus, and I found out that some melancholies, deep melancholies, can enjoy looking at the inside of a bus as much as the inside of a cathedral. So, I let him sit there. I let him do what he wanted. And as we went along, I learned I learned because I'm the one with the age and the knowledge. I'm the one that should know how to deal with these. I'm the one that teaches other people how to. And so, as I went along in that trip, it was an amazing discipline as I was able to bite my tongue as I was able to sit quietly as I was able to let him sleep through the Alps. Now, that is so beyond my imagination. How could you sleep during the Alps? I woke him up once. I said, "Look, those are Alps." He took one look, went back to sleep. I said, "Fred, don't you want to look at more?" He said, "I've seen them." Well, it's true. He'd seen them. He'd seen the Alps. That's all he needed to see. So, this was difficult for me. The collar wants to let's get the program moving. My son wants to rest. However, I want to share with you that when you do train up a child in the way he should go, so that when he is old, he will not depart from it. He will know who he is. He will have a self-identity. He will have a selfworth. And my reward came as we sat on that bus one day and a girl told me the next day about it. She said, this was a little groupy of mine that was kind of following me around, taking pictures of me at odd angles and uh you never feel comfortable at that. And she was sitting across the aisle from me and she told me the next day, she said, "Your son really loves you." And I was almost taken back. I said, "Really?" She said, "Yesterday, when I was across the aisle. She said, "I took my camera out." And she said, "You had fallen asleep against the window." She said, "Your head was turned over. Your mouth was open. You didn't You look very funny." And she said, "I thought this will be a great shot." She could blackmail with. So, she said, "I took my camera and I put it up in front of me and I focused on you." And she said, "Just as I was about to take that picture," she said, "your son just put his whole body right in front of you." And she said, "He looked at me and he said, "What is it you're planning to do? She said, "I'm going to take a picture of your mother." And he said, "No, you're not." He said, "You will not take a picture of my mother unless you ask her first." Now, when she told me that, I tell you, I cried when she told me that. And it was as if the Lord was saying to me, if you understand them, if you're not trying to make them into what you want them to be, if you're realizing what kind of a personality they are, and you're taking their strengths and amplifying them and working with them quietly on their weaknesses so that they will not have problems with other people, that if you're doing this that ultimately there will be a reward. It tells us at the end of Proverbs 31 that your children will rise up and call you blessed. And that last night on that trip we stood on the balcony at the Jerusalem Hilton looked out over the landscape saw the dome and all the different beautiful pieces that are there that you just love to view. And as we stood there quietly and I had learned to be quiet in those three weeks. As we stood there quietly and I wanted to point out sanguin wise, oh look at that, oh look at that, oh look at that. But I stood there quietly and as we stood there. My son, after a half hour of silence, he said to me, "Mother, this has been a wonderful trip." And he hadn't said that before. I said, "Thank you, Fred." And he said to me, "It's given me a chance to think, and I've developed my philosophy of life." I didn't know he had a philosophy of life. I didn't know he was thinking of one. I didn't understand that at all. But I do know as I stood there and realized that this dear, sweet, sensitive boy, so different from me, that when I pulled back from my aggressive personality and could let him be what God made him to be and allow him to be himself that I could see the validity in that verse that when you do train up a child in the way he should go, not what you have preconceived he could be in order to reflect you and your glory, but when you bring him up to be what he should be with his strengths and weaknesses, that as you do that that God will reward you and ultimately your own children will rise up and call you blessed. Thank you.