Temperament Test: Melancholic vs. Choleric
Two children want to learn how to crochet. Mama wants to learn also, so they all set out to learn together.
You know your child is a melancholic when . . . the child uses a loom, weaves together a lovely potholder, then sets about to crochet the edges for a final product. One small mistake is made. The tears begin to flow. The children begins tearing apart the potholder, slamming, banging in a tearful rage. "I can't do this! I can never do this! I'll never be able to make a potholder!" The child runs off, curls up on the couch to cry, and even an hour later refuses to speak to Mama about any subject.
You know your child is a choleric when . . . the child is using a loom to learn how to "finger crochet" a hat. All is going as beautifully as one could hope for being a young child doing this for the first time. Two small mistakes are spotted by the child amidst all the stitches and the child declares that all is lost, nothing can be done. Mama encourages the child to proceed ahead, the mistakes will hardly be noticeable, but we can't cut the stitches or the entire thing will unravel. Screaming at the top of one's lungs: "I DO NOT NEED YOU. I DO NOT MAKE MISTAKES!" (Could someone be more choleric?) Much encouragement and helpful ideas are proffered, to which it is retorted time and again, "I don't need you. I don't make mistakes!" When Mama actually asks the rhetorical question of whether God makes people be born able to crochet, the answer given is "Yes!"
 |
| Climbing trees at a delightful 18-acre wooded property |
 |
| Running for the pure joy of it |
This is really interesting to me because I never really "got" the temperaments until I heard a talk by Colleen Hammond this summer at one of the IHM conferences. Anna is no doubt a sanguine. Ohhh my gosh...to a ridiculous level. And to me I thought ben was for sure choleric. He can be very very shy but it is a family joke that we say, "He may be shy but he's not shy about dictating!!" But this is totally not how he would react to such a situation. I know because they have just gotten a loom to make potholders. And he kept screwing it up. So he redid it and redid it until it was correct and then he would do mock "tutorials" as if he was giving a class teaching others how to do it. And this went on for days LOL..No upset about it...just persistent. So what is that??? I may be back to the drawing board....I also felt I was choleric and i am the same way generally...and certainly a bossypants!
ReplyDeleteJamie: I'm wondering if Ben has a good streak of phlegmatic in him. They're hard to motivate, but, when they want to do something, they can be quite persistent.
ReplyDeletehttp://knitandcrochetshow.com/pdf/2013_Fall_BOGO.pdf
ReplyDeleteComing up in Concord, maybe seeing all the neat projects would be good encouragement for your struggling beginners.