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The INFP Child and Her Stuffed Animals
Over the years I’ve invested a lot of energy into understanding my child and the way God created her as an individual. I’ve written about that journey from many different angles in the hope it would help other parents who find my posts.
Lately I’ve been reading more about the INFP type now that Caroline and I have determined it best describes her. In the midst of all these years of parenting, I didn’t spend much time at all trying to figure out Caroline’s personality type for a variety of reasons I don’t need to get into there. But it’s interesting how when I look at it now it draws together many different ideas I’ve engaged with over the years.
I made this observation some time ago in Gifted Children Don’t Know Life Any Other Way:
One of the things we’ve learned about Caroline’s particular bent is that playing with stuffed animals and acting out their stories is not an option. It is a daily necessity. It is like sleep, food, air, and water. It is a basic need in her life. It’s not even a need for play. It is a need for how she processes information. If she doesn’t get it, it negatively impacts her just as it would if we denied her food or sleep or water. We know this as a fact because when she doesn’t get this kind of play time, something in her dies a bit until that need is met.
And she doesn’t know how to be any other way.
That is her reality and how she is wired just like I don’t understand how people can go through life and not be soaking up information all day long.
All gifted children have their “thing” and they don’t know life without it. It is as natural to them as breathing. It is a necessary part of their life. It would be easy for me to look at Caroline’s play with stuffed animals and think it is a childish thing, but it’s not about the stuffed animals, per se. It’s about what they allow her to do and a huge need they meet in her life. They aren’t toys. They are tools.
I don’t know where it is the INFP personality and where it is the giftedness, but it’s all there.
In a description of the INFP, this observation is made:
INFPs never seem to lose their sense of wonder. One might say they see life through rose-colored glasses. It’s as though they live at the edge of a looking-glass world where mundane objects come to life, where flora and fauna take on near-human qualities.
INFP children often exhibit this in a ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ fashion, switching from reality to fantasy and back again. With few exceptions, it is the NF child who readily develops imaginary playmates (as with Anne of Green Gables’s “bookcase girlfriend”–her own reflection) and whose stuffed animals come to life like the Velveteen Rabbit and the Skin Horse.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Caroline and David played with her stuffed animals for a minimum of an hour or two every single day for years. Not weeks. Not months. Literally years. Hours every day with very few days missed. It was as much a part of our daily routine as eating and sleeping. They made up personalities and stories for the vast majority of the stuffed animals. One particular group of stuffed animals has an entire on-going story that went on for years. They still talk about it and reference it to this day. Aspects of it have become part of our family vocabulary.
Keep in mind that Caroline is an only child who is homeschooled so we are her playmates and daily companions. How this would have played out if we had more children or she had a daddy who worked outside the home, I do not know. But God in His Providence gave Caroline a daddy who was available, creatively minded, and chose to invest this time in her.
If you are a parenting an INFP child, your child may have a similar need. It might not be of the same intensity. Your options for meeting that need might be different. But it is a need that should be met. Remember, your child didn’t decide to be this way. She was created this way by God. It’s all she knows. Our responsibility as parents is to be a good steward of our child’s way of interacting with the world and slowly teach her to take over that responsibility for herself as she prepares to enter the adult world.
“Pansies” by R. C. Lehmann
Pansies
Tufted and bunched and ranged with careless art
Here, where the paving-stones are set apart,
Alert and gay and innocent of guile,
The little pansies nod their heads and smile.
With what a whispering and a lulling sound
They watch the children sport about the ground,
Longing, it seems, to join the pretty play
That laughs and runs the light-winged hours away.
And other children long ago there were
Who shone and played and made the garden fair,
To whom the pansies in their robes of white
And gold and purple gave a welcome bright.
Gone are those voices, but the others came.
Joyous and free, whose spirit was the same;
And other pansies, robed as those of old,
Peeped up and smiled in purple, white and gold.
For pansies are, I think, the little gleams
Of children’s visions from a world of dreams,
Jewels of innocence and joy and mirth,
Alight with laughter as they fall to earth.
Below, the ancient guardian, it may hap,
The kindly mother, takes them in her lap,
Decks them with glowing petals and replaces
In the glad air the friendly pansy-faces.
So tread not rashly, children, lest you crush
A part of childhood in a thoughtless rush.
Would you not treat them gently if you knew
Pansies are little bits of children too?
R. C. Lehmann
Life During the First Two Weeks of Homeschool
Caroline and I have completed our first two weeks of homeschooling this year. It’s gone well overall and I think we’ve settled into a flexible rhythm that works for both of us. But it’s been an adjustment for each of us in different ways. I’m getting up an hour to an hour and a half earlier. We’re starting much earlier in the morning than we ever have. It’s all good, but it’s a big shift for me since prior to this year she always wanted to start later.
Just before the start of our homeschool year, I created a collection of themed playlists so if I didn’t have time to write a post I could sit down and quickly record something to share. Great plan, right? Except about half way through each day my voice starts to go. Since we do a lot of reading aloud and discussion on top of the subjects where I “teach” Caroline, my voice gets a workout each day. I’m very glad I made a change at the last minute and added a second video course. From the vocal standpoint alone, I can’t imagine teaching another subject.
Along with all this, there has been a lot of sad circumstances in our somewhat extended circles which has weighed me down quite a bit at times. Over one recent weekend, I felt a crushing weight of sadness on my chest all weekend. I won’t go into any more details, but I did address it here if you want to read about it: Time To Press On.
Truth be told, I’m more than a little disappointed we’re halfway through September and I’ve done very little blogging since there is so much to write about this time of year. But I made the decision a few months ago that home and family comes first and I was moving blogging down the list as a priority. In the past, I would more often than not choose to work on blogging rather than doing somewhat important but lower priority homemaking or family things. I’m not doing that any longer. Home, family, and homeschooling come before blogging.
So does my need for time to myself which has been in very short supply lately. I have nothing to give to others if I don’t have time to be refreshed. I’ve had to severely limit my interactions with others outside my immediate family so I have enough energy for homeschooling and my homemaking responsibilities. The past four years have taken a toll on me as an INFJ. Parenting an INFP daughter during the past four years has also been emotionally draining. I could wish things were different in the world or that we weren’t both deeply feeling women with a strong sense of justice, but that’s the way it is.
So I adjust accordingly and continue to trust God to lead and protect us each day.