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Towards Eden, an Enneagram Podcast
Welcome to Towards Eden Enneagram, a show where we dissect our Enneagram types so we can understand ourselves and have way better relationships.
The Enneagram is a tool that illuminates our motivations, our blind spots, and the differences between myself and others.
We can use it to see ourselves more clearly and to get healthier.
The Enneagram isn’t about what we do. It’s about WHY we do what we do.
Towards Eden, an Enneagram Podcast
#25 - Parenting 7 Kids With the Enneagram - with Victoria (4)
Victoria (4) is a mom to 7 kiddos. She parents with her husband, an Enneagram 8.
Victoria talks about having a common vision and common goals as parents, and how the Enneagram helps them understand their children in a deeper way.
⚡ HIGHLIGHTS FROM THIS EPISODE ⚡
- How a 4 and an 8 parent together
- Chores - practical or stealing our kids’ childhoods?!
- Parenting kids individually based on Enneagram types
- How the Enneagram can help kids feel less lonely
📚 RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE 📚
- Scott Allender - “The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence”
- Enneagram Institute
- Truity test
- You’ve Got a Type (Youtube channel)
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Enneagram guides for sale in my Etsy shop 🥂
The Road Back to You by Ian Cron- start here to find your type
Towards Eden Enneagram Instagram 🌿
Towards Eden Enneagram Website 🌿
Email me 📩
elyse@towardsedenenneagram.com
Get my FREE Guide to the 9 Enneagram Types 🌱
This guide is a great quick-reference to help you remember the types.
My guest today is Victoria and our topic is the Enneagram and parenting. I really love talking about the Enneagram and family dynamics and going deep with just how the Enneagram can help us read the layers and layers and complications and dynamics in our family units. So I thought it would be super fun, after meeting Victoria and hearing about a little bit about her parenting story, to have her own to talk about how she uses the Enneagram with parenting. So I met Victoria in an Enneagram coaching group. So we're in a training group together, learning together from Krista Harden of Enneagram and Marriage. And yeah, that is how I know Victoria and I am now going to let her introduce herself with the first two questions when in the world are you and what do you do in?
Victoria:life. I am in Ohio In life. I keep up with my big family and kind of follow my interests towards using Enneagram to sort of help employees in the company working towards getting a whole presentation together. That's been exciting. And then, yeah, mostly it's just. I mean, I have seven kids and they take a lot of keeping up with, so they keep us pretty busy and there's not a lot of time for very much else.
Elyse:So let's jump to the Enneagram. Then yeah, how did you first learn about the Enneagram and tell me about how you figured out your Enneagram type.
Victoria:Yeah, so I had a. So, to start it off on a super heavy note, my dad passed away in 2009 and a very close friend of mine, her dad, passed away a few years after mine, and so we were both sort of bonding over this. You know, it's when you're an adult kid but your parent passes away young, there's this weird sort of space because people kind of don't remember that, like you're still a kid missing your dad, anyway. So she was reaching out to me and we were getting together to sort of share our grief stories. And she brought along the Enneagram book because it had us questioning a lot of things about who we were and what happens now and just where we were in our 20s. So, like, development is still fully happening.
Victoria:And she knew that I was really into at the time. I was really into Myers-Briggs and understanding cognitive processes and things. And she said, hey, this is a sort of like a more vibrant look at how we function inside. And she showed me the book and I was really interested. And then she was a two and she was like I think I totally have you pegged, You're so totally a four. And instantly I was like you don't know that.
Elyse:You don't know me.
Victoria:You don't know me, how't know me, how could you say that I haven't even read the book yet? So um so yeah, but she was totally right oh, that's hilarious so ironically, that is a very poor response to being told that you're easy to peg.
Elyse:Um, don't you dare put me in a box.
Victoria:Yeah, don't, please don't pigeonhole me. I can be anything I desire to be Exactly. But that was my first introduction to it and I started researching it because it was so fascinating to me and I started getting deeper and deeper into it and I wanted to read about the history and I was listening to podcast after podcast and book after book and I really liked I think it's Scott Allender Enneagram and emotional health and things like that.
Victoria:And between that and looking at the Enneagram Institute's sort of like levels of health with each type, I was able to be like, oh wait, that totally was me in high school and I've progressed a little bit and that's good. But yeah, that was so me in high school. So, yeah, it's like just a lot of confirmation about four. And I think I was on some Reddit threads for a while, or whatever those are called subreddit, where it was nice to just see other people being like I knew it was my type when I was like, ouch, that stings, I don't like that so much. And I related to that experience and was like, ok, no, I think this is it experience. And I was like, okay, no, I think I think this is, I think this is it so. So, yeah, there was that.
Victoria:And then there was finding tri-type helped me accept how I function better because it sort of balances things out and it's less pigeonhole, less like, because what I discovered with Myers Briggs was that it did feel very rigid, like Like for me. I felt like you're locked into this and your brain doesn't change how it you know, processes, information. You just grow in inside of your type and like. But there's truth to that. But Enneagram has so much more space for movement and progress and personal growth and learning from and emulating the healthy parts of other types and there's just more relationship between them all instead of it feeling so segmented. So so yeah yeah, that's great.
Elyse:So so it sounds like there was never a doubt about four. You didn't mistype on any other number you found for pretty quickly.
Victoria:Yeah, I did. The only one that would ever give me a slight like is this. It, though, was five, and that's in my tri type, and the only reason I knew I wasn't just straight up a head type was because, emotionally, I it was like such a huge landscape that I couldn't I wasn't in charge of you know. So, yeah, I couldn't really deny that. That was what took over. You know, I I wanted my head to take over because that felt safer, but emotions were running the show at the time, so, oh, that is a good way of putting it, a Good distinction between four and five.
Elyse:Yeah, I'm going to take a second to explain about the tritype theory, which I love. Tritype theory. Tritype theory basically says that we look at the three centers of intelligence, so head, heart and gut. It basically we each have one type out of each of those three centers that we um relate very much to the core fears and core desires. So we still have our main type. So victoria, still her main type is four, but then she'll also have what's her top type within the head, which is five, and then what's her top type within the gut, which is nine, nine. Okay, so then her tri type, we would say, is four, five, nine. And it helps with um explaining some of the complexity of humans and distinctions between you know, 18 different enneagram fours. They're gonna look different from each other and, yeah, the tri type is a fun um extra way to kind of distinguish, like what other top types you relate to yeah.
Elyse:I love it. So tell me about your family and um like Enneagram types within your family, and how older are your kids? Are they really to an age where they do anything with Enneagram yet, or no?
Victoria:um, yeah, so so I'm a type four, I married a type eight. Um, my husband discovered his type in individually, uh, independently, that's the word I was trying to say. Okay, um, uh, my kids are 19. That's my oldest. She tested as a pretty high on the truity test. She tested as a nine and a two. Um, I think it's probably more in the two, but we'll see.
Victoria:Um, next oldest, my 17 year old. He tested as a three, which seemed to fit like a glove. Then we have my 15 year old. He is a one. And then my 14 year old. She tested pretty high in both nine and four, which I think she's probably more in the nine realm right now. But again, lots of development to go. And then for the younger crowd, my 12 year old. He's a little six ish, a little three ish. My 10 year old is kind of nine ish. And then the five year old, the youngest. He's got some seven happening right now. So we'll see what that, what that, does as they get older. But yeah, just I appreciated the truity test because it was short and yeah, the attention span is, you know, not ready for 45 minutes of asking internal questions.
Elyse:So absolutely not.
Victoria:No, not, I don't, even I don't want to do that either, um, but yeah, I think it really helps. We did Trudy tests, we talked to them about what the results meant for the four older teenagers and then, um, we showed them. You've got a type on YouTube.
Victoria:He does a lot of different ways of deep diving into the stereotypes, in particular for different types, and sometimes stereotypes are useful because then it just sort of fleshes the idea out and you can go oh, I relate to that and not so much that and all that stuff. And that really helped solidify those ideas for the kids and you know they they really appreciated hearing that there were people who relate to how they think and process, because each my girls are kind of similar, but my boys especially are very different and they're very different from my husband and I just in how they process things. So it's always helpful in a family where everybody has these big, strong personalities. It's always helpful to have you know there are spaces in the world where you would find more in common. Just because you're different from your siblings doesn't mean that you're alone. So that helped a lot.
Elyse:But for you and your husband, what would you say are the other main purposes of guiding your kids to find their types? You know, when you are at the beginning of this process, like what was your intention with wanting to introduce your kids to the Enneagram?
Victoria:Yeah, so, um, like I said, my oldest is 19 and we were coming up against so many, um, teenager focused, um, I don't want to say issues, but adventures with the kids and because we have so many, there are times when it can be overwhelming just trying to catch where everyone is and trying to catch our role as parents, and I didn't want to miss. I've always been so wary of lumping them together as the kids and wanting for each of them to shine as individuals, not just for their own sake, but also in my mind, so that I don't fall into the trap of just this is how we do stuff, so this is how I'll treat every teenager. This is how we do stuff, so this is how I'll treat every teenager. These are the rules for every single one of them. Like, there's some consistency, but they're individual people. They need different things at different times, and Enneagram was something that my husband and I had found very meaningful in our relationship to understand each other better. So it seemed like a natural step to tell the kids hey, we want to understand you better, we want you to have language to tell us how you're thinking through things and yeah, and we want you to know that it's possible to introspect and still grow, like it doesn't have to be a crutch label, that it can be your starting point for what you think you should be as a person, how you want your character to grow, what God is telling you needs to shift or to balance, or what have you. So it was really a hunt for language in our family that was neutral you, you're so outgoing.
Victoria:That can be like a little bit too limiting, I think, for teenagers to hear, because the second you go, you're so outgoing. The instant you say that, in the back of their mind they're going well, yeah, but not all the time. Like there are different times when I'm doing other things and you're like well, yeah, because we're, as you said, complex beings and Enneagram just gives it a lot more like. You know, if you're my three-ish son, you know he's outgoing but he gets worn out like he. He has outgoing energy, but he is also doing that because he's aware of what other people are looking for. So he's always trying to meet that. So he gets worn out and it was helpful for us to be like hey, it's OK that you need a break from it, you're not being antisocial, you're just discovering a boundary. You know things like that boundary, you know things like that.
Victoria:And my one-ish son is actually. He loves being around people because he's not worried about what anyone thinks. That's not draining for him at all. He's like I know exactly the way that I should be and I will be that way. No one can change my mind, which is, you know, comes with strengths and weaknesses, but in a social setting it was so neat to be like yeah, that's awesome that you can do that. And now we can balance that with like okay, how can you reach out to other people and draw them into your circle and have some compassion? So, you know, for each child, it's just given us a really great like okay, here are the motives that you relate with the best, and here's how we can balance that motive with a goal that you have or a goal that we think you should have, and it gives us some steps forward that don't feel so like change who you are. It's like it's because that's not what we're after at all.
Elyse:So yeah that that was so many good, so many good touch points that you just listed.
Elyse:I appreciate hearing that.
Elyse:I really liked how you talked about it, like I don't think you use the word loneliness, but kind of an awareness of not wanting any of your kids to be lonely because they feel different, different even within the family unit, because we know this is true people can feel lonely within their own family if they feel different from the rest of their family.
Elyse:Um, for example, I have a sister who was an enneagram too, and she was kind of always growing up, just processed very differently from all the rest of us, especially when it came to the emotional realm, and she just got frustrated because it seemed that nobody understood why she was processing so emotionally and she got messages from the rest of her family. You shouldn't be processing so emotionally and just have you, have you tried just thinking more that kind of yeah, that kind of messaging? So I I think that's really awesome that you're trying to communicate to your kids, like, even if you feel like you have differences from the rest of your family, like okay, maybe here's why, and here is an enneagram type that you might relate to, and there's a lot of other people in this world that also relate to the motivations of that type.
Victoria:Yeah, very much so, yeah, absolutely, and you know at two it's. It's also important that they know that the reason they process in that way it comes from a good place Like that's they process in that way. It comes from a good place Like that's. That's why you have levels of health with everything. You know. If you're coming from a place of a one and you want things to be black and white, that's coming from a good place, that's a good thing that you're trying to reach for, and then it's you know, then it's not about, like I said, it's not about change who you are, it's just once you understand it gives you so much more freedom to take a step in a direction that's more balanced than where we get to when left to our own devices yeah, definitely the balance and the growth like, and this is why we okay, you were talking earlier about the Myers Briggs like Myers Briggs great for a lot of purposes.
Elyse:um, at the end of the day, it's looking at it's looking at a lot of outward things, which is why I think it can be. It wouldn't be that hard for for us to kind of guess somebody else's Myers Briggs type, in a way that it's not so easy to guess somebody else's Enneagram type, because of what's all going on in the inside and then that is all fluid and changing and, like you're talking about teenagers, like, of course, how we are presenting as kids and teenagers is going to be so different than how we're presenting and behaving in 20 years from that, exactly, exactly. So here's what I really want to hear about.
Elyse:I want to hear about you, the Enneagram 4, and your husband, the Enneagram 8. What is it like for you two, with your types, to parent together?
Victoria:Yeah. So it's really funny because we always say that parenting has always been our strong suit, like that's the place where our teamwork comes together so well. So we've got, you know, some archetype happening, some some very female energy from me, some very male energy from him, in sort of that classic understanding of it. And you know, there's there's totally times where that is so difficult to uh stitch together. Um, totally, the, the, the, the schoolyard rhyme men are from Mars and women are from Venus. And you know, there's not a lot of understanding between and with parenting.
Victoria:Even in our younger days of being married, it was so cool to see we were so both of us, devoted to the concept of our kids not just doing well, but of seeing our kids as people from the minute they arrived. They weren't our kids, they were tiny people trying to grow up and becoming bigger people. Both of us had things that we brought to the table that were such strong tools. I had a family that was very, very good at discussion and openness and safety. He came from a family that was very, very good at discussion and openness and safety. He came from a family that was super, super good at teamwork, at accomplishment, at task-oriented success. So I feel like when we brought those two together, they came together in an extremely balanced way, with an energy from me that was willing to go deep and an energy from him that was willing to never give up. So it was like when I got exhausted, he was like, nope, we still got this. And when he was pushing, pushing, pushing, I was able to go hang on. Let's take a second and remember who they are. So it was it just, and because it was about our kids, who we loved so much, there wasn't a lot of clash there on a consistent basis. We definitely clashed.
Victoria:I'm not saying that we did this perfectly we still don't do it perfectly but I know that we both have so much confidence that we're both trying to get to the same place with each of our kids. We want to get to the place where they're both independent and able to be interdependent. We want to see as much balance as we can without losing the individuality and there's a lot of tension there because that's asking a lot of us of the kids of our family unit. But I mean, I think God has really blessed our determination to understand. We want to understand each other, we want to understand the kids and we're willing to be wrong. If that's not the case, like if we jumped too quick, we're willing to be wrong for the sake of understanding.
Victoria:Neither one of us is afraid of things being difficult. I sit with difficult things very easily yes, I don't want to say easily, very peacefully, I'll put it that way. I sit with hard things peacefully, with hard things, with a forward momentum that makes them not ever insurmountable. There is always a way. So I think we both had, yeah, just a lot of determination and a lot of passion for what we were doing.
Victoria:And we got married very young and family was one of the things that we were both just super sure that we wanted to have multiple kids. We wanted it to be a solid family unit. We wanted to create that in the world and have it be, you know, a group of people who are able to move things in the world to make something better wherever they end up landing, you know. So we had this, this, this big mission. We're big like visionary. You know this is so important to us. Like that, that kind of energy is, is a place where we function well together, because for him, as an eight, it's it's all about having that, that I don't want to say courage, but like that triumph, energy, where he's just like this is what's happening. I feel it in my gut.
Elyse:I know it's what should happen.
Victoria:This is how it's going to be, not in a locked down way, in a very movement oriented kind of way.
Victoria:And for me, it's like I make sure that all that movement is hitting as many places beneath the surface as we can reach as we go. So it's been. I think it's probably one of the few places where I've felt confident. Not as, um, I have all the mom guilt don't't get me wrong. I have way too much mom guilt. I'm working on it. But in terms of parenting duo the two of us together that's probably the most confident I've ever been about anything in my life. So it's been really beautiful to see what God has done with those strengths.
Elyse:That was such a beautiful picture that you just painted of your guys, of your guys duo, of like the strength and you. You really have a way with words because I was like so mesmerized watching you describe how you balance each other. I love how balance keeps coming up like that is a huge core value for you. I can hear in the way that you want to teach your kids how to be balanced and you want to balance each other out, and I think it's really fun to hear about how the four energy and the eight energy are coming together and you're explaining those things really well, how the four and the eight are meeting, and it's about more than a four and an eight, right, because it's you two as individuals. Like you're also talking about how, what, what, what gifts your families of origin um gave to you guys that you're giving to your kids, um, can you think of a story that highlights, maybe a story that highlights, maybe a story that highlights the differences in your guys' parenting style?
Victoria:Yes, I can absolutely do that. When my oldest was maybe like 10, we started going okay, everybody's getting old enough to really take on, you know, more of a chore than just pick up the toys off the floor in your room. Oh yeah, we can actually assign some things, yeah, and not being a four, but one of the things that I do that is very four-ish is not love chores, totally. Yeah, it is an avoidance problem. What chores?
Victoria:are so mundane and ordinary and I should be doing something more meaningful than chores 100% and I, logically, my five is like this is how we get to good things. Tiny steps are good things. They build to better things and and the floor is just like. I don't want to hear you say that.
Victoria:So it was time to start assigning chores, and one of the differences that I saw very quickly was that I was kind of projecting my own attitude about chores onto the plan of giving children chores, where I was like just do, just sweep this room and then we can play and you can do whatever and whatever. And my husband's like what do you mean? Like she could sweep the floor and wipe down the table and they can clear the table and, like you know, have her take the laundry to her room. Like she's capable, she can do these things, I'm like, but she's only 10, like she's supposed to be living her life and having childhood and you know not getting laundry to her room no right, exactly like it's fine that it's in the living room for three days, it's fine that she's just going through it on the couch, it's's not fine.
Victoria:It's not fine. But that was a different priority for me. My priority was for her to have the freedom to explore who she was and what life was like and interests and find her deeper feelings about things she loved and all of that good stuff. And my husband's priority was you're drowning in housework. You are not ever going to be Mary Poppins. You need the help. Our whole family system is going to function better if we do it Very practical.
Elyse:He was looking very practically at it and also it sounds like he's trying to take care of you, his wife, in that right.
Victoria:Yes, yeah, yeah. And then because of where I was emotionally at the time, instead of hearing the care and the protectiveness for me in that.
Victoria:What I heard was judgment.
Victoria:What I heard was my own inner critic being echoed you can't handle it alone, like all of those lovely, insidious, horrible things that love to cut us down. So it was a really big struggle for me to, I felt, mean giving a bigger expectation to my kids when they still looked so small to me and my husband was excited to see what are they capable of. Let's find the limit and see, okay, that one was a little too big and I'm like let's not even get close to a limit. Let's make sure that everyone is good, everyone is free and able to pursue whatever they want, including me, because no one's going to do the chores at all. Like, just, you know, just very, um, yeah, just very, very much about keep the creativity and the inner worlds intact. Don't distract us from it, don't yank us out of it, don't make us do things, don't remind me of all the ways that I think I'm failing, like all of those things. And he's like but results, but better life, but better system and then happier people, what about that?
Elyse:Yeah, and you mentioned earlier about how you and your husband you're so great at the teamwork of parenting because you have the same goals. You both have the same goals about treating your kids like individuals, like humans, and you have visions for what that looks like. So it's kind of funny to hear that kind of story because you were kind of trying to take it two different directions but you were still working towards the same goal, just kind of like let's go the practical route of, you know, strengthening our family by having all the kids join in, and okay, let's go the inner work, discover your unique identity route, right, but you want the same thing for your kids.
Victoria:Yeah, yeah, and you know that's been the journey is realizing that both of those things are good things. It's just a matter of timing and, again, of balance and making sure that you know cause there. Cause I did when I was, when I was growing up, I was the oldest of two and my sibling was 11 years younger than me and a special needs kid.
Victoria:I had a lot of responsibility when my parents it a lot of pressure put on me to take care of him and to prioritize taking care of him rather than figuring out what I wanted to do and find people that I wanted to hang out with. But you know, my parents doing the best that they could. We were all doing the best that we could. Just in from my teenager self, that's what it felt like was restriction and being boxed in. So I think I again I think the projection of that was huge in my parenting when I was in my twenties I was so afraid of making my kids feel that same feeling.
Elyse:You have mentioned something about how you can. You don't want to always be one size fits all with your kids, so I'd love to hear more about that. Like with the Enneagram, how does you know, knowing my kids might be this type or this type or this type? Like specifically, it sounds like you have two or three types for each kid. Like how does that practically inform ways that you would parent them differently or make different decisions for your different kids?
Victoria:Yeah, no, I have a great example of this my 15 year old, the one-ish boy of this, my 15-year-old the one-ish boy and the 14-year-old, who I think is probably more nine right now, when it comes to their alone time. For my one-ish son, I know that if he is going into his room and focusing on he plays the drums. If he's focusing on practicing drums or reading or giving himself his personal schedule that's on his wall or he checks everything off he does every day, I know that that means he's in need of a recharge and the best thing for him is to have that alone time. My nine-ish one will stay in her room forever and then she will come out and be so sad that no one went to find her.
Victoria:We were all so busy that no one bothered to ask how she was doing.
Victoria:So I know that if I've not seen her in a couple of hours or something, that it's time to find her and she might not even feel like leaving her room. But I know that the loving thing for me to do is to draw her out before her sense of being left out kicks in. So the comfort and the self-soothe is strong with this one, but it also she's still. She's only 14. She's still making the connection that like, oh, I have a responsibility to myself and to my family to reach out and have connection.
Elyse:She wants to be reminded that, yeah, that she matters, yes, and that she's wanted and that there's a reason for her to come out.
Victoria:And sometimes that sounds like us arguing about why she should come out of her room. You know, but it's, you know, it's, it's more. It's funny because it's it's less of argument these days and more of her going, oh, I don't want to, and then she's out. You know, like just learning the pattern of like, I do actually feel better when I spend time out of my room and around my family, even though it's not as comforting to me to be around all the noise and the chaos and whatever else, the activity that's happening, or getting pulled into something I didn't want to do, or whatever, there's still value in it for her. Whereas for my son, when he retreats, I know that he's doing it on purpose to get what he needs to give back out, because then he does rejoin us and after he's been down there, he rejoins with an energy that's more capable of having grace for everybody. Oh yeah, whatever it is, he thinks they shouldn't really be doing.
Elyse:So this is an interesting example, um, and I think you know, a parent who didn't have any enneagram knowledge but was attuned to their kids Could come to this same conclusion right.
Elyse:Like about how to treat these two kids differently. But I think what is really valuable about the Enneagram is when you learn about those type structures. It gives you more context and you can understand it deeper. Understand it deeper. And there's language around you know we. We could conclude okay, my, my kid, um, my kid is staying in their room and withdrawing and actually what I know as a parent that she needs is to come out and join us because she could just spiral in her alone time forever. But then understanding about Enneagram nines gives us so much more context about what, like what are the internal questions driving that? And we know that Enneagram nines are questioning does my presence matter? Does my voice matter? Does anybody, does it even matter if I'm here or not? And I just think that makes it richer about it's a richer experience of understanding your kids as humans right, like you say as individuals, and as you are helping them grow to be their own people.
Victoria:I think it would be really interesting to have you know.
Elyse:My parents didn't know the Enneagram when I was growing up. I think it'd be interesting to to grow up with parents who knew the Enneagram. That would just really put a different spin on development, I think.
Victoria:Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I you know and that's the other funny thing is well, actually, let me tell you one more story, because it's funny. Yeah, go for it. So my youngest five, um, the reason that I think he's leaning into a seven place right now, um, if he falls down and gets hurt or he's playing with one of his brothers and it gets too rough, he is very upset and then he immediately wants to run away. And if you try to comfort him, he will get mad at you for saying things like oh, that looked like it hurt. Oh, you seem really upset, he hates it. He gets so angry, he's like no, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not and I'm like buddy, we need to name these things. It is very important that you are able to say things like I didn't like that. So I've had to work with the other kids because for them, when they see him upset, they know if I can get him to laugh he'll pop out of it faster and that's true.
Victoria:But I know, because of Enneagram, I know that if he skips that step of acknowledging, like I feel angry or I feel frustrated or I feel embarrassed, that's the worst one then, he's going to completely miss his opportunity to process it and then come back together Instead. It's all avoidance, it's all. It got to the point where he would have tears streaming down his face and he'd look up and go just kidding and start laughing and they thought they were helping him and I was like guys stop.
Victoria:This is not okay, like he really needs to. Just just like 15 seconds.
Elyse:Okay, like this doesn't need to be a drawn out thing.
Victoria:He's so little Okay, like this doesn't need to be a drawn out thing, he's so little, but just a hey, can you just tell me that hurt, you know? And he's like I don't want to just let it hurt, right. Yeah, it hurt, okay, and then we can comfort it, we can hug, and then he can bounce out and he's fine. But just recognizing that it is more comfortable for my five-year-old to run away from a bad feeling than to express a bad feeling is a huge jump, I feel like, for him. Where now we're working on naming emotions, not just because I arbitrarily like that. You know what I mean.
Victoria:Yep that you know what I mean. Yeah, it helps me to have like a reassurance that I have a purpose and wanting that for him rather than me going. I think it's just better this way, you know, for me it feels better. I guess it answers that. Fine of like, no, this is, I've researched this, this, this is correct because yes and that that reasoning helps. So much so, and I just thought of that story but no, that's a.
Elyse:That's a great story and the little guy you know literally getting hurt and but then immediately running away, is just a, this physical, embodied form of escapism and the avoidance big time yeah absolutely that is really sweet and it's you know, it's sweet that your, your older kids, are trying to trying to help him and they want him to feel better too.
Victoria:Yeah yeah, it came from a great place.
Elyse:It was just like a let's just tweak this just a tiny bit like yeah, and if you can, um, not you, you guys who are listening will hear that Victoria's not ever saying, like my kid, who's definitely a four, definitely a seven, right, it's like holding it with open hands and but if you can kind of identify a couple top type options for children, it, there's this, there's this way that you can kind of, in a way like predict patterns and predict the future, in a way of like we know how these type functions, because types are.
Elyse:There's a lot of patterns with how types react and behave. So it sounds like what you're doing is you're kind of predicting if you're a little seven, hypothetically, and you turn into a seven, then you are going to have some struggles in your life with avoiding hard emotions and not wanting to acknowledge reality when it's hard. And so how can I now, as a mom, like, help you, help you learn a little bit of how to do those things now, so maybe it'll be easier, like those tendencies aren't going to go away. If that's his type, right, but right. But you want to help him, um, help him have a little more training on it now as he's developing.
Victoria:Yeah, I think it's so important to oh it's so tricky because it's it's important to catch as many developmental moments as we can and to also recognize we will not catch them all. Then nobody gets out of becoming a specific person, like nobody's going to come out of childhood and be perfectly rounded. You know we all have specificity to us and that's a beautiful thing and a difficult thing. And one of the hardest lessons as a parent for me is the moment that I had to not just understand but come to grips with and accept that I cannot perfectly parent my kids. Nobody ever got to have perfect parents nobody.
Victoria:So, you know, realizing that there are going to be gaps, and that that's exactly where I'm trusting God to fill and come in and step in, and just as he has for me and for my husband and our families. You know, that is exactly the space where, with Enneagram, where the open hands that you talk about like that's precisely it, because there's there's no way for me to see ahead of time what they're going to experience in these formative years. It's going to solidify the pattern enough that it becomes something they rely on for the rest of their life. All I can see are the pieces that are in front of me, and I can only see them through the four lens I was given. You know, yes.
Victoria:So I think the reason that it's so easy to for me is that it's so easy to have open hands with it is because I know I can't. I know that chasing a oh, I think it's this one, no, wait, I changed my mind. I think it's that one. No, they're. I changed my mind. I think it's that one. No, they're testing like this. But I think they answered it wrong. Like you know all of that, I could get sucked into trying to perfectly nail it Definitely. But I think knowing and accepting that I cannot perfectly parent, no matter what type they are becoming, that I cannot perfectly parent, no matter what type they are becoming, helps me just step back and sort of have more of an observation with their personality rather than trying to form it with my parenting, and that's been really helpful, especially learning, as through our training, learning about the movement that's in Enneagram, it makes so much more sense to say my five year old is in a seven ish place right now. That's just where, developmentally, his brain is hanging out.
Victoria:Next year it'll be probably somewhere different because he is very young, but with my older ones my 19 year old, my 17 year old- they're getting you know they're solidifying more, and it's a little easier to be like, yeah, they just keep coming back to this one train of thought, of behavior. I really think this is the direction they're going and at that point I get to let go and let them figure it out. So, yeah, hands open for sure, absolutely.
Elyse:So is there such thing as taking it too far with Enneagram or relying too much on Enneagram when it comes to these family relationships?
Victoria:I think there is. I think there is. When my husband first came to me and talked about his type, we were both very excited to talk about how we relate to each other in these types and everything like that I started to notice that out of our excitement very natural out of our excitement we started attributing everything to what type we were and I could feel for myself that I was getting a little annoyed at being like oh, that's so, four of you was a frustrating thing, and I started to see him sort of be like don't dismiss this just because you think it's an eight thing you know, and so that kind of helped me.
Victoria:Like you know what I don't want to have my kids experience that sensation.
Victoria:Yeah, I don't want to miss anything, um, just because I'm excited about this lens. So I definitely think that there's a place where, um, you can be too reductionist and giving some, because when we say enneagram type, it's a broad term. There are not only so many subtypes, but within subtype there's all of your contexts that you grew up with, there's all of your tri-type, there's stances that shift around, there's there is so much fluidity happening that saying this is a type two thing at some point that breaks down Like that's not a perfect answer for every relationship, every circumstance. It's just not so right. In that space of wanting my kids to be individuals, I never want to reduce them to just a type. They're my child, they are human. They are having to grow up in this world and figure it out, just like I had to and still have to. It's not easy out here. So I don't want them to feel like, oh, mom only ever saw me as this personality and she missed a bunch of who I am.
Victoria:I don't want that to be the story so yeah, I definitely think there's a place where you rely on it so much because it's scary to admit that you don't know everything. It just is because the stakes are high and you want to get it right yeah, beautifully said.
Elyse:Thank you for reminding us about the grace that there is, that we're. The goal is never to get it all right because it's just not going to happen. We're going to fail if that's the goal yeah, exactly so that 49 minutes honestly flew by. Um, we're gonna wrap it up, but that was an amazing conversation. I'm like surprised that we're already to the end, because I keep talking to you.
Victoria:Yeah, that was very, very fast um.
Elyse:Did you have any like final thoughts? You want to leave us with tidbits um yeah, I don't know.
Victoria:I mean I will talk forever, so that's the problem.
Elyse:But if you're prompted, you will keep going exactly.
Victoria:Um, no, I guess it's just. I guess I love using Enneagram in our family. I also love families using anything that helps, Like that's. You know, the expansive part of it, I guess, is finding something like we talked about at the beginning. Something like we talked about at the beginning finding some kind of language for your family to reach for, that isn't so pointed at each person, that it can be more neutral, that can have that like we relate into it, into this space and now we can look at how it relates between us as people.
Victoria:Finding something that has that language I think is so important, and I do think that Enneagram is already equipped with so many of the tools that make family discussion and and family conflict resolution so helpful. And you know, just being able to have the tools to tell you know, hey, my brother said something really rude to me, and having the tools to be like OK, I know, and that wasn't right, but it came from this place and I want you to understand that other context that was happening, because I think you missed it Like that helps us just treat each other as people rather than, as you know, inconveniences.
Elyse:Yeah, people, not inconveniences. That's right. I think that's a great way to end it. I want to say thank you so much for your time and expertise and for teaching us from your experience. This was really awesome.
Victoria:Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you giving me a chance to nerd out about it for a whole hour. That's so great.
Elyse:Always.
