ENFJ Parenthood

Mentors are, on most measures, extremely good parents. Present, warm, interested in the specific child rather than in children generally, and willing to organise their life around what a child needs. They put in more than almost any other type and they do it with real pleasure rather than duty.

The risk is not neglect or harshness. It is subtler and this type is badly placed to see it, because it is made entirely out of things they are doing well.

I’ve come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate.

— Haim Ginott

What they give

Attention that is actually attention. This type is in the room. They notice the change in mood, the friendship that has gone wrong, the thing not being said about school — usually before the child has decided to mention it, sometimes before the child has understood it themselves.

Belief, and the infrastructure behind it. A Mentor parent sees what a child could be good at and then does something about it: the teacher found, the opportunity arranged, the practice made possible. Children of this type often get access to things their family had no obvious business providing.

Emotional literacy. Feelings get named in these households. A child learns that what is happening to them has words, that other people have interior lives too, and that a difficult conversation can be had without the house falling apart. That is a substantial advantage and most people do not get it.

Repair. This type apologises, means it, and comes back. A child who watches a parent take responsibility for their own behaviour learns something no lecture delivers.

The risk: a child who performs

Here is what this type has to watch, and it is built out of their strengths rather than their failings.

A Mentor’s approval is warm, visible and slightly conditional — not by intent, but because this type is genuinely delighted by growth and genuinely, faintly disappointed by its absence, and children read both with total accuracy. Add to that a parent who sees potential clearly and quietly organises for it, and you have an environment in which a child learns very early what pleases their parent and becomes extremely good at providing it.

The result is a child who is capable, well-adjusted, easy to raise, and gradually less sure which of their interests are theirs. It does not look like a problem from outside. It usually surfaces in their twenties as a person with a good career they cannot say they chose.

A child who is being developed learns that being loved and being improved are the same event.

Two guards, and both take deliberate effort.

Say the unconditional thing at a moment when nothing has been achieved. Not encouragement, which is about what comes next — a plain statement about who they are now, with nothing attached. This type finds it almost redundant. It is not.

Let them be bad at something in front of you without helping. The instinct to arrange, coach and open the door is the strong one here, and a child who never struggles unassisted in front of their parent does not learn that struggling is survivable.

The other risk: the child who manages the parent

A quieter one, and specific to this type’s emotional presence.

Mentors are expressive, and children are excellent at reading their parents. A child who can see that their parent is worried, disappointed or hurt will frequently take responsibility for fixing it — hiding a difficulty to avoid adding to the load, performing being fine, choosing the thing that will make the parent happy.

This is not caused by anything a Mentor does wrong. It is caused by the parent’s feelings being legible in a house where feelings matter. The guard is to be explicit about it: say out loud, more than once, that your moods are not their job. Children do not infer that. They have to be told.

Where else it strains

Over-involvement. This type organises, and adolescence is the period during which organising becomes intrusion. A Mentor parent has to deliberately withdraw from a role they are good at, at exactly the moment their child stops explaining themselves — which feels, from the inside, like being pushed out of something important.

Difficulty with the flat refusal. Conflict is uncomfortable here and a child who digs in can extract a great deal. The correction is worth stating simply: a child’s distress at a limit is not evidence that the limit is wrong.

The child who does not need much. Mentors are at their best with a child who is becoming something. A self-contained child who is quietly fine can end up receiving less attention, and can conclude that being interesting to their parent required a project.

What their children say later

Two things, usually together.

That this parent was completely present, believed in them, and gave them access to a life they would not otherwise have had. It is said with real warmth and it is usually accurate.

And that it took them some years to work out which of their ambitions were their own. That is the cost of the strengths above, it is not inevitable, and the two guards in this section are most of what prevents it.

One thing to watch for this week: tell your child one thing you like about who they are, with nothing attached about what comes next. Then say nothing else — because the reflex is to add the next step, and the next step is the whole problem.