I've done Myers-Briggs, which says I am ENFP. (I want to talk. I go with my gut feelings. And I'm not a detail person.) I've done Gary Smalley's which says I am a golden retriever. (I live to make your life easier.) And I've now done Florence Littauer's, which says I am a melancholy/choleric.

But I think that by nature I am a melancholy/phlegmatic. A melancholy wants to do it right. A choleric wants to do it their way. A phlegmatic wants to do it the easy way. I think that as a mom and a teacher I have come to see the necessity of being a choleric. I'm not doing a good job with my kids if they don't have to do what I say or if I don't do what I say. Since I used to give in (golden retriever or phlegmatic) whenever they whined about anything, I was teaching them to whine. Didn't want to do that. Changed the rules. Changed my response. They don't whine now.

I had goals all my life. The longest term ones were to have a PhD from Purdue, to be a teacher, to own a house. I've done all of those.

I think my husband, who is also phlegmatic (conflict avoider and I want to do it the easy way), sees us as being lazy because we have the brains to be so much more than we are being. But I think we've also made choices. I could have gone on having nationally accepted papers and teaching at the university full-time, but we'd have had to decide where I wanted to teach and he'd have had to get a job there, and I wouldn't be homeschooling. I don't think we're lazy, exactly. Maybe we just like to do things the easy way.

My sons are choleric/phlegmatic and sanguine/phlegmatic. That means one wants his way and he wants it to be easy and the other wants to have fun and he wants it to be easy. I can see where having to do things in life, like school and daily chores, are going to go against those tempraments. But you know, we all have to do some stuff we don't like. Even if most of the time our lives are perfect.