Weekly Tools and Tips to Improve Any Relationship
In our last “Ask the Expert” post, Jeremy Daniel responded to a woman who wanted to know what strengths she brought as a parent as a Red. This woman said she was very well aware of her limitations. Does that sound familiar to anyone? Parenting is the hardest job in the world, and it may be very easy to see your limitations as a parent while being somewhat blind to your strengths.
I have two wonderful parents, one Blue and one Yellow. As a Blue myself, it’s very helpful to have a Blue mom who is sensitive to my emotional needs and who appreciates and understands me. I could go on and on about the strengths she’s brought to our family as a Blue (and maybe I will in a future post), but today I want to talk about the strengths my Yellow dad brought as a parent. In turn, I hope the other Yellow parents are able to recognize these strengths in themselves and hopefully see the value they’ve brought to their own families. Of course, the Yellows reading this may already see themselves as being pretty great, but just in case you’re having doubts, I’ll reassure you of your awesomeness. 😉
The strengths I mention are specific to Yellow parents.
As a Blue, I am definitely opposite of this. I feel ALL the feels. If something negative happened growing up, whether it be friend drama or boy problems, my dad exuded an attitude that helped me believe my life was not completely falling apart and that things WOULD work out in the end. If something negative happened in his personal life, I literally didn’t even know about it or it didn’t seem to bother him too much. He never complained about his job and when he lost his job a few years ago, I felt the sad and angry emotions while he maintained a positive attitude that he would be taken care of.
Who doesn’t like to be entertained? When I was in 3rd grade, different parents of students in my class would come into our classroom every so often and educate us about influential musicians. Of course, the norm was to learn about Bach, Beethoven and the like. Well when my dad came in, he decided to teach us 9-year-olds about The Beatles. He asked if anyone in our class had a birthday coming up, and when a boy raised his hand he had him come up and he played The Beatles’ song “Birthday” for him. I’m pretty sure he whipped out his trusty air guitar, too. He is very comfortable in front of an audience, and he doesn’t disappoint with his killer Neil Diamond impression and corny Dad jokes.
We’ve all seen the movies where the parents are more concerned with work than with their children. I was lucky enough that when my dad left work, he left work. Although he was busy with work and church responsibilities when I was growing up, he made a lot of time for his family, and he was always present with us. If we went out to dinner or on vacation he was there to have quality conversation with us and enjoy the activities we were doing.
When it came to some of my more complicated or creative school projects or contests, my dad was great at taking the lead. In 8th grade, my science teacher assigned us to create a contraption that would crush a grape through the use of simple machines. For a girl who hates science, that was very overwhelming! In stepped my dad. Over the weekend, he took me shopping for the parts and proceeded to basically do my project for me as I watched him without a clue. He was always good at taking over short-term projects like that as well as the pumpkin-carving contest at school and answering boys to dances in creative ways.
When I was a kid, my family was listening to the song “Nowhere Man” by The Beatles. (Can you tell my dad is Beatles obsessed?) As we were listening to the lyrics, “He’s a real nowhere man sitting in his nowhere land making all his nowhere plans for nobody,” we kids asked my dad where “nowhere” was and how somebody could go to a place when it was called “nowhere.” Rather than explaining the meaning behind the song, he packed us in the car and drove us for about 45 minutes up to the mountains, or in other words, in the middle of nowhere. He told us that this was “nowhere,” and to this day we call that area by the same name!
Yellows, your suspicions were correct…you guys are great parents! Your kids are lucky to have you. Readers, what are some of your favorite strengths about your Yellow parents? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Megan Christensen graduated from Brigham Young University-Idaho in 2014 with a Bachelor’s degree in communication. She previously worked as the head writer for KSL.com and is now the digital content manager for the Color Code. Her core color is Blue, but she is almost just as White.
