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0:00 This is ten truths every parent of an 0:02 INFJ needs to know.
Number one: General truths about your INFJ. So, your INFJ is the rarest type on the planet. They are about one percent of the population. So, what that means is they process and engage in the world differently to pretty much everybody else. INFJs are known to carry a lot of contradiction on the inside. For example, they don't always feel as though they fit in the world, yet the world needs them. What is most important to the INFJ is what can't be seen. We call this introverted intuition. Your INFJ has abilities that need to be nurtured, protected, and welcomed.
Number two: There is much more going on behind the scenes within the INFJ than could ever be explained. Due to INFJ children feeling misunderstood a lot in their childhood, they can learn to be quiet instead of sharing. However, given half a chance and being asked the right question, they could talk and talk and talk. It's really important to ask open questions and to be curious, almost eternally curious, about what it is that they might be thinking about or processing. What you could discover is a very abstract vocabulary. For some parents, that can be really hard to receive, as there doesn't seem to be anything tangible to grab onto. However, don't worry about it. Just let them talk. They are developing their introverted intuition. Giving them the space to communicate it and an expressive will help them to develop it, being an invaluable part of them in the future.
Number three: Help them to make sense of their feelings. Due to what we call introverted intuition and extroverted feeling, the two cognitive functions for the INFJ, they have an uncanny ability to pick up what is going on in the worlds of other people. This can mean that they are more an expert of other people's feelings than their own. So, helping INFJs to discern what feelings are from other people's can be really important, as INFJs can grow up confused about what their feelings are and what other people's feelings are, and feel responsible or overly responsible for other people's feelings, causing potential problems for the INFJ. So, frequently asking them questions about what it is that they're feeling, or if your INFJ is expressing that they think somebody else is feeling a feeling, or they're they're picking up a feeling in somebody else too, ask them, "What are they feeling about what they're picking up in the other person?" That can be a really helpful way for the INFJ to recognize within themselves both the other person's feelings and their own, helping to separate them and create some clarity.
Number four: Don't bother hiding your feelings from your INFJ. They probably know what you are feeling better than you do. So, this follows on from the previous one, which is your INFJ is probably very attuned to what's going on in the world of the other family members in the household. Your INFJ is probably very good at picking up what's going on below the surface. So, they're very good at picking out the nuances and almost the subliminal sorts of messages that are going on with within people and between people. So, they're usually very attuned to what others are feeling. So, if you sense that your child is picking up on your feelings, it's really important not to deny them. For an INFJ child, this can be very disorienting when they are very clearly picking up a feeling and then it's being denied that it's there. The INFJ could be wrong, but very often they're not wrong. So, to acknowledge the feeling helps the child to settle and to reduce any anxiety that they might be having due to picking up a feeling that you're that you're having, if that makes sense. So, ironically, by you acknowledging your feeling, if they're inquiring about what's going on for you, will actually reduce their anxiety for the most part, not increase it. Of course, you need to use your own discretion and wisdom about what and how you share that, but just generally speaking, this this is a good rule to go by to keep things clear for the INFJ. Maybe another way of saying it is, you can acknowledge the feeling without necessarily going into the why of your feeling. For the INFJ, any unacknowledged issues within a family are like neon signs for the INFJ. Ironically, the more that something is denied or rejected or or suppressed, the more the INFJ is seeing it and picking up on it. So, the healthier the family, the healthier the INFJ. And those hidden issues can be quite distressing and painful for an INFJ, as the INFJ will be focusing on those issues as almost like a form of a disconnect within themselves and will just carry them until they're resolved. And unfortunately, for some families, things don't get resolved, and that can cause problems for an INFJ child growing up when issues aren't acknowledged within a family system. So, it's really important to be clear with your INFJ child, using wisdom, so that they're able to maintain as much harmony as possible.
Number five: Just because they understand deep things doesn't mean they're ready to be a counselor or confidant. For some families, often INFJs report that they became a counselor or a confidant for a parent or a family member growing up because of their natural ability to listen and be curious and just their general sort of unspoken openness. They can be dumped on. And while an INFJ child can receive what is being said, often when this sort of thing is happening, it's not appropriate sharing that's being is taking place. And so, while the INFJ child can seem on the surface to be handling what's going on, often they're not mature enough to really deal or understand or hold or carry what is being said, even though on the outside it looks like they are sort of taking it in their stride.
Number six: Most INFJs are sensitive. Harmony, harmony, harmony. For the INFJ child, conflict can be very distressing and anxiety-provoking for an INFJ. However, unresolved conflict is much more distressing, as INFJ children are often very much connected with the undercurrent within a family system. What's going on, what's been what's being said, why it's being said, relational conflict, all of it is being picked up and analyzed unconsciously for the most part. And because the INFJ usually just holds that in and doesn't communicate it, often parents are unaware that they're carrying quite, they can be carrying quite a load or a burden. And what sort of hat, what can be happening here is that the INFJ child is picking up the atmosphere in a family system. They either are picking it up and not knowing how to talk about it, or just not knowing what to do about it because they're a child. And so they they carry it. Or if they're a little older, they do understand what's going on, but to bring it up might bring on more conflict. And so they keep it to themselves, to their detriment. So, it can be very important for a parent to be just checking in with the INFJ, sort of checking their harmony barometer, making sure that they're paying attention to that side of the INFJ child, so that the INFJ can stay calm and centered and in that sort of harmony zone within themselves. And when a parent just, you know, asks questions, "How are you going? What, how are you feeling?" or more specific questions like, "You know, how did you feel last night when Mom and Dad were fighting?" or "When, you know, your sister or your brother came home and said what he said?" You know, things that are more obvious, checking in with the INFJ child, asking them how they're going, can be really important to helping them to communicate and to partly resolve it for them, so that they can get back to harmony.
Number seven: Don't be afraid to be wrong. Because INFJ children are often very good at picking out what's going on below the surface on a deeper level, they can be more cued in or clued in to what's going on than a parent might be, not in everything, but in certain situations. So, for example, I think it's fair to say that even the best of parents can have bad days. And it can be common for, or understandable even, sometimes for a parent to try and cover over that that bad day, or you know, sort of feel embarrassed about it and deny it or shut it down. "Let's not talk about that." For the INFJ, that's going to be hard. And if a night, if if the INFJ child is feeling confident or feeling secure, they're most likely going to bring it up. Or they could bring it up in such a way that it is confronting for the parent, because, you know, the INFJ might be able to just hit the nail right on the head about why the parent was sad, this or how they said it, or what the feeling and why they did it. And this can be challenging for parents of INFJs. However, if if the parent is able to admit to a shortcoming, admit to something that they did wrong, it will actually build relationship with your INFJ child. It will connect the INFJ to you. They'll feel bonded to you. It will actually be relationship building, not not detrimental at all to the situation. However, you know, we're all human beings, and none of us like being called out on stuff. However, if if a parent's able to get past that and recognize when they get something wrong, it will actually bring the INFJ child and the parent closer together.
Number eight: Be gentle with them. INFJ children can be very hard on themselves. They, it's possible for them to be quite self-critical. And so, if a correction is required, it probably requires a very gentle approach as opposed to a harder or more confrontational approach. The the INFJ, for the most part, is wanting to grow, is wanting to change, is always wanting to self-improve themselves. And so they're probably picking up their error just as strongly as you might be. And as the parent, and so it's almost like becoming a co, like a collaborator on on the growth moment, and coming alongside them and almost helping them to do it, helping them to recognize and and acknowledge their own error or their mistake, and helping or allowing them space to find the answer can be a very helpful way for an INFJ to grow.
Number nine: Pay attention to their hunches. Sometimes INFJ children can come out with things that just seem to come out of, where I think all children can do this, but INFJs can do it in such a way that it's either dismissed very easily, or missed, or criticized because it just seems to have no real backing to what's being said. This could just be their introverted intuition saying something, recognizing something, speaking something out. And especially for the up, for the child INFJ, it's really important to nurture those hunches, not necessarily believe them, but just encourage them to be articulated or and recognize them, as it helps them to develop this part of themselves. So, in the early stages, it's not really about whether the the hunch is right or wrong. It's that it's allowed to be expressed, allowed to be communicated, so that the INFJ child can build confidence in their ability to communicate it. And also, if it turns out to be incorrect, that's just an opportunity for them to learn from that and to be developing that intuition and harnessing it and sort of honing its accuracy.
Number ten: And saying the above, don't put them on a pedestal. So, the flip side to the INFJ feeling ignored or misunderstood, or just not, yeah, not understood on a really deep level, is that they're put on a pedestal, as though they are sort of godlike, that they can't do anything wrong, and you know, there's some kind of like spiritual you know, child sage or something. The point being that at the end of the day, they're still children. And it's kind of like helping the adult in them to grow and to develop whilst allowing them to be a child at the end of the day. The INFJ child is a child, like every other child, and they're going to make mistakes, they're going to have bad days, they're going to, you know, have their negative moments. So, it's really important to, whilst helping them to develop, also keeping them grounded in fact. Helping them to develop does actually ground them.
Bonus truth for INFJs: Truth is what holds them together. So, this is a really important one. INFJ children and INFJs in general prize truth very, very deeply. And the, what's hard for INFJs is that they often see where there isn't truth. They often see discrepancies, they see contradictions, they see things that don't line up. And that can all lead to like a disturbance on the inside. And so, the more truth that they're able to live within and live a live around, the better for the INFJ child growing up. So, in a sense, it's about reaffirming the oven ten points, which is, it's all about allowing truth to emanate and permeate the family system and the INFJ, so that they're able to feel a lot more centered. As truth centers an INFJ, it's very uncharacteristic for an INFJ child to lie. They will usually only develop that side of themselves if they are conditioned to do so. However, INFJs love to tell the truth. If it's safe, if the environment is harmonious, if the environment welcomes the truth, then the INFJ will simply speak the truth.
So, hopefully that gives a little bit of insight into maybe some aspects of your INFJ child that you maybe weren't aware of or didn't understand or didn't have a name to describe it, and may provide a few tools here and there to better connect with your child and support their growth. So, I hope you've enjoyed this video. Feel free to like the video, share the video too, as you think might benefit from this content. Feel free to subscribe to the channel. There's a lot more INFJ and MBTI videos. And thanks for watching, and I'll see you again in another video.