Book Review by Jack Falt
While there is real benefit to learning about your True Colors in a group, the book does give you the information to determine your own temperament Colors. (We are not just one colour but usually have one colour that is dominant.) Even the picture sorting cards are included in the book. The place to start is by determining your own temperament. The next step is to determine your spouse’s temperament. Ideally, you would do this together. It also likely will help you understand each other better.
Now you can move on to begin to determine the colours of your children. The description for each colour of child begins with the child as a baby and moves through the stages up to adolescence. No child will fit the description exactly. That is because of the other colours coming through his or her personality. When the children are old enough, it would be worthwhile to involve them in deciding on their own colours. A warning here is that most children are attracted to the Orange lifestyle. They need help distinguishing what they would like to be from what they really are. You need to emphasise the value of each of the colours to help children feel good about themselves no matter what colour they are.
Now when you have identified everyone’s colour, you can look at the rainbow your family really is. It becomes easier for everyone to see where everyone’s behaviour is coming from. Much of the hostility within a family is because of the misinterpretation of others’ motives.
Next the book looks at the various combination of colours of the parents with each other, and then as parents and children. Each colour will have different interests and will react differently to requests and commands that are necessary to help the family function together. Parents will likely have different parenting styles that are influenced by their own upbringing as well as their colour. There are lists of suggestions on how to improve your relationship as a couple as well as with you and your children. There are also suggestions on how to help children improve their relationships with their siblings.
Your role as a parent will be much easier if children have a good sense of their self-esteem. What gives one colour self-esteem isn’t necessarily what gives self-esteem to another colour. Self-esteem comes from accomplishment, and helping children become competent in what is important to them will greatly enhance their self-esteem. Addressing the needs of each colour of child will help this process along as well.
There is a chapter on strengthening your lower ranked colours, listing the strengths, values, skills and needs of each colour that could be very helpful to you.
Our goal as parents is to raise self-sufficient children and we need to know how to help them keep safe as they are out on their own during their adolescent years. Suggestions also are given for family activities and the kinds of family chores children of various ages should be expected to achieve.
There is a very short chapter on learning, mainly on learning how to take responsibility. I wish this chapter had been expanded to include how children learn academic subjects in school and to do the related homework as this is an important area the parents have to monitor.
Overall, this book is very worthwhile to recommend to parents, and could be used by facilitators of any temperament training method to lead a parenting class.