ENFPs usually don’t choose to have children until later in their lives, when they’ve explored the world and learned to temper their own need for independence with the needs of others. But once they do decide to have children, they make warm and exciting parents who encourage their children to be strong and independent people.
General Overview
Once they mature and settle a little bit, ENFPs make wonderful parents. What they love most about being parents is exploring the world anew through their children, showing them the wonder and the adventure the world can offer and experiencing it again through new eyes. The ENFPs children will usually thrive under this care, and grow up in an environment that is always fun and creative and encourages them to explore and express exactly who they are without censure.
“Once they mature and settle a little bit, ENFPs make wonderful parents. What they love most about being parents is exploring the world anew through their children, showing them the wonder and the adventure the world can offer and experiencing it again through new eyes.”
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ENFPs are also naturally warm and emotionally aware, attentive to their children’s emotional needs while still encouraging strength and independence. When they’re healthy, ENFPs are also extremely free with their own emotional expression, and their children always know that they’re loved and safe.
Household Organization and Discipline
ENFPs don’t like structure or routine and will not bring that to their children’s lives. They naturally create an environment that is unstructured and designed to encourage and allow exploration. This doesn’t mean that they’ll abandon their children of course, no healthy type would ever do that, instead they’ll provide the kind of environment they enjoy and join their children in their exploration of it.
This openness may seem idyllic, but it often lacks any sense of discipline. ENFPs are not good at setting hard rules, expecting them to be followed, or at punishing people when they disobey, and this can cause problems when it comes to their children. ENFPs often rely on their partner to discipline their children and continue to struggle throughout their children’s lives with setting boundaries on their behaviors.
The ENFP and Emotional Support
ENFPs will give their children a lot of emotional support. This type uses introverted feeling as their secondary function, which gives them a genius level understanding of their own emotions and of the emotions and motivations of others. It also makes them incredibly warm people, who are at ease with emotional expressions, and they’ll shower these on their children at every opportunity. ENFPs emotionally invest in the people they care about, and will find great joy and contentment in connecting with their children on this deep emotional level.
The ENFPs Engagement Level
ENFPs often find a good balance between engaging with their children and giving them space to grow and learn. They use extraverted intuition as their dominant function, which likes to explore the world and demands a certain level of independence to be healthy and happy. And ENFPs will often assume that others will have the same need. This means they’ll happily explore the world with their children but also keep up their own lives and interests so their children’s lives don’t become totally their own. And this can make for some very healthy, and autonomous but loving parent child relationships.
“ENFPs will happily explore the world with their children but also keep up their own lives and interests so their children’s lives don’t become totally their own.”
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The ENFP and SJ Children
The ENFPs natural warmth and emotional intelligence will usually drive them to understand their SJ children even when it seems impossible. ENFPs are very different to SJs in lots of important ways. SJs need structures and routines to feel safe, they’re strongly connected to the past, and they learn by relating the information from their senses to past events. This often makes them very reluctant to try new things or move out of their comfort zone. This way of functioning is the opposite to an ENFPs view of the world, and can make it difficult for these types to connect and understand each other.
But ENFPs believe above all things that people need space and permission to be themselves, and they usually have enough emotional intelligence to allow and encourage this. And for their SJ children, this means that the ENFP will give them room to grow in their own way while still encouraging them to push beyond their comfort zones and explore the world at their side. And this kind of gentle understanding and persuasion can be extremely beneficial to the often overly cautious SJ type.
The ENFP and SP Children
SP children will usually find the perfect partner for their adventures in their ENFP parent. They use extraverted sensing as their dominant or auxiliary, and use it to explore the world through their senses. This function can match well with the ENFPs dominant function, which does the same thing, but for a different purpose. 1 These sometimes similar cognitive functions drive both these types to seek out a mix of autonomy and exploration, and the ENFP and their SP children will probably have endless plans and adventures together. SP children will also appreciate the unstructured environment and thrive in the creative and imaginative world the ENFP naturally creates.
The ENFP and NF Children
ENFPs will connect naturally to their NF children. Their shared emotional natures will make understanding each other easy, and the ENFP will have all the tools they need to make their NF children feel happy, secure and loved. NF types often have a lot of emotional needs that they struggle to get met in relationships with other personality types. So having the kind of expert support an ENFP can provide can give NF children a very solid foundation for the rest of their lives.
The ENFP and NT Children
NT children will often find ENFPs overwhelming but mesmerizing at the same time. Their zest for love and open emotionality is something that NTs often aspire to, and growing up around it will benefit NT children in countless ways. An ENFP parent may not always understand their NT children, but they’ll love them just the same and do what they can to show them that the world can be a magical place if they just experience it. And for NT children, who are too often in their own heads, this can be a magical thing to learn.
Final Thoughts
ENFPs usually make warm and loving parents who teach their children to be autonomous and to explore the wonder of the world. This sense of wonder is key to what they bring to their children, and through it the ENFP parent will introduce their children to a world that is amazing and beautiful and there just for them to explore.
References
- Storm Susan. “Understanding ENFP Intuition“. Feb 13, 2017. (Retrieved Feb 2018).
- Storm Susan. “Are Youa Ne User or a Se User? The Difference Between Extraverted Sensing and Extraverted Intuition“. Dec 22, 2016. (Retrieved Feb 2018).
- “ENFP – The Discoverer“.