Here’s a List of Personality Traits to Help Parents Understand Their Kids
What personality trait does your child display most often?
As parents we often observe certain personality traits, but without guidance it may be difficult to articulate these traits, or even identify them specifically. This is a list of personality characteristics you can use it to guide observations of your younger child. It's also a great starting point for discussions with older children. I adapted the list from here, where it is used in conjunction with other questions as part of a career path exploration.
See Also: How To Understand and Support Your Child's Core Personality
Honesty: Having integrity and keeping one's promise.
Courtesy: Being thoughtful of others.
Responsibility: Being accountable for duties and following through with your duties.
Compatibility: Being in harmony with others and having the ability to work well with others.
Loyalty: Showing devotion to people and/or things.
Enthusiasm: Having a strong affinity towards and eagerness/ willingness to work with others or things.
Open-mindedness: Being receptive and interested in the opinions and ideas of others.
Self-Control: Controlling your own actions and feelings.
Influence: Motivating or encouraging others.
Initiative: Starting thoughts and/or actions.
Adaptability: Making changes when necessary.
Industriousness: Being consistently active and getting work done.
Carefulness: Giving watchful attention to people and/or things and doing things properly.
Self-Reliance: Having trust in one's self to doing things independently and feel confident about them.
Compassion: Having sympathy and feelings for people with problems.
Dedication: Being seriously devoted to causes and/or goals.
Competitiveness: Striving to win.
Patience: Being able to wait and taking time to do things.
Perfectionism: Trying to achieve the highest possible degree of excellence.
Courage: Meeting danger or difficulties in spite of fear.
Decisiveness: Making decisions promptly and definitely.
Drive: Having the energy to get things done.
Perseverance: Being persistent in pursuit of tasks.
Calmness: Being serene.
Stability: Being constant in responses.
Help Society: Do something to contribute to the betterment of the world.
Help Others: Involved in helping other people in a direct way, either individually or in small groups.
Public Contact: Have a lot of day-to-day contact with people.
Work with Others: Have close working relationships with a group, work as a team toward common goals.
Affiliation: Be recognized as a member of a particular organization.
Friendships: Develop close personal relationships with people.
Competition: Engage in activities that pit abilities against others where there are clear win-and-lose outcomes.
Make Decisions: Have the power to decide courses of action, policies, etc. (Leading other children in play.)
Work under Pressure: Work in situations where time pressure is prevalent and/or the quality of my work is judged critically by parents, teachers, or others. (Tests well.)
Influence People: Be in a position to change attitudes or opinions of other people.
Work Alone: Does projects independently, without any significant amount of contact with others.
Knowledge: Engage myself in the pursuit of knowledge, truth and understanding.
Artistic Creativity: Engage in creative work in any of several art forms.
Aesthetics: Notices the beauty of things, ideas, etc.
Stability: Prefers a routine that is largely predictable and not likely to change over a long period of time.
Recognition: Be recognized in some visible or public way.
Excitement: Experience a high degree of (or frequent) excitement.
Adventure: Enjoy frequent risk-taking.
Profit, Gain: Interest in accumulating money or other material gain.
Independence: Be able to determine the nature of my work without significant direction from others; not have to do what others tell me.
Moral Fulfillment: Wants to contribute significantly to a set of moral standards.
Physical Challenge: Enjoys physical challenges.
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Comments
Hi, I'm new to my computer and this was the very first site i went on for a college project and it was very helpful thank you.:)
The collection is very good & amazing. Nice one to hold upon this. All the stuffs gives a meaning to the collection & symbolizes a lot. So overall good one
This page brought a tear to my tiny eyes. It was very toucHING.
this saved my life
Wonderful hub. Very extensive list. Thanks
nice personality list... i liked this...
..... please support this program.......
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I am pursuing MBA(VIT University, Vellore,India) and i was looking for Organizational Behavior topics in terms of Personality so that i can give a proper seminar. Really i got many meaningful points from this page. Thanks a lot Lela.
this is a very nice list hard to undertsand a bit but it is great when explaining ot kids just let them know htye are amamzing and they couldn't be anything else but that.
Thanks, this helped me in my english project
Really useful. Thank you.
nice list
very nice meansful so that i can help father
i have two yes
very,meaningful so that its help to my colleges!!!!
very good traits
thanks so much for this list!! It helped me with my high school application. I bet this list will help a lot of people:)
Great list but can you add believer of faith
This list helped a lot!!!!!!!!! I am currently writing a story, and I needed to develop their characteristics (the characters) and this really helped. And it also helps me identify characteristics in myself and my friends.
wow this is very help it helped me to describe a chracter in my book reaport lol
Your list don't not help high schoolers with a high-level of thinking that need's help with a Personal Essay for Collega :(
WOW, THIS IS BETTER THAN ANYTHING ELSE. WE ARE SISTERS AND WE CANT BELIEVE ALL OUR PERSONALITIES WE HAVE & NOW SUNNY AND I BELIEVE WE SHOULD ALWAYS DO THE RIGHT THING, NOW WE HAVE DONE IT AND BY THE WAY, WE GOT A lot OF CERTIFICATES. THANKS TO THIS WEBSITE. :)
Wow, this is great! It really inspired me to embrace who I truly am, and all of the great personality triats I have! It also helped me to become a better person, and work on imporving my negative traits. This list has truly changed my life!
All good news there..thanks
thank so much for the personality list
Helpful!!
thank you
great list!
thank you , thank you. this list have helped me for making a resume!!")
Nice and thank you! I needed to write down a simple, one personality for my character profile. And this totally helps! :]
AWESOME LIST THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!
love it i just love it
Very Nice and thorough list.
Quite the list you have there. I was hope for a few negative ones but it's still well done.
actually i found that you repeated a few of the words and/or meanings a few times. for example there is 2 of the word "stability". also you missed a few traits, like negative personality traits such as impatients etc. otherwise i supose you could say this list is of mediocre standard. in other words get fucked
Really Enjoyed your list!
Your hit the nail on the head! Good hub. Thanks for sharing.
my goodness that was rude Jesse l it helped me thanks
it is great, i really like to follow all these traits to grow in my life. thanks for giving me an opportunity to know about how one should groom up in life.
WOW! Thank you so much for the list. This can be my guide in determining traits of my co-workers
well, it's a wounderful list but if u can also add one personality with one trait, it would be great....
Thanks.
Awesome list.Thakns
I am learning Spanish and need to know personality traits so as to use the verb "ser" correctly. Your list will be most helpful. Thanks so much. Elayne
I looooooove this list. So amazing!
Only took minute to find what I was looking for
thanks(:
it didn't help me at all sorryy:(
jajaja i love pankakess jajaja just trying to be gufyy:P
this was very helpful thanks
amazing list I looked only for 1 minute and I found it
i love this list at the momment...
i had to answer a question in an application " what is the most unique personallity trait you will bring?"
this helped me a lot.....
thankyou trait list
Hannah says:
5 days ago
yourrrr a friggen legend! this list made my day
luvv
xxxxx
yourrrr a friggen legend! this list made my day
luvv
xxxxx
i love this list at the momment...
i had to answer a question in an application " what is the most unique personallity trait you will bring?"
this helped me a lot.....
thankyou trait list
I think it helps to know this lists.
Anyone pathetic enough to need a list to tell them about their own children does not deserve the fertility that was given to them.
Worst list ever.
Thanks .This is a great list , it really help me out in my personality development . I would love to share this with my family &friends.
I know this list was meant to help parents, but I am only in grade seven and i enjoy writing stories, so i'm not a parent. to young for that. I have written some stories and when reading over them, i noticed that my characters didn't have personalities other than, good, evil, innocent(mostly children who didn't know about evil things) or love struck. your list has helped me developed my characters and lengthen my stories into book length novels. I made a chart of the character names and then listed the traits from your list under the people it would fit. It made it a lot easier to incorperate the traits into the stories, create much more complete stories and well rounded characters. So thanks, you really helped me a lot.
this list helped me on my home work
thanke you i gat an A+!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
great list
helped a lot with work
great list
helped a lot with work
this is fabulous" wonderful
Fabulous! You really did an awesome job on this hub. Great topic and original information. I would love to share this with my friends on facebook and twiiter. Take a look at my hub https://hubpages.com/business/Daycareschoolonline and let me know what you think! All the best of luck to you!
Very good and school counsellors should have access to it!
Great list! This will come in handy and helpful in the near future.
Great list i actually was using it to describe the type of qualities i want in a guy lol...YAY for single people
It was difficult at first when my child was so opposite of what I was as a kid. But you eventually learn to love how they are like you but yet their own person.
I don't want to say "great list" or "thanks for the list" like everybody else, but I would like to say thank you for the help that this list has been for a school project I am working on. I am in grade 8 and we are doing a character study; I found this list great in helping me find words to describe my oterwise non-describable character. Thanks!!
Thanks for the list. It is indeed very helpful.
Thanks for the list, i have wanted to a way to help my child grow a little more, and Jillian has suggested a good way to use it, telling her she's a good child isn't really the best way forward, and this will help.
this list is incredible, i used to have low self-esteem and thought that i didn't like myself, that i wasn't good enough, this list helped me a lot. Thank You.
wow this made me think of some things i would have never thought of
Very nice list and thanks for sharing! It takes a lot of work to raise your children but the best way is to balance love and discipline so that your child knows you have their best interest in mind.
As you've already heard, you've compiled a complete and outstanding list!
thanx 4 the list i found just what i was looking for my hmwk. ur the best!:)
Love this list! I'll be referencing it for my little girl. Thanks!
This saved my life
its a fact, children inherit the properties from their parents so why we people first look ourselves and list out all the things that our child can have of us. In this way we can easily find out child behaviour, instead lof looking for the top features listed by my dear friend...
This list has help a lot of people. This list have even help me
This list will help others a lot with personal traits. I have discover some things about myself that i didn't know about.
dis is a nice list. dis list will help others a lot.
Nice list. A great help for parents like me.
Seems like you got them all! Thank you. It's amazing how every kid you have either your own or in the classroom can be SO different.
What a lovely and thoughtful list.
This is bettter than Dr. Phil and Dr. Spock :)
Great list, too bad I didn't have it when my children were little. I can say though that they do possess many of these traits. So I guess I did something right.
I like your list a lot. It's bookmarked to be shared with my husband.
A very good list of things for parents to work on. I'll be bookmarking this in a jifty!
Great hub :)
Fabulous list, I can use it to my next class as part of our topic "PERSONALITY TRAITS"
The personalities of children emerge much sooner than one would think. I had 4 girls, raised them all 'the same' basically and they all turned out completely different. Parents should always be on the lookout and allow children to embrace the personality they were meant to have.
- Author
No, no ranking - just lots of good traits!
Excellent list of personality traits. Which are the preferential traits? Are they ranked as per relevance or all have same relevance?
An excellent list here - great reading.
this is very well presented. great list.
Lots of task to do then. LOL
Nice list!
thank you. this is very helpful indeed.
I have nothing more to add , all in the list are really great. I will copy paste it in order that I could always read it over and over.
This is a great list!
Very nice list - my husband and I were just talking about new ways to describe our children's traits to them. It becomes worthless telling them "you are a great person", how much better to let them know "they are a loyal, enthusiastic person" and that we greatly appreciate their Industriousness. That should spark some conversation about who they really are and who they want to grow into.
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