A Spiritual Growth Plan for Your Phlegmatic Child

by Connie Rossini

Is your child mild mannered, quiet, and slow to adapt to change? Does he like to sleep, hate to clean his room, and do other work sluggishly? Does he avoid conflict and hide his emotions? This book was written for you! Discover how to motivate your child to use his talents, increase his confidence, and strengthen his servant leadership skills. Teach him to pray mental prayer from a young age. A Spiritual Growth Plan for Your Phlegmatic Child will support you and your spouse as first teachers of the faith. Help your child become the person God meant him to be.

188 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 4, 2016

About the author

Connie Rossini gives whole families practical help to grow in holiness. She is the author of Trusting God with St. Therese, the series A Spiritual Growth Plan for Your Children, and Is Centering Prayer Catholic? The Contemplative Rosary, co-written with Daniel Burke, is due out in October 2017. Connie writes a column on prayer for The Catholic Voice of the Diocese of Omaha, and she blogs at Contemplative Homeschool. She is also a columnist for SpiritualDirection.com. She and her husband Dan have four young sons.

Reviews

[C.D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

s your child pleasant as can be until there are chores to be done? Yessiree. The author poses several questions like this to help you see the phlegmatic traits in your own child or lack thereof. While I don't think my child is a full-blown phlegmatic, according to the author few people rarely fit perfectly into a single category, she has definite leanings. Being able to put a label on the behavior is eye-opening. I have a better understanding as to why my middle schooler finds math and cleaning her room so overwhelming. Rossini gives great suggestions on how to work with my child's temperament instead of against it. The book helps with more than academics and chores though. It addresses the "whole" child, how sloth can be a root problem with this personality type, giving tips and lesson plans on how to overcome it to bring out your child's deep spiritual side. Even if I hadn't been able to apply this to any of my own brood, I still would have enjoyed the sections where she analyzed the personality types of biblical characters and saints. Apparently, Queen Esther and Abraham show strong phlegmatic traits. I can rest easy knowing my child is in good company.

An easy to follow and informative read. Very highly recommended.

[Cris · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you travel in certain circles, you often hear people talk about their "choleric child" or "such a sanguine spouse". If this is you, then this book will seem like a natural progression in the temperaments theory revival. Although there isn't much here that probably hasn't been written already on rearing children according to temperaments; the series is an extended treatment. A good way to think about this book for folks who are not into typologies or quizzes is that temperament theories help scrutinize for besetting sins or indwelling sin as well as the corresponding graces or virtues. (I would have liked more discussion on the theological underpinnings but that's just me.) My only large caveat is that the book does not have more imput from more parents for often I have gleaned good ideas from talking to friends whose children have weaknesses similar to mine. What sports do we put a sloth-inclined kiddo in? Which child is more likely to find missing keys? How do we counteract a tendency to scrupulosity? Though the book includes formal lesson plans, more casual parents can think of it as a refrigerator reference to keep in mind as you prune your little bonsai trees.