The Battle of Understanding: An INFJ Mother and Her ESTP Son

Dustin. My firstborn. My wild child. The fire that burned through every carefully built structure I tried to put around him. He came into this world a force of nature—high-energy, fearless, relentless. If there was a boundary, he pushed it. If there was a rule, he questioned it. If there was an expectation, he shattered it.

And then there was me. The INFJ mother. The one who felt everything too deeply, who anticipated every danger before it arrived, who wanted nothing more than peace and meaning. I wasn’t built for chaos. I wasn’t built for a child who ran headfirst into life without hesitation, who learned through experience rather than guidance. But there he was—a child who was everything I wasn’t. A child I didn’t fully understand.

The world didn’t understand him either.

And that’s what started the war.

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Fighting Against the System, Fighting Against Each Other

They told me he had ADHD.

They told me he was oppositional.

They told me he needed to be tested, medicated, controlled.

And I fought. I fought with everything I had. Not because I thought he was perfect. Not because I didn’t see his struggles. But because I knew, deep down, that they were wrong.

They didn’t see the boy who thrived when he was engaged, who could memorize every detail of something he loved but tuned out when it didn’t matter to him. They didn’t see that he wasn’t defiant—he was trying to navigate a world that wasn’t made for the way he learned.

But I saw it. And I fought for it.

And in doing so, I became his greatest ally—and his greatest enemy.

Because while I was fighting the system, I was also fighting him.

I was trying to protect him. He saw it as me trying to control him.

I was trying to anticipate his needs. He saw it as me not trusting him.

I was trying to help him find his place. He just wanted to live on his own terms.

We screamed. We slammed doors. We pushed each other to our breaking points. And through it all, I kept asking myself, why is this so hard? Why does it feel like we are speaking different languages?

Because we were.

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INFJ Mother, ESTP Son: Speaking Different Languages

I look back now, and it all makes sense.

I was the planner, the dreamer, the one who lived in a world of intuition and long-term vision. He was the doer, the risk-taker, the one who needed to touch, feel, experience everything firsthand.

I saw consequences before they happened. He didn’t care about consequences until they smacked him in the face.

I needed structure, routine, predictability. He thrived in spontaneity, in chaos, in movement.

I wanted to talk about feelings. He wanted to act. To do. To prove himself.

I thought I was teaching him how to survive in the world. But to him, I was just another force trying to tame him.

I know now that he wasn’t broken. He was never broken.

He just wasn’t wired to sit in a desk all day, to follow rules that didn’t make sense to him, to exist in a world that valued compliance over curiosity.

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Would Knowing Then Have Changed Anything?

Yes. Everything.

If I had known about personality types back then, if I had known that he was an ESTP—a child built for action, for experience, for the thrill of the moment—I wouldn’t have wasted so many years fighting him.

I wouldn’t have fought so hard to make him fit into my world.

I wouldn’t have seen his energy as a problem to be solved.

I wouldn’t have spent so many nights crying, exhausted, wondering what I was doing wrong.

And maybe—just maybe—he wouldn’t have spent so much time feeling like he wasn’t enough.

Because the truth is, the world failed him. The system tried to put him in a box that was never meant for him, and I—his own mother—was trying to do the same without realizing it.

I thought I was protecting him.

But I was just another part of the system trying to make him something he wasn’t.

And yet, despite everything, he fought back. He refused to be labeled, refused to be medicated into submission, refused to be anything other than himself.

And now? Now, I admire him for it.

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What I See Now That I Didn’t See Then

Dustin is fearless. The world tells him no, and he finds another way.

He doesn’t sit still, doesn’t dwell on the past, doesn’t waste time overthinking.

He jumps, he falls, he gets back up. Over and over and over again.

And even though we still clash, even though there are still moments where we don’t understand each other, I know that we have both grown because of it.

I had to learn to let go. To stop trying to control the uncontrollable.

And he had to learn that sometimes, just sometimes, my warnings weren’t meant to limit him—but to keep him from breaking himself beyond repair.

We are still fire and water. We always will be.

But I no longer try to extinguish his flames.

And he, in turn, has stopped trying to drown me out.

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The Lesson I Wish I Had Learned Sooner

If I could tell my younger self anything, it would be this:

He was never the problem.

The world just wasn’t built for kids like him.

And you? You spent so much time fighting for him that you forgot to simply see him.

See the way he thrived when he was allowed to move, to explore, to experience.

See the way he struggled not because he was difficult, but because the world tried to make him something he wasn’t.

See the way he needed to be understood, not fixed.

I see it now.

And I hope—despite everything—he knows that I always loved him, even when I didn’t understand him.

Even when I fought against him.

Even when I was so caught up in my own fears that I didn’t see his strength.

I see it now.

And I see him.

Finally.