Applauding the Good

As a parent, how much time do you spend fertilizing your kids versus trying to fix them? That's a lesson that Brandon and Annalyn Miller learned with their daughter Madeline. So Madeline handed us this report card at the end of sixth grade, all A's and a C- in math. And being a parent who was a high performer in school, my first thought went to, what happened in math?

How did that happen? And so being a student of what I have been speaking about decided maybe I should ask her about the positive grades first. So literally, we switched the conversation. We said to our daughter, you got an A plus in reading, Madeline, do you like to read? And our daughter's eyes lit up and she went, Daddy, I'd love to read. Sometimes you and Mommy think you're putting me to bed at night and I'll stay until two in the morning reading books.

So I offered her, I said, Madeline, I tell you what, this summer I'm going to hire you to read books. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. Do you know the things your kids are really good at and the things they love to do? What are you doing to help fuel those passions and abilities? We'll talk more about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. One of the challenges I think all of us face as parents is how we deal with the preconceptions that we bring to parenting about what a good child is supposed to be. Why are you laughing? I laughed immediately because I can remember having those thoughts. You know, now I'm a grandparent, but when I realized what my thought was about what my children should be, it was more about how they made me look. I was going to say the same thing. It was all about me.

And they would make me look better and people would think better of me. We've got some friends who are joining us this week to talk about rethinking our parenting. And I'll just say again, this is really at the heart of what we talk about in the Art of Parenting video series and the book that Dennis and Barbara Rainey wrote, The Art of Parenting.

Because as moms and dads, we have to rethink our approach to parenting and not just try to follow some recipe. Annalyn and Brandon Miller join us on Family Life Today. Guys, welcome back.

Hi, thank you for having us. Thank you. Brandon and Annalyn are from Sacramento, California. They are parents of seven kids.

Brandon works with businesses and with ministries to help in strength development. Annalyn, if you want to sell your house and you live in Sacramento, right, they can call you. Call me. All right. She's doing real estate in Sacramento. And in the meantime, they've raised three of their seven kids, still have four at home. And I say you've raised three of your seven. You're still parents, right?

Yes, we are. Yeah, but you have to adjust how you do it once they're married, don't you? Very much.

Brandon and Annalyn have written a book called Play to Their Strengths. And you said that this is an approach to parenting that dawned on you 10 years into the journey, maybe beyond that. What was your original parenting strategy?

Do you remember? I would say our original parenting strategy, somewhat like we just discussed, was really making our kids make us look good. Very performance-oriented.

Performance. And did you judge other people's kids? Absolutely.

Yes, absolutely. That was the standard by which you knew if you were a good parent. Did your kids behave better than the other kids at the family event or the restaurant?

And you'd give the sideways glance to, oh, they don't know what they're doing. Because they must not use as strong a threat as I do to get their child to comport to the behavior you want to see in the restaurant. Meanwhile, you're coaching business leaders and saying, really, what you need to do is try to encourage the strengths in your employees and help them play to their strengths in the workplace, and they'll be better employees. And you went, oh, maybe this would apply to parenting. Maybe I should take this home and apply this with my, at the time, emerging teens and little, little ones.

And so it became, for us, a conversation around how would we make this switch? What would this look like practically in our home to create a culture, a space where it was okay to play to their strengths without getting caught up in what others would think about us in the process? Which can be very different because many times we hear we need well-rounded kids. How would we go from having well-rounded kids to playing to their strengths? You know, I think that as we can even consider the idea of being well-rounded, our idea of that is, you know, they're excelling in school, they're playing a sport, they're doing an art, and we want our children to do all of them excellently. And be perfectly behaved in the process. Yes, and maintain perfect behavior.

When I say that out loud, of course, as we're all sitting here, we're going, that's just so unreasonable. How could we even, you know, expect that or think that of our children? So, you know, when you look at just beginning to change this culture into looking at what's right with your children and looking at the strengths in your children, it does take some time to discover what those things are.

So I think there is going to be opportunities that you are putting in front of them, right? Even as small children, grade school children, maybe you let them do, you know, they want to play an instrument or whatnot. I think for us, one of the things that we, especially when our children want to try new things, our only thing is, you know what, if we can provide that for you and if we can make sure you can get there for those practices and whatnot, we just ask that you finish it. At the end of it, if they say, I didn't enjoy it or I didn't like all the practice afterwards, it just didn't energize me, that's okay. You know, but even in the process, our only thing is, is you got to finish it because we don't want our kids to just learn and start and not finish. So if they try out for the soccer team, they're going to do a season of soccer and not quit halfway through.

And we've had that happen to us. We have a little guy who is, he's a swimmer and in our summer swim leagues, he breaks 30-year-old records. He's amazing. And each year after the season, we ask him, do you want to continue doing this?

You're amazing. And his initial response is, no, I don't like the practices. I'm not into this sport. And then every year around the spring, he remembers how much he likes to win and beat people and says, I'll give it another go. And we're going to play this out, but my prediction is he will age out at some point and decide it's not for him. Even though we could transition him to the year-round competitive club, we could start to really invest.

The sport takes a lot of investment with the travel, but we're metering and monitoring, is that really the way to go? Because the myth of well-roundedness, Dr. Donald Clifton, who is considered the father of strength psychology, so he's the one who started to ask questions, why does our field of study focus so much on what's wrong with humans instead of what's right? And he's quoted in one of his books as saying, for every one strength a person has, you have a thousand weaknesses. So to spend a life trying to solve those things and become who you're not is really a recipe for frustration. On behalf of the person who is either the parent, the child, the manager, or the employee, pick your spot of human development and you're building a place where we're going to really struggle. So what do you say to the parent that has the child come home from school with the grade card?

Because I know we focus on the negative and not the positive. So he's got four As and whatever, and he's got a D in algebra. And most parents go, why do you have a D here? Rather than, oh my goodness, you're so good at these other areas. What do you say to that parent?

Because that's what a lot of us do. Here's the playbook. So Madeline handed us this report card at the end of sixth grade. She's now a sophomore, but at the end of sixth grade, all As and a C minus in math. And being a parent who was a high performer in school, my first thought went to, what happened in math? What happened?

How did that happen? What in the world? And so being a student of what I have been speaking about decided maybe I should ask her about the positive grades first. Because by percentage, parents who see that report card will spend 80 percent of the time to 90 focused on the bad mark. And that's where they're going to spend 80 percent of the night to 90 percent of the time remediating. Which, by the way, for many employees listening, that's what your annual review feels like. Excellent, excellent, excellent needs improvement.

Let's just camp here on needs improvement. So literally, we switched the conversation. We said to our daughter, you got an A plus in reading. Madeline, do you like to read? And our daughter's eyes lit up and she went, daddy, I'd love to read. Sometimes you and mommy think you're putting me to bed at night and I'll stay till two in the morning reading books.

As a sixth grader. And I said, wow. So I offered her, I said, Madeline, I tell you what, this summer I'm going to hire you to read books.

And she looked puzzled and quizzical. Really? I said, yeah. For every book that's 100 pages, you get a dollar. 200 pages, you get two. 300 or more, you get five.

As long as you write a book report, turn it in on Mondays, I'll pay you in cash. And my little girl read and she read and she read. And what we were doing is we were playing to the fourth E that we talked about, energy. When a child plays at their strengths, they build energy.

In fact, they reserve it. So at the end of summer, we came back and said, hey, Maddie, you got to see in math. What do you think about some math tutoring? And her answer was, sure.

Be happy to put some effort there. And if we had reversed it, I guarantee I asked this question to rooms of people. What do you think would have happened if I started with, Maddie, this summer, math tutoring.

All summer long. The answer I get from most is I would have had eye rolls. I would have the wah, wah, wah. It would have gone over that way. What would have started as, but here's the carrot. Here's all the incentive, would have probably turned into the stick.

Would have probably became very authoritarian. No, you must. You have to. And this starts to erode that parent-child relationship around, am I really advocating for you to be your best or to be who I think you need to be to get by? The point is that there is energy around our strengths. When we do the things that we're good at, we feel energized. And in fact, I think feel a little more empowered even to try to tackle some of the things that we're not as good at.

Thank you. We call it the three C's. So when a child plays with their strengths, and an adult does, number one, you get more confidence. So you start to feel like, I got this. I'm in my zone. This is my area of genius. Two, competence. I have more room. I can grow here. I believe that there's more in my tank.

And third, creative. Because in a creative space, now we're finding other avenues to get to my answer versus when you play to a weakness, what starts to happen is those three start to collapse. And some call it lizard brain or reptilian, and you start to have this anxiety toward, oh, can I do it? Do I have what it takes? Am I going to perform because mom or dad might be disappointed in me? And disappointment in parenting is very difficult for a child to face because it goes back to that question you said on the last show, which is, do they love me? Is it important for us as parents to know how we're wired? What are our strengths? Because our kids could be opposite of that. I know that our oldest son is very different from me, and I'm all about let's get your stuff done, let's get it done now so that we can play after.

He has none of that in him. There was one day that we were in a phase where they're in high school and we would toilet paper each other's houses, our friends, for fun. Joy is important. Yeah. And so it's like, oh. We're not advocating this.

But we would do it. This is not a parenting strategy. With our kids, and so it's time to clean up the toilet paper because we were toilet papered the night before. So I said, boys, it's time to go out and clean up the toilet paper.

Well, the two are out there, but the oldest, CJ, who's very analytical, as we said before, he is not out there and I think, oh, you're just being lazy, you need to get it done, come on, and I'm on him. He is creating a long stick, a handle of a broom, and he's connecting this sharp pointy thing. I don't even know where he got it. He's duct taping it to it so that he can go out and pick up the toilet paper without bending over and putting it in his bag. Now, I'm like, why are you wasting your time?

Let's get it done. Where as I got older, I started seeing like, wow, he's kind of a genius. He's working smarter, not harder. Exactly. And so it made me think, why am I so about getting it done right now according to my timeframe?

Which, is that true? Like, we're parents, we're different. Can we rub each other wrong and how do we give grace to do that? So in our book, we would say that parents knowing who they are is probably the most important takeaway we think we wrote about. Because for a parent entering into that realm and when you think about bringing home that new child and I think we were saying earlier, you're wanting to flip them over and find instructions.

Right. What do I do now that I'm this parent? And so then this natural apprehension starts to come in. Do I have what it takes?

Could I help this child be who they're supposed to be? And so some people use this term faking it till you make it. Well, that mentality, if I don't really come to terms with, well, who am I as a parent and what will I excel at and what am I strong in? Then that leads me to trying to compensate in areas where maybe don't come as natural and they aren't as easy. And so we describe this condition in our book that is, it's a real challenge. It's imposter syndrome. So it's presenting a front of who I am or who I think I'm supposed to be that matches to my kid.

And there is a danger there. And on the other hand, it's also the challenge of putting onto my kids who I think I am and now you have to be me. And so both of those lead to a separation. So now we're not meeting. We're not communicating because we don't even speak the same language now as we grow.

And so we feel like knowing who I am is very important as equal it is to know who you are as my child so I know how to parent you. Yeah. In chapter seven, we talk about seek your super. Wait, wait. Seek your super?

What's that? So that whole chapter talks about that movie and how the dad was living a duplicitous life. So when he decided to actually tap into his super and he brought it home, he also inspired each family member to bring out their own super and to really live out who they were created to be. You know, it's interesting. I've always, and you mentioned this in the book, I look at my sons now, 33, 30, 28. What they are doing and what they're good at, what their strengths are today, we saw when they were two or three. You know what I mean?

Very much. And you have the quote in there that we at 26 often are what we were at three. So as parents, you can see it.

Again, it doesn't mean it has to be that, but if you step back and analyze, you see it early, right? We like to say your kids are not meant to be a mystery to you. That God really does intend for you to know them. So Jeremiah talks about, you know, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And so God already knows who this child is. And so when they come into our world, we have a chance to know what God already knows. And I believe when we're genuinely in that discovery mode, genuinely staying curious and asking questions, not just why did you do that, but who are you? What makes you unique and what am I seeing that I'm probably going to keep seeing throughout your life?

What is this strength? What is this character quality and how do I help shape it for the best possible place where you'll express this in life? Talk about that a little bit, because you mentioned in one of your chapters, speak the truth over your children. So I'm sitting there thinking, well, our three sons are living out who God made them to be.

Part of that's the way God made them. I'm wondering how much of that is what we did as parents? Because we, when we saw that, especially Anne, just started speaking that out loud to them. I remember saying to CJ, someday God is going to use your brain, the way it's wired, to really impact the world. So much different than my brain.

Austin, you love literature, someday, you know. And so now I look today, it's like, wow, I can see them doing that. How much of what we say as we speak truth over our kids as parents is that critical? When we think of the opportunity we have to be the voice in our children's life, the things they will remember, there's this idea that for every five things you say that are strong, if one of them is negative or ten that are strong, one negative, they'll remember the negative more than the positives. And so our opportunity to see something brilliant, something beautiful, something in its raw form and start to call it out is our responsibility and opportunity. So our fourth child, Michaela, she is, by her sibling's own vote, the most strong-willed child in our house. Hands down, she'd win the prize every day going away.

We voted too, yes. And we love that tenacity and that strength, but it is difficult to parent that child who will challenge you every step of the way. So we are teaching her a lesson in her teens that we want her to learn agreeableness versus argumentative behavior. And so we remind her, but what I tell her, don't lose that edge. Don't lose that place where you'll stand up for others, where you will confront injustice, where you will speak things that need to be spoken, because that's from God. And He's given you that.

We're just going to learn how to aim it in a way that it doesn't always feel like an onslaught for daring to disagree with you. Well, and that's a significant point. She doesn't know how to use it yet. One of the things we talk about at our Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaways is that strengths and weaknesses that we see in our spouse, weaknesses are oftentimes strengths that are being overused. Absolutely. And so if we can go to a child and we see a weakness and we ask, what's the hidden strength behind that weakness? So I'll give you an example. Let's say that you have a child or a spouse who has a critical spirit. Okay, they're just, they're always criticizing anyone and everyone. Behind that, if you start to look, that child has high standards. They expect things to be done right. They put that on themselves.

They put it on other people. It becomes a weakness when they overuse that strength of, I have high standards, and they don't give any grace to anybody, and they start to apply. When you can help a child say, you know, here's what I'm seeing, you have really high standards, but sometimes the way that comes out is in a critical spirit.

You make other people feel bad. How can we help you maintain that good thing of high standards in your life and wanting to see people do things right without becoming critical in the process? That's where you're helping a child see the hidden strength behind the weakness that's enacting out behind that strength.

Absolutely, because if we think about our greatest strengths really come from these patterns in our brain that you might call a talent. So these are those super highway neural pathways that you're going to move down them whether you want, because there's weakness as in not having enough strength to be strong, and then there's weakness, as you said really well, Bob, that it's a misused or abused strength, too much of it. And those are the ones that you as a parent, depending on what it is, you're wrangling those. You're working on those. That's where that authoritative, you can't let go of the control. You can't let go of the expectations that your child needs. What we've learned is that the more explicit the expectations are and the clarity around what you need to meet them, and am I really setting you up for success become the hallmark of how household discipline can function. Because now I can correct you in the parameters that fit for who you are, not just a one-size-fit-all for all of these kids, because you have different ways you're going to have challenges. So let me ask you guys, David and Ann, if we could go back, you knew this at the beginning and you were doing this at the beginning, you could have a do-over. What would you do differently raising your three boys that would have led to more playing to their strengths, do you think?

I think we did do it with our youngest and partway with our middle son. But part of it was knowing myself and knowing my strengths and my weaknesses. Back to what you guys said, this is at the heart of the book, to know your own strengths first as a parent.

And actually, I'll never forget listening to Chuck Swindoll talk about, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old he won't depart from it. And the whole idea of that Hebrew word meaning according to their bent, that switched me, that really transformed my thinking because I started looking for their bent. And then I started speaking out what I saw in them. And honestly, I also had to go back to our oldest and apologize. I had to apologize. I'm sorry that I've been trying to make you like me.

I'm sorry that I've been putting expectations on you that have kind of taken the light out of your eye. And that really did a lot to build us back up because our kids are so quick to forgive. What would you say, Dave? I would say as I watched Ann, she's given herself a hard time. She did this. She really did. She taught me to see their strengths.

We didn't call it play to their strengths, but that's better language than we had. But it was like God has uniquely designed them, Ephesians 2.10. They're like a work of art. It's sort of neat to think everybody sees it. I mean, their brothers saw their strengths. You see it in other people.

It's hard for parents to be that objective, but if you step back and go, what are they? And I'll never forget, our oldest, we already said, CJ was more technical and analytical. Our middle son was really a love literature, and Ann just built that. And now he's a literary agent. He's our agent.

It's really cool. Then our youngest was very athletic, and he lit up on a ball field, and it's all he ever wanted to talk about. And I'll never forget, our oldest son, CJ, was on the high school football team that I coached. And he wasn't the starter, but he contributed and played well.

So it wasn't like he was a terrible athlete, but he wasn't going to be the star. They win the state championship. First time ever in the school's history football state championship, right? And he gets a ring, and it's awesome, right? Three or four years later, the youngest, Cody, is the star. Sets every school record, gets a full scholarship of college, ends up playing in the NFL for a real brief period of time.

So he's the star. They are undefeated, number one in the state the whole season. Don't lose the game. Get to the semifinals.

Get beat. And so the best athlete in the family isn't going to get a ring. And so I'll never forget, and I'm on the field, and we're just in tears because we should have won the state championship that year, but it's not going to happen. So I get on the bus, and we go home, and I find out as Cody gets in his car at the high school after getting off the bus, CJ, the oldest son, drives over, takes off his ring, and says, you deserve this ring more than I do. It was just such a tender moment because CJ was acknowledging, you have the gift. I got the ring. Of course, Cody went, it's your ring.

He'll never wear it, you know. But it was so beautiful in that moment as a dad to say, you know, we all see each other's gifts, and they're beautiful, and you just celebrate them. You know, and that's what you're saying, play to that, and beauty comes out of ashes. You know, one time I was asked, you know, what have you seen in your home since you've implemented this with your children? And grace was the word that I gave them. I said, there is just tremendous grace for each other.

Like you just mentioned, each one of our kids can celebrate over the other child without feeling less than, without feeling, man, I wish that were me, or I wish I could do that like you do that, which is somewhat common. And so, I think when we take this perspective of celebrating who God has made them to be, celebrating their victories, celebrating, you know, the amazing things that they're going to do in the future and beyond, it is something that is going to transform generations to come. Well, and I don't know what moms and dads listening needed to hear today, but I think there are moms and dads who are looking at each other and going, okay, we've got some work to do, and maybe need to dig a little deeper and read the book and understand better how they can understand their own strengths and then play to their kids' strengths. And guys, thank you for being here, for helping coach us on this, and thanks for writing the book. Thank you.

Thank you. And I hope a lot of our listeners are going to get a copy of your book. It's available on our website at familylifetoday.com. Go there to order the book Play to Their Strengths by Brandon and Annalyn Miller. Again, the website is familylifetoday.com. You can also order by calling 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, order the book Play to Their Strengths online at familylifetoday.com or call to order 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word Today. We have been hearing from many of you over the last several months and recognize that this has become an increasingly stressful time for lots of couples, lots of marriages, lots of families. A lot of you have been contacting us asking for prayer for your finances, for your marriage, for issues going on in your family. Some of those are related to the coronavirus.

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Because increasingly in this culture, all of us have to be ready to defend our faith. Sean McDowell and Jay Warner Wallace will join us tomorrow. Hope you can be with us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.