Helping Your Kids Identify Their Strengths

Build your child's faith with Clubhouse Jr. and Clubhouse Magazines from Focus on the Family. Boys and girls ages 3 to 12 will enjoy all the faith building activities. From fun crafts and puzzles to character building fiction and powerful Bible stories. Invest in your child's faith all year long. Subscribe today at focusonthefamily.com slash kids mags. Clubhouse and Clubhouse Jr. award-winning magazines full of games, stories, and God. Find them at focusonthefamily.com slash kids mags. My daughter has always loved different creative pursuits whether it's been piano in high school or baking.

It's always something different but it's creative. So from the earliest age my daughter always showed kindness and compassion and she always noticed those around her who were in need and she now works for a foundation that gives away scholarships for teenagers that really truly need that help. My oldest son is good with mechanical and home repairs and that came in really handy this past weekend when we were doing some home repairs that he just jumped in took over and it turned out great.

Well I wonder if you can relate to those parents. Do you see areas where your child seems to really kind of shine or are you more likely perhaps to see where your child struggles and fails? Today on Focus on the Family we're going to be talking about ways that we as moms and dads can have a more positive approach to parenting where you look at your child and see their strengths and I think it's going to be a really encouraging program for you.

Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly and I'm John Fuller. John, every parent knows their child has certain talents or skills. You see that usually pretty young. I remember with Trent I could see that he was mechanical. I could totally resonate with that opening. Trent was always the mechanic and it was a little you know I had to humble myself because at the age of nine or ten like he could put things together that I would struggle with and I had to say okay you're the guy.

You're going to be coming to you for all this and then Troy's just different. He's more of a writer, reader. He loves that area. Trent's more science and so it's just great to be able to see that.

Now how do you develop that? That's what we want to talk about today and not concentrate on the negative things that so many times us as parents that's where we go to is the things that aren't being done so well and our guests today have written a great book Play to Their Strengths and it's a wonderful resource to help parents understand the gifts and talents that God has given their children. Yeah I appreciate what you said about the boys. I remember one of my kids would always say I have an idea and it was it was kind of irritating for a while until I realized I could lean into that and say you are a man of many ideas and that just to affirm what I could and see the positives and as you said Jim we have some great guests here. They are Brandon and Annalyn Miller and they've joined us.

They're authors, speakers, and business owners and Brandon does a lot of coaching and consulting with businesses and families and Annalyn is a successful real estate agent and we're glad to have them here. It's great to have you with us. Hi thanks for having us. Thank you.

Yeah welcome. Well let's get started. You have a small family, seven kids. My last count it was seven. Come on seven kids that's awesome.

Yes we are one big happy family literally. What kind of car do you have? Just curious do you have like a 15 passenger van? It's not but I do have a large SUV. So that you can actually get them all in one vehicle? Not at all. So the others you just have them jog outside? They have their own vehicles now and it's their job to get where they need to go.

I think that's awesome. I just always wondered you know big families. Well you've got a big family too John. We had a suburban for many many years. Well you've admitted that in the early years of parenting you made a lot of mistakes.

Let's just start with describing some of them so we can attach to those mistakes because we all make them. Sure so as our kids were younger we realized that our focus really wasn't on trying to find the unique talents and and get into the the conversations and and and learn who about who they are. We were really raising them to make us look good.

Obviously that's a very good admission. It was it was true and we had to come to grips with the fact that we didn't want to be those parents in public whose kids could not behave. The Walmart shoppers. We did not want to be those parents and so you didn't want to be those people whose numbers flashed in church because it was your kid that you were going to have to go back to the class. That's the ultimate social scorn. And you're like the walk of shame.

That's me. I'm the one whose child cannot hold it together during you know preschool in church and so we very much focused on behavior modification. You need to act this way because this is the proper way to do things and in reality I think as we got older and realized this is ridiculous we're trying to make them be something that makes us reflect well and gives us a good reputation but this isn't working. And in the book you point out it was your three oldest kids when they got into their teen years you realize you could no longer control them the way you used to. Bribery didn't work as well.

So you could bribe younger ones with sweets and almost get away with anything. As they got older they started to up the ante and we realized we're going to lose this game if we keep going. They're going to have the house. They're going to own it all.

So it was it was wow they have their own minds and they're pushing back and they're they're challenging us to think differently about okay what what are we doing here and and should we make an adjustment. What was that moment with Lance? I think that was the aha moment that you mentioned. What took place and what grabbed you? So Lance was in eighth grade and I spent a year traveling to every wrestling tournament the kid was in and I was that dad that some of you coaches know you don't want to have that dad. I was involved. I was loud. I was engaged. Opinionated. And engaged. I like that. We're going to call that the nice way to describe it. So I tried to be that guy.

Well going into the next year he signed up to play football and I said my sport. Here we are. We've arrived at the place. So I got myself onto the coaching staff and so that whole summer I did. I'm all in. And so that whole summer I'm gearing him up getting him ready. So on the day of his first practice we're driving to the field and I'm giving him that get one for the gipper son. Here's how you're going to play. Here's how you're going to do it.

Here's how you're going to show up. And I mean I was sweating. It was August.

I was spitting on the steering wheel. It was a good speech. Well he leans over. This is a 14 year old little guy compared to his big dad.

Put his hand on my shoulder. He goes, hey dad I just need you to know I'm not like you and I'm not going to play football the same way that you did. And I was shocked. It didn't feel that way at the time. But in retrospect it was the I'm not like you. And it's just one of those moments where you go, boy that came from somewhere deep. There's something in there that I needed to pay attention to. And so I spent the next season not just during his football season but the next season really evaluating what did that mean. Now what did you say to him next?

I don't think that's in the book but I'd like to know. I think something like go get him son. Do it your way. Yeah the best I had was go get him. And then I and I was coaching. So I got out there and I was trying to coach and I noticed you know this this probably wasn't going to be his sport.

He was one season and he's like dad they're hitting me in the head. I am not into this sport. And I thought that's the fun part. We were just wired differently you and me. Very much. And so and so it just caused me to step back and then interestingly enough what I do for a living is I assess people's strengths. And so at the time I asked him if he'd be willing to take an assessment and he did and the guy couldn't have been more correct.

We're totally opposite people. Right. And your comment about people who are mechanical so he was the kid. That was him. He was the kid and and funny story years later my son today is the journeyman electrician. Which is hilarious because in my early days of college I took on the job of electrical work to pay the bills. Get me through school figure something out and I don't know it was about 18 months in I realized that either myself or someone at work was going to die if I continue to do this trade. Me and and wires with fire in them did not belong in the same place and so I dropped out. So the fact that this guy ends up yeah turning this into his profession very successfully is just one of those we look back and go. We look back and laugh because literally had it right. Yeah we we were like we we need you to be the man of the house and take care of this family so I'm thinking this job is not gonna work.

Not gonna work. After the second after the second time Brandon got electrocuted. I would have caught the house on fire somewhere somehow but you explain in the book to notice in your child the shining eyes.

Yes. What did you mean by observing the shining eyes? So when a child is in that place of doing something that they really love that they derive energy from there is this glimmer you know and you notice it where they are doing something and their eyes are bright and their eyes are excited about whatever task or thing they're doing and we encourage families even as your kids are younger to begin watching for that and what we what we call that is you know being fascinated with them being in a place of discovery mode all the time. In our book we talk about how in the beginning when you bring your your babies home and you know you're just full of wonder you're like who are they gonna be what are they gonna be like who well you know what traits are they gonna take on and we're so excited and enthralled in them and so you know as they get older we sometimes lose that. Yeah we we we borrowed that phrase from a gentleman by the name of Benjamin Zander so he's the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and Ben would say the only way I can tell if my players are engaged is I gotta look in their eyes and he and he dropped this quote he said if their eyes aren't shining I get to ask myself who am I being that my players eyes are not shining and then he dropped it even further and he said hey parents when your children's eyes aren't shining you get to ask yourself what kind of parent am I being and it was one of those mic drop moments of just whoa that's a whole different way to shape what am I doing that's causing my my kids eyes to be downcast and have I lost that fascination with this child am I more frustrated with what they're doing because you know as we describe in the book from the early stages into toddlerhood you wonder who stole your baby I mean you're wondering like what what happened in my child that now they're willful and sassy and pushing back and embarrassing me in public to the place of okay I can now start to reframe the fact that one I'm in control I'm the adult and two I get to start discovering who this child is and stay in that mode. How does a parent stop and not react when that child is kind of triggering you in those ways you you just described how do you stop and see the good in that moment you take that child under your arm well that is one way to do it you know for us and one thing we've had to do is literally stop and see them for who they are and not what they're doing because sometimes and even as adults we do this we have immature responses to things right and it's after the fact in hindsight that you go okay I probably didn't say that in the in the right way but this is what I meant so even our children do that right like in the back of her head she's probably just wondering like how does all of that work together and in her mind she's wanting to put the pieces together yeah and I would say there's so there's there's two answers to that one is the power of the pause right so in the moment stop take the breath what am I about to say or do that this child is going to respond to that's really hard to do that sounds great too is the practice before the moment right it's the conditioning of my child cannot be perfect my child is going to be who they're going to be and and so it's funny with our children so we have five of them that have passed the 15 year old mark and we'd like to say that we are perfect that every child at 15 loses their mind in the miller home one where the daily house too okay yeah so we're we're five for five right we're waiting on the 13 year old we're bracing for the next round but as we mature different groups through now we've started to realize you know we know what's coming with teenage years we understand that some of this is hormone-induced behavior these people are experiencing life that they hadn't known before and we can begin to look ahead and imagine how we're going to respond now with sierra i think one of the powerful lessons we understood about her is that our goal wasn't to change her right our goal is to help direct her guide that energy because she wasn't being inauthentic this was her she is a leader she wants to engage she wants to challenge and if we can help her guide that we get to see the the wonderful woman she is today there's there's a line and you know i think all of us as parents we experience this you start to ask yourself what's what's wrong with my kid yeah you know and you may have forgotten yourself at that age that's typically what's going on but you start to ask that question and you've got to be really careful because it can come out in your demeanor toward that child and what's a better question that you should be asking rather than what's wrong with my kid fill in the blank so you know i i want to bring up a scripture and it's psalm 139 and i love how it discusses how you know david presents that he was knit together in a very intricate way in his in his mother's womb and you know for us i think to stop and just consider who is god making right now yeah what okay lord help me see it because let's be real when you're in the moment as we all talked about and and maybe there is a feeling of being disrespected by a child or whatnot um sometimes it's hard to to really see past it so to really seek the lord i think that's super key you've got to just ask the lord for wisdom and he says he will give it and so for brandon and i know that's obviously um as christians something that that we take to heart but we believe that with our children it's really key god who are they yeah how can i help steward that person that you want you know i've heard that verse and i i love that passage of scripture i've never thought of it though in terms of god didn't finish knitting together in the womb he's still creating today that's a great reminder our guests today on focused on the family are annalyn and brandon miller and we're so glad you've joined us for this really good insight about parenting they have this book called play to their strengths a new approach to parenting your kids as god made them and we'll encourage you to get a copy of that from us the details are in the episode notes you describe a classic parenting issue i think it was your daughter maddie now i i get it people are watching i know you have your kids permission to share these stories i'm sure but with with maddie i think she brought home a c she was an a student i had that same situation with troy i actually had to just release him from the tension of that i said you know what it's okay you know you know if you get a b it's going to be okay and he looked at me and said really i said yeah that's you know just do your best what happened with maddie so maddie handed me her sixth grade report card and like a parent who was a straight a student i go to look at this report card and the first thing i see you know bright lights glaring at me is c and math c and math and i had to take a a deep breath and take a swallow and go maddeline you got an a plus in reading which she did you did such a great job i'm so proud of you so i didn't even touch the c a plus in reading maddeline do you like to read and so maddeline looks back at me she goes dad i'd love to read sometimes you and mom think you're putting me to bed at night and i'll stay till two in the morning reading books we're like and i said okay i said well i have an idea how about this summer i'm gonna hire you to do a job and she looks back with big eyes really i said yeah i'm gonna pay you to read we can go get as many books as you want from the library we can order them with the goal that every book you read and do a book report i'll pay you 100 paid books you get a dollar 200 you get two dollars 300 or more you get a bonus five dollars the book report has to be turned in on monday and i'll pay you in cash and so in every talk i get yeah i'll ask people what do you think happened and they'll say well you bought math books i go no i didn't buy math books for her to read no i let her choose and she read and she ran the quality of the book reports got better so what i was doing is i was feeding maddie's energy i was feeding the place i would grow her confidence at the end of the summer i went back to the sea hey maddie what do you think about doing some math tutoring as you go into you know junior high it's gonna it's gonna elevate here what do you think sure no problem we did some tutoring so today i would say madeline doesn't love math that's probably not an area where she's going to focus however she's she's competent she can do her part because when we play to strengths what we watch happen is kids grow in confidence you'll watch competence grow and then creativity so that what you get back are reserves to go at the areas where they do need certain things in life even if they're not strong in it they will need these math is one of them and yet we've provided some energy to go at it yeah that is great dr ben carson he said that's the reason he's a neurosurgeon his mom paid him for book reports and that's where he said he learned so much information so who knows who you have on your hands that's right that's right i mean we we we get to practice that for every report card yeah so we have children who are straight a students our youngest boys one is on a roll every time principals list the other one it really struggles school is hard for him and what we learned with daniel is that if we let daniel who by the way is our star athlete the kid the kid definitely he has literally been this is no parenting you know he's number seven so this is not just us every team he's been on he's been an mvp every day he's amazing to watch we'll see where it goes he's only 11 but but he struggles in school and what we found is that if we took time to let him go express his energy play basketball go run around do football he likes to dance if we give him time to do that and then ask him to do school we get a better school outcome right if we force school first and try to put more time there we get a kid that cries we get a kid that's frustrating yeah and that's knowing your child's been in fact you identified five e's that can help parents discern what their child's strengths are i think that's a good place for us to inform parents because some parents are probably asking i'm not even sure that i know what the three strengths of my child might be we definitely will say well we know three weaknesses i think we're better at that than knowing the strength so what are the five e's here you go so number one is enthusiasm what is it that your kid looks forward to they will make they will stay up till two in the morning doing it even without asking so enthusiasm can be pretty obvious it's what they talk about it's clearly where their eyes light up number two what comes easy so our daughter madeline going back to her she loves to bake and to cook and so one day we annalyn comes home madeline had made cream puffs literally mom thought they were like this i thought she purchased them yeah and and when asked about it for baking cooking you know we're when we leave town madeline is the the go-to sub for our cooking and she's the one that wow comes easy to her she's preparing all the meals very good at meal prep loves it does a great job we'll see what her culinary future looks like number three parents this is the kicker excellent so this is standout performance above standard but you don't get to be the judge parent this requires third-party validation this requires other people to tell you your child stands out your child won the award they they clearly have that ability that's the third clue because you can have the first two without the third and we'd like to say without excellence it's probably a hobby and that's cool let your kid go garden and kill tomatoes if they want that's fine they may enjoy it well enough but excellence is a distinguisher for a strength and number four energy what we love about this one is that you can watch that energy increase after the activity instead of diminish so it's really that which brings them up instead of sees them depleted so they'll actually show great stamina they'll keep coming back and that's where the fifth one enjoyment this is where the gift of resilience comes in what will they keep doing even when it's hard and it gives you a clue as a parent where you can apply some pressure because if you see the first four the fifth one is where no we're going to finish the piano lessons because i see the first four just because it's getting hard we don't let up we're going to keep pushing through because that's where you can watch them really emerge with those areas of greatness when i think that you know that's good if it's obvious and it sounds very appropriate those five e's when it's not so obvious or when your child has deficits what do you do as a parent to you know recognize the deficit and encourage them i mean you mentioned what you did with the math class that was good are there other examples of the deficit probably management yeah yeah so daniel he he is one that that struggles in some of his schooling and what we have found is as brennan mentioned he gains a lot of energy from doing certain things so we've kind of reversed you know tutoring with basketball so hey go shoot hoops for 15 you know set a limit go shoot hoops for 15 minutes come back in and read a chapter and so you just you we we've switched it almost because it used to always be no fun until and because he loves gamification so daniel's a gamified kid so what we did is we found a program to help his reading where they turn into a game so he does this online tutoring where he wants to win the game by connecting the words so as they gamified the learning it piqued his interest because he wants to to be in front well what we've watched this is one of the gifts of covet to our family is that we didn't have the extracurricular options and so we were able to invest additional time and he was he was game because he thought oh this is fun i'm enjoying this we have watched his reading increase four levels in six months wow that's amazing because all of a sudden we tapped into another part of his strength so one of the ways we think about overcoming a weakness is what strength can we call we call a life hack right what strength can we hack into that we can pull from to help in an area that that he's going to need he's going to need reading and so that's one of the ways we think about overcoming a strength is or a weak area leverage of strength to fill in the deficit yeah i mean that makes total sense let's review some of the common lies that you say parents believe about children for example my kid can be anything if they work hard enough we like to believe in that i mean i think it's a nice statement hear it all the time is it accurate yeah no so so we follow an author by the name of tom wrath and tom is uh is known for saying this is a this is a myth that if you just work hard enough you can be better well in reality there's so many things we know so many things we don't know and a whole bunch more we don't know we don't know and in reality we're working hard might lead to a good solid mediocre a good solid hey great job you're right in the middle and what we suffer from in our in our country and really globally is that we have many people that arrive in adulthood that take on jobs and they find themselves in this place called disengagement just meh i'm just kind of in the middle i'm just kind of here because i need a paycheck and and when we shift the focus to kids saying let's really find out those things you do that you excel then all of a sudden hard work takes on a different meaning hard work elevates and exponentially increases your outcome yeah i mean that is really important to know how to manage well right you've observed an identity crisis in our world today explain why you urge parents to counter that by declaring god's truth over their kids on a regular basis and what i the shorter version of this is making sure your your children understand their identity in christ i mean that's really what you're talking about yes it is i i for brandon and i you know realizing that it's important for us obviously as the parents to go okay well first of all how do we see ourselves right because it starts with us how does god see us and then translating that to our children and helping them realize that they were created for a purpose that they were created to do good works that they actually all have beauty within them to be shared with the world and the world needs it each and every one of them and it looks different and the world needs every different part of you and so it just changes our perspective we talk about in the book if you know of putting passages that really speak to you speak to your family and posting them and talking about them and filling your children with those truths so that it anchors them absolutely we'd like to think that if if we're going to encourage our kids to be their very best do do it under god's glory right due to where you're not just being amazing for the sake of all eyes on you and if that happens fantastic high fives all around enjoy and celebrate what god has done yes because if we are created in his image and we're created to bring him glory then then the opportunity for us to declare that truth over our kids as christian parents to say you have within you this this divine greatness that all of us have it let's find it help you be that person and then just remember where to give the credit what a great place to end i mean right there this is the high side of parenting doing what your child needs you to do is their mom and dad and i think this has been great and very instructive play to their strengths a wonderful book and i'd say get a copy of it right here from focus on the family and we'll send you that copy is our way of saying thank you if you can send a gift of any amount and if you can't afford it we'll get it into your hands and trust others we'll cover the cost of that but this is one of those tools i say it often because we're not going to do things that we don't think will benefit you as a parent this is one of those resources you really need to help you in your parenting journey yeah donate today and get a copy of this book play to their strengths when you call us our numbers 800 the letter a and the word family or the link is in the episode notes and we do have a parenting assessment for you online when you're at the website take that it's just five or six minutes long it really is a very helpful tool in your parenting toolbox brandon and annalyn thank you so much for being with us this is great stuff thank you for having us jim thank you and coming up next time we'll be talking about what happens when addiction impacts your family nobody ever starts out saying hey i want to be an addict it doesn't work that way it's like the person well yeah i wanted to be an alcoholic no addiction is two things it's subtle and it's sneaky and then it gets a stronghold on behalf of jim daley and the entire team thanks for joining us today for focus on the family i'm john fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in christ parents are you looking for an informative encouraging and engaging resource for your teen daughter check out the new and improved brio magazine from focus on the family almost double the original size in a book-like format this trusted biblically based magazine provides teen girls with inspiring stories fashion advice cultural insights and positive role models help your teen girl live out her faith subscribe at briomagazine.com that's briomagazine.com