Today our expert guests are Analyn & Brandon Miller, successful business owners and the parents of seven children. Brandon is a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach and CEO of 34 Strong, and Analyn owns and operates the Analyn Miller Group, part of Keller Williams Realty.
They are passionate about seeing families engage in a strengths-based parenting approach that honors the uniqueness in every child and empowers positive parent-child relationship through every stage of life. Their recently published book, Play to Their Strengths: A New Approach to Parenting, offers an incredibly fresh take on parenting.
The idea for the book came about when Analyn and Brandon both had a desire to work together on something, and one thing they both had a passion for and wanted to share the message of was parenting. They had been implementing this strategy themselves for around 10 years, and it dawned on them that they needed to start sharing this with the world. So they started writing.
So, what is strengths-based parenting? It starts with the belief that every child is born great, and learning to identify what their natural strengths and tendencies are to encourage the momentum of their innate talent.
The strengths based development is relatively new in it’s formal understanding, and there had been some very clinical, research-driven books around the topic of parenting, but they wanted to write the handbook for real life. What does it sound and feel like with seven children, sorting through all those different personalities and making it work?
In school, kids are often brought up being told what their deficient at, what they need to improve and do better at. It can go against our natural tendencies to focus so heavily on their strengths instead of trying to counterbalance against weaknesses.
Here are some simple ways you can implement strengths-based parenting in your home:
- 5-to-1 Ratio: To push them in the direction of their strengths, for every one thing they need to work on, identify and focus on five things that are nurturing them into their potential.
- 5 E’s: Start evaluating what your childs’ strengths are based on what they look forward to (Enthusiasm), what comes natural to them (Easy), what it is that third party observers notice they are above-average at (Excellence), what gives them Energy, and what they Enjoy so much that they don’t want to give up.
- When faced with something that is one of your children’s weaknesses, let them do something that will fill them up with energy first instead of withholding it. This will give them the reserve energy to get this done.
- Leave comparison at the door: Strengths-based parenting starts with the parents. Instead of looking at the way others parent their children and trying to identify where you don’t measure up, focus on what your parenting strengths are. Get to know who you are and embrace the areas where you are strong.
Since implementing this, Analyn and Brandon have noticed their children (and even themselves) looking at people and identifying the strengths in them before jumping to conclusions and assuming what is wrong. It creates an environment that is much more forgiving.
“There is just something so incredibly rewarding about watching children grow into the best version of who they are, instead of what we think is best.”
The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway
“This book is not an event, it’s a journey. It’s okay to spend a couple of months on a chapter. The whole idea is that this book isn’t just something you read once and stick it on a shelf. We wrote it to be a field manual because we felt like that was what was missing for us, and so we wanted to give it to the world.”
“It’s never too late for a do-over. At any age or stage your child is at, you’re still their mom, you’re still their dad, it’s never too late to start looking at them through this perspective of ‘what’s right with your son/daughter, and how can I be that parent that supports them along the way?’ It’s never too late for a do-over.
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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.
Resources:
- Learn more at https://www.analynbrandon.com
- Read: Play to Their Strengths: A New Approach to Parenting
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnalynBrandon
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/playtotheirstrengths
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-miller-873a6bb
The Daily Helping is produced by Crate Media
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