Your child is unique and is born with a combination of natural talents that no one else on this planet is likely to have in exactness.
If you are a parent of twins, I believe that you will agree each of the pair is unique in his/her own ways.
As parents, we have the responsibilities to be good stewards of our children and their talents.
We need to help develop our children in the way that they are uniquely designed by helping them discover their talents and invest resources at our disposal to develop these talents.
The worst thing we can do as parents is to have a one-size-fits-all approach in raising our children. For example, we should not adopt the mentality that because we were raise in a particular manner during our childhood, therefore our children should be raised in the same manner as well.
Firstly, the environment has changed since our childhood and what may use to be “right” in the past may no longer be relevant.
Secondly, while we are grateful to our parents for raising us, their methods were probably passed down from their own parents and are very likely be far from perfect,
Thirdly, the notion that our children need to be all-rounders and be as good as other children will do more harm than good. See this interesting quote by Albert Einstein:
Today, we have at our disposal a wealth of information on parenting skills supported by robust research. We should therefore be proactive and put aside our own prejudices and be opened to continuously learn better parenting techniques.
I believe that as parents, most of us can agree with what I have shared so far.
However, I have discovered through conversations with fellow parents that one major road block to helping our children develop their talents is that most of us are at a loss of how to do so.
Our journey has probably been a series of trials and errors.
You may have already invested much money only to discover that your child is either totally not interested or have very limited talents in those areas that he/she has tried.
I once had a discussion with a life coach and commented that some individuals seem to know their talents and life calling from a very young age such as being musicians, lawyers or doctors. He commented that some of these may have been due to parental expectations and hence you see some of them changing their careers paths drastically at some point in their lives to pursue what they really love and are good at.
How much better if we are able to help our children to discover their natural talents at a young age and to help them develop their talents accordingly.
I soon realized that the key to staring this journey is to have a system to do so.
Without a system, our efforts will be at best random and haphazard. Our aspiration to help our children need to be supported by a proven system.
Recently, I came across a useful system known as the Gallup StrengthsExplorer.
The Gallup StrengthsExplorers is a well-researched and tested online assessment tool that helps children between the ages of 10-14 to discover their natural talents. StrengthsExplore is a children’s version of the similar tool developed for adults known as the Gallup StrengthsFinders. See my previous post on StrengthsFinders here.
The philosophy behind StrengthsExplorers is that if we as parents focus on developing our children’s talents instead of just trying to fix their weaknesses, they will began an exciting journey towards doing the things that they truly love and can excel in.
As a result, they will be happier, more confident and successful as individuals. Their health and social relationships will also improve.
We are not totally ignoring their areas of weaknesses. We should continue to help them manage their weaknesses so that they become less weak in those areas. However, we should be investing most of our resources in developing their talents so that these talents become strengths.
You child is a star and not round. The pointed edges of a star represent your child’s strengths. Develop the pointed edges so that they become sharper. The valley represents his/her weaknesses. Manage them so that they are less deep.
Help your child become a star and to achieve greatness according to their natural bent.
The StrengthsExplorer online assessment consists of 78 questions and should take no more than 15 minutes for your child to complete.
With an ambitious vision to have 1 billion people take the Strengths online assessments, Gallup is currently offering the assessments at very affordable cost of only USD$9.99. You can make the purchase here.
Upon completion of the assessment, your child will receive a report that reveals his/her top 3 talents and recommends action plans that he/she can take. The report is accompanied by a workbook which you can guide your child to complete. The workbook will help your child to think about how he/she can use his/her talents immediately and in the future.
You will also receive a parent’s workbook. This mirrors the workbook that your child receives. The is to enable you to compare your perception of your child with that of your child’s and to help you see his/her talents in a different light. I encourage you to take immediate actions to develop your child. Learn more here.
Fathering Champions stands by a simple 3-step approach to achieving massive success for young champions and the people in their lives: 1) Aspiration, 2) System and 3) Action
You aspire to help your child achieve huge success and live a happy and fulfilling life through doing things that he/she loves and is good at. The StrengthsExplorer is a simple and yet extremely useful system to help you to start this journey.
However, I often find that majority of people never achieve the kind of success that they could achieve simply because they fail to take immediate action.
Take immediate action now and help your child discover his/her talents. Click here to start.
If you would like to be kept updated on future StrengthsExplorer’s events, articles and workshops through Fathering Champions, sign up to be on our free StrengthsExplorer subscription list here.
I will be publishing a blog post on what I discovered about my 3 boys’ talents through completing the StrengthsExplorer assessment.