YOUR CHILD’S MOST ANNOYING TRAIT MAY JUST REVEAL THEIR GREATEST STRENGTHS | Josh Shipp | TEDxMarin

[Music] [Applause] [Music] an exasperated father asked his son's high school principal what career his son should consider in the future now his son was described by many of his teachers as lazy distracted and that he couldn't remember anything so the principal replied to the father and he said it doesn't matter what he does he will never amount to anything the father's name was Herman and that student who wouldn't amount to anything that was his son Albert Einstein now before you and I start thinkin poorly of that principal from 1895 we have to admit something we've all been that principal we unintentionally overlook a kid's raw and unrefined talent because that very talent tends to first bubbled to the surface as an annoyance and as a dad I'm guilty of this myself a hundred percent my son will be like hey Dad do you want to play Legos and I'm like yeah just a minute and then he goes and sets a 60-second timer and like stands there staring at me the entire time I'm glad you find his persistence amusing I find it annoying but here's my question what if the kids most annoying trait is actually their biggest talent in disguise meaning what if a kid's greatest asset first presents itself as a giant pain in your hmm asset and if that is true how do we not make the same mistake as Einsteins prince and unintentionally overlooked genius simply because it first says hello as an annoyance well over the last 40 years the Gallup research organization has conducted more than two million interviews with successful people and an interesting commonality emerged amongst these interviews they found that successful people identify and refine their talents so that their talents become their strengths now good for those people but the question is then how does a kid move from Annoying trait to talent to strength to success well I'm going to argue it's because that kid has at least one caring adult in their life who does the following who redirects the annoyance and cultivates the talent Lonnie's mother was excellent at this Lonnie was meddlesome and mischievous always getting into things as a kid he almost burned down his family's home because he attempted to cook a rocket fuel on the stove as you do Lonnie's mother bless her she didn't lose her cool as you might think she had the patience or the wherewithal or the blood-alcohol level to see past this notice that her son had a scientific curiosity she redirected him today it's good let's get you a hot plate would you take this outside somewhere more safe Lonnie Johnson holds more than 80 patents and is the inventor of the national treasure the super soaker which is amazingly approaching 1 billion dollars in sales and with Lonnie's cut of those proceeds he founded his own research firm which works on inventions related to clean energy now Nancy had a teacher who did this for her Nancy as a kid was described as loud opinionated overzealous she once hijacked the microphone at a school assembly in order to advertise this new student club that she was starting a student Club which sought to convince world leaders to participate in nuclear disarmament not surprisingly no random high school kids showed up to that club but a teacher took notice of this that Nancy was a leader albeit a bit overzealous Todd Nancy hey here's how you get people on board with your ideas how you work how you recruit people towards your ideas Nancy Lublin went on to recruit thousands of volunteers for the crisis text line which provides 24/7 crisis intervention for young people who are deeply distressed and even suicidal they process more than 28 million text messages and save countless lives and then there's mrs. Wilhite she had this kid in her class loud constantly disrupting constantly talking making everything a joke the class clown kid one day mrs. Wilhite pulls him aside says hey you should sign up for speech and debate I don't know if you ever thought about this but I think you could be a gifted communicator and I will never forget when mrs. Wilhite said those words to me and you are listening to me speak today because she did she didn't get annoyed by me though she had every right to be I was incredibly immature and sophomoric as a kid in her Spanish class I would do annoying things like I would ask her hey mrs. Wilhite how do you say the phrase I would earn in Spanish knowing full well this would force her to say aloud yo gonorrhea gracias yet despite my finely tuned immaturity she looked past it she redirected the annoyance and she cultivated the talent you see every kid needs one caring adult like mrs. Wilhite in their life an adult to be patient where others might be pestered so when that kid in your life inevitably annoys you let's be honest likely in the next 24 hours because they're constantly getting into stuff or they're argumentative or they're annoying take a deep breath and consider in that moment that you too might just have your very own genius sitting right in front of you thank you very much [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 667,221

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Social Science, Children, Education, Empathy, Parenting, Psychology, Social Change

Id: mU5WO93Kw4E

Length: 7min 51sec (471 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 18 2017