Meet Maylin Griffiths of Raising Character in Gilbert

Today we’d like to introduce you to Maylin Griffiths.

Maylin, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
As a Clinical Child Psychologist, I’ve had the unique experience of working with many families across all walks of life. I have seen the benefits to children of positive, strength-based, proactive interventions. When I meet with parents and teachers, I collectively hear a desire to raise children that we’ll admire as adults. I hear a desire to raise children that are happy, successful, and will have a positive impact on our society as adults. As a former Professor for graduate students, I became interested in the development of positive character skills that I saw some young adults struggling with. Skills like optimism, tenacity, integrity, compassion. Skills that are necessary for relationships with others, success at a job, and contribution to our society.

As a mom to two young children, I was able to experience first hand how difficult raising children can be. It’s exhausting, draining, self-sacrificing, and really makes you question everything you think you know. I thought this was unique to me, but after talking with many moms in our community, I started to realize I was in good company with these feelings. I began integrating my clinical skills by proactively teaching character skills like self-control, integrity, compassion, and optimism and saw first hand how much easier this made my parenting journey. I began sharing my techniques with other parents and have been amazed at the response with how much these skills changed their relationship with their children. I’m seeing more confident parents that know they are teaching skills to their children that will set them up for success as adults. I’m meeting with children that can now calm themselves down and take ownership of their self-control. I’m reading journals from children who were previously in therapy and are now writing about hope and optimism.

Raising Character has become an exciting integration of clinical skills, teaching skills, and actual experience as a parent. Together, as a community, we are raising children we’ll admire as adults.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Well… it’s been a long road. 12 years in the making. But smooth? Every road has speed bumps, but those are to be expected. *Insert the character skill of Optimism here* Whenever I hit a speed bump, I think: This is Temporary, This is not Personal, and This will End Soon. That’s being optimistic. Smooth is too easy. I think we learn from our struggles. We learn from hearing “no”. We learn from disappointment. So, the road has been as smooth as it should be and as rocky as I need it to be.

Raising Character – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I specialize in showing parents how to confidently raise children they’ll admire as adults. Through the Raising Character community, I share resources, tips, secrets, and techniques for proactively implementing positive character skills.

What sets me apart from others is that I am not a parenting site. Google “parenting” and there are millions of ways to parent. There are plenty of sites telling us how to parent, not parent, the best ways, the worst ways, etc. I’m not here to tell you how to parent. What I am here for is to tell you that if you are not focusing on raising a good human, you will regret it when your child is an adult. If you say you want your child to be successful as an adult, you need to start doing something TODAY to make that a reality. If you are not teaching character skills like optimism, self-control, integrity in your everyday parenting, you and your child are missing out. Many do not teach these skills because they were never really taught to us. Kids do not come with a lesson plan. Fortunately, I have developed one. I have quick and easy (15 min or less) Online Character Courses on my website that show parents and educators a step-by-step process for teaching character skills to children.

These Character Courses are unlike other parenting resources in that they are proactive, positive, and character trait focused. The skills are backed by research, utilized in clinical practices, and proven to be successful by other parents in our community.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I hope we see more parents invested in the long-term, positive outcomes of their children. It will be a shift, but at some point, we need to see that putting in 15 minutes now is a much better use of our time than hours of fighting, yelling, therapy and intervention resources.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.RaisingCharacter.com
• Email: info@raisingcharacter.com
• Instagram: www.Instagram.com/RaisingCharacter
• Other: Character Courses: https://www.raisingcharacter.com/courses

Image Credit:
Headshot: The Freckled Pineapple, Kid Photos: Rosemary Watson Productions

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