|
Unearthing kids' strengths for happiness and success
by Dr Lea Waters
Lea Waters, PhD, is a psychologist, researcher, speaker and author. She’s one of the world’s leading experts on Positive Education, Positive Organizations, and Strength-based Parenting and Teaching. As a University researcher, Lea turns her science into strengths-based strategies to help organisations, educators and parents around the world build resilience in their employees and children, helping them to thrive.
Dr Waters wrote this great blog in 2019:
“Personality strengths—our character—play a big role in helping us build our talents. Think about anyone who has built a talent and imagine if it could have been done without character. Imagine Einstein without curiosity, The Beatles without creativity, Mother Teresa without compassion and Neil Armstrong without bravery.
Yet for decades, scientists were blind to character strength. We focused on talent, often on physical strength and skills. In fact, when I first ask young children what they think a strength is, they almost always point to their biceps or talk about being able to lift something heavy.
Once you get familiar with the language of strengths and a framework for seeing them, you’ll see character strengths easily in your child. In fact, you may find your child calls on their character strengths more often than on talent to meet life’s challenges.
Three key elements of a strength
1. Performance (being good at something)
Watch for when your child shows above-age levels of achievement, rapid learning, and a repeated pattern of success.
2. Energy (feeling good doing it)
Strengths are self-reinforcing. The more we use them, the more we get from them. They fill us with vigor. You’ll notice your child has abundant energy when using a strength.
3. High use (choosing to do it)
Finally, look for: what your child chooses to do in his/her spare time, how often they engage in a particular activity, and how they speak about that activity.
For true strengths, these three elements form a beautiful feedback loop. Great performance provides the child with a shot of high energy, so the child naturally chooses to do more. In turn, high use – also known as effort or practice – improves performance levels. So, for example, if you notice that your child is energised when they play the piano, and you provide enjoyable opportunities for them to play, if they are mining a true strength they will likely practice more, which improves their performance, which then energizes them… and so the loop continues.
Keeping this triad in mind will help you avoid pushing your child into an area that seems like a strength just because your child is good at it. It will also help you differentiate between whether your child is bingeing on an activity in an escapist way or expressing a true strength. For example, parents have asked me, “My kid is great at computer games and wants to play all the time. Is that a sign of a strength?” I reply, “Observe their energy levels at the end. Are they drained and cranky? Or energised and full of life? Are you seeing the full triad?” Computer games can tap into a child’s strategic and problem-solving skills or stimulate creativity (in some games, you invent whole new worlds). Or they might just be about filling time. So, look for all three signs. When you see your child do something well, with energy, and do that activity repeatedly, you’ll know you’ve unearthed a
strength.”
In SACS Junior School, we have a number of character strengths that we celebrate. Heart, Mind and Life are the strength headings that these come under. We take these from the Bible.
Heart has strengths such as caring, grateful, principled, courageous and servant hearted.
Mind has strengths such as knowledgeable, thinking, inquiring, open-minded and reflective.
Life has strengths such as hopeful, self-controlled, persistent, balanced and communicative.
This term our character strength is hopeful.
I trust that you can see some of these valuable strengths in your children and then be able to celebrate them.
Joy Rohrlach
Year 5 Leader
|
