Help Your Kids Recognize Their Character Strengths

by PATRICK 

“For healthy mental and emotional growth, we need a gentle, skillful, balanced approach, avoiding extremes. If we are becoming arrogant and self-important, the antidote is to think about our own problems and sufferings, to bring us down to earth. But if we are feeling overwhelmed, discouraged, helpless and depressed, it’s important to reflect on our positive qualities or achievements to uplift our minds.”

(Facebook Post from his Holiness the Dalai Lama 1-18-11)

It is just part of life that at times we feel overwhelmed, discouraged, helpless, sad or anxious and these feelings are equally as debilitating to a child as to an adult.  Anxiety about being reprimanded by our boss because we failed to complete an important task of our job feels just as real as the anxiety a child feels on the way to school knowing they did not complete their homework and will have to suffer the consequences.

The difference for grown-ups is that we have had years of experience dealing with emotional setbacks by using the strengths we know we possess to help us, and some have even had coaching over the years to teach us how to positively deal with life’s ups and downs.

For children these coaches are of course their parents and teachers and one of the greatest things we can do for our children is to help them recognize their unique signature  strengths and virtues, when they have displayed using them and how using them made them feel about themselves, others and their future.

Research in Positive Psychology and Subjective Wellbeing (SWB) reveals tremendous benefits in recognizing and building upon our kid’s core moral and character strengths, and this was recently made crystal clear in a 4^th grade classroom where each child created their very own “Pyramid of Power” and how their teacher used the power of helping his students discover their Character Strengths.

But parents don’t have to leave the building of their children’s character strengths up to their teachers at school.  In fact, parents can easily help their kids identify their core strengths by reminding them of instances when we watched them use them.  Here are a few examples:

“I remember that time at the park when you made friends with that boy who was playing alone.  You really showed compassion for others by being that way”

“You were so helpful to your sister when she slipped and fell on the wet floor.  You are very caring about others.”

“You really showed how brave you are when you and your friends stood up to help that student you saw was being mistreated.”

This activity promotes collaboration, confidence, mutual respect and engagement with your child, not to mention this puts them in a very positive emotional frame of mind.  Kids beam with joy when they know how proud they have made their parents.

One of the greatest feelings a child can have is when they know they have made their parents happy and proud.

Helping our kids build upon their strengths makes far more sense than to focus on their weaknesses in an effort to over come them.

Children are much more likely to set attainable but challenging goals for themselves, with our assistance at times, when they are aware of the strengths and virtues they possess.  On occasion they will experience mistakes and failures, but they will know they can choose to build upon their strength of perseverance.

Neal H. Mayerson, Ph.D. Founder of the VIA Institute on Character says “Character strengths differ from other types of strengths, such as our talents, interests, skills, and resources.  They are foundational — and upon them we express our talents, develop our interests, build our skills, and use the resources or assets provided to us by our families, schools, workplaces and communities. For example, if a character strength is perseverance, a runner’s talent for speed can be fully expressed.  Without perseverance, it is unlikely the runner will be successful.”

Imagine a future where our leaders where trained from childhood to build upon their character and moral strengths and were committed to using them every day of their lives.

I know I am not alone in my optimism about our future because so many are now doing what it takes to make a difference in our children’s lives.  The dream has been around for a long time:

“We must remember that intelligence is not enough.   Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.”  — Martin Luther King Jr., Speech at Morehouse College 1948