Champions, winners, warriors. How to support your child’s strengths?

Your child should feel important, appreciated and they should believe in their own abilities. Even if they don’t do great in one area, there are others in which they feel more confident. The parent’s role is to help the child find and name their strengths.

 

Family time
It’s worth developing the child’s strengths (Tatiana Jachyra/Kulczyk Foundation)
It’s worth developing the child’s strengths (Tatiana Jachyra/Kulczyk Foundation)

Does your child has many ideas? Are they quick to learn something by heart? When they see someone in need, do they try to help? Together, think about what your child likes to do and what they enjoy. Maybe there’s something they always do well. Analyse their strengths. To do this, you can use our questionnaire for the child.

You might not have had the chance to notice how many strengths your child has! Use the parent’s questionnaire to help them name their potential strengths. Remember not to value or compare your children. Emphasise that each of you can be good at something else and that is their strength.

My advantages – medals for the whole family

Everyone has a ‘gift’ and is talented at something. Everyone is valuable and it’s worth reminding people about it; for example, by saying nice things to each other. We suggest you make ‘merit medals’ for each of you. Prepare crayons, ribbons or string and sheets of paper that you can cut your medals from. Your task is to prepare a medal for each family member and write on it their three biggest gifts. Colour the medals, making them positive and colourful. When you’re ready, read what you wrote down out loud and drape the medals around each other’s necks. How do you feel when you hear about your strengths? The game can go on. Maybe someone will want to add something in the future?

 

How to turn a weakness into a strength

Watch the children, pay attention to what they are interested in, what they like to play, what activities they enjoy. Let them test and try new things. Explain that we won’t necessarily succeed right away, as sometimes we need to put more effort into something. Encourage children to try again and to test new ideas to achieve their goal, but don’t force them to do it at all costs. This way, there’s a better chance that the child will be able to determine what they like and what they dislike. They might also decide that they want to develop a particular skill, even though at the beginning it seems to be more of a weakness than a strength of theirs. Support them in this, even if the child is not spectacularly successful in this area. 

 

All source materials are prepared by the team of Kulczyk Foundation’s Education Department in cooperation with teachers and experts – pedagogists, psychologists and cultural experts – and verified by an experienced family therapist Kamila Becker. Kinga Kuszak, PhD, Professor of Adam Mickiewicz University, Faculty of Educational Studies, provides content-related supervision over Kulczyk Foundation’s educational materials. All materials are covered by the content patronage of the Faculty of Educational Studies of Adam Mickiewicz University.

The article was published on 20.04.2020 on the website of Instytut Dobrego Życia (Good Life Institute)

Authors: Marta Tomaszewska (Kulczyk Foundation) and Anna Woźniak (Instytut Dobrego Życia)