Wellbeing

Understanding Your Kids' Character Strengths: An Expert Guide

By Michael Grose

Understanding your child's strengths helps them succeed with confidence, keeping stress at bay.

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 strengths.

We focused on talent, often on physical strength and skills. When I first ask young children what they think strength is, they almost always point to their biceps or talk about being able to lift something heavy.​Once you familiarise yourself with the language of strengths and a framework for recognising them, you can quickly identify your child's character strengths.  You may find your child calls on her strengths more often than her talent to meet life’s challenges.

Three key elements of a strength

You’ve probably seen a child joylessly perform at a piano recital or play a modified sport.

They may hit all the right keys or strike the ball over the net but lack energy and enthusiasm. It’s as if they don’t want to be there.

On the flip side, we’ve seen the child onstage who’s clearly motivated and energised and who fearlessly flails through every mistake—of which there are many. Or a child who tackles a subject at school with enthusiasm or plays a sport with passion and exuberance.  

Three elements come together to form a strength, They are:

1. Performance (“What are they good at?”)

Watch for when your child shows above-age levels of achievement, rapid learning, and a repeated pattern of success.

This achievement could be in the academic field, sport, the performing arts, or anywhere.  My son showed flair in the Kitchen at a young age, which suited his learning style. Cooking was practical, hands-on and enjoyable.

Yep, you guessed it, he became a chef.

Look for the activities your child performs at a higher level than other children their age. These may be school subjects, sports, artistic activities, or leisure activities.

2. Energy (“What do they feel good doing?”)

Strengths are self-reinforcing.

The more kids use them, the more they get from them.

It feeds their self-esteem and helps form their identity. In adolescence, the child who says,“I’m good at art” becomes, “I’m an artist.”

Working from strengths fills kids with energy. Think back to your child and recall the activities that energised them. The activities that you were involved in where time just seemed to slip away.

For me, that was football. I’d play it for hours, even in the off-season. I loved it.

I annoyed my older brother because I always wanted to play football with him after school. He often gave in to my constant nagging.

Notice the activities that energise your child—those activities that make them feel good about themselves. They're so good that they usually don’t want to stop, even for dinner.

3. High use (“What do they freely choose to do?”)

Finally, consider what your child chooses to do in their spare time, how often they engage in a particular activity, and how they talk about it.

My unrestrained enthusiasm for football showed itself in the games I played and my thirst for knowledge. I read countless books on the sport and gathered statistics on teams and players that I could recite at any moment.

Heavy usage? It's more likely an obsession.

The feedback loop

For true strengths, these three elements form a beautiful feedback loop.

Excellent performance gives a child high energy, so a child naturally chooses to do more.

High use—also known as effort or practice—improves performance levels.

So, for example, if you notice that your child is energised when she plays the piano, and you provide enjoyable opportunities for her to play, if she’s mining a true strength, she will likely practise more, which improves her performance, which then energises her… and so the loop continues.

My football obsession revealed my character strengths of persistence and focus. Football enabled me to develop these strengths, which I applied to other areas of my life, including my career as an educator of children and parents.

My son’s obsession with cooking led to a career in the food industry and nurtured his signature strengths of creativity and enthusiasm. These two strengths are evident in all areas of life, including parenting, work, and leisure.

Be mindful of this triad when identifying your child’s strengths

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 genuine strength.

For example, parents ask, “My child is fantastic at computer games and wants to play constantly. Is that a sign of strength?”

I reply, “Observe his energy levels at the end. Is he 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 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.