Tips for helping your child recognise their strengths

Research suggests that we can help children feel less anxious by finding way to increase their confidence in their ability to cope with the dangers they predict will befall them. One way we can do this is by helping them to recognise their strengths. But how do we do this? 

Below are a few ideas for how to help children and young people recognise their strengths.  Some of the suggestions involve “strength cards”.   You can download some strengths cards by clicking on this link. You can leave the strength cards as one sheet or cut them up, just as you wish. 

• Spread out the strength cards in front of you and child and take turns picking a card and talking about a time when you demonstrated that strength. For example, “I’m picking generosity. Yesterday, I shared my cake with you, even though I was really hungry.”.  If your child is older, they may not want to do this publicly, but they may be happy to do this by themselves.
• Ask your child to tell you in detail about an activity they really love doing and what it involves. (I don’t know about you, but I have absolutely no idea what my child is actually doing when they spend hours on Minecraft!)  You can then ask them what positive characteristics they use while doing this activity. Have the strength cards laid out on the table so that it’s easier for your child to identify the strengths they use.  If your child struggles to identify their positive traits, you might want to say what you think. For example, “Sounds like you have to be incredibly patient waiting to catch a fish.  How do you manage that?”  Or, “You’ve shown great commitment to the football team over the last four years.  You always turn up, even when it’s raining.”.  Or “When you build those worlds in Minecraft, you’re being amazingly creative”.
• Encourage your child to think about a time they found something difficult in the past, but they overcame the problem. Ask them to identify all the personal strengths they used to do this.  For example, persistence, bravery, creativity, being determined. Use the strength cards as a prompt if they find it difficult to identify the characteristics.
• Get your child to pick their top 5 strengths and encourage them to create something to remind them of these strengths. For example, they could paint the words on a t-shirt or pillowcase using fabric pens. If your child is artistic, they could create a collage, sculpture, poem or piece of art to represent each of these strengths. If they love Lego, they could build a wall of Lego with a strength written on each brick. They could draw around their hand and write a strength on each finger and then decorate the hand.
• When you notice your child doing something amazing, you can praise them, making sure to be specific about the positive characteristic they showed. So instead of just saying, “You did great today”, try “You were really brave today. I know you were worried about talking to the shopkeeper.  But you did it anyway”.
• Get everyone in the family to pick a strength card at the start of each day and challenge them to demonstrate that strength at some point in the day. At the end of the day, check-in to see how everyone did.   

Not all of the suggestions above will work for every child, but finding a way for your child to focus on their strength can be very powerful, especially if they spend much of the day worried or sad.