As I mentioned in Chapter 7, saying no and setting limits is part of our responsibility as strength-based parents to help our children learn self-control. When my children misbehave or need to work on a weakness, I remind myself, “Here’s a moment where we can do some attention training together.” The more I build my kids’ capacity to focus their attention and override their impulses, the stronger they’ll get at handling this challenge and others, too.
Strength-based parents still need to discipline their children. The difference is that they approach misbehavior from a constructive, growth-oriented perspective that gives kids a clear idea of the strengths that can be used to change for the better.
Strength-based discipline is based on the premise that by nature we are motivated to self-develop.1 Negative patterns or behaviors signify a block in our drive toward strength-based growth. Strength-based discipline is about working with a child to discover what’s blocking his progress and helping him get back on track. That’s what this chapter will help you do, coupled with the tools you’ve learned in previous chapters. Strength-based discipline can break the cycle of nagging/criticism/confrontation that quickly becomes unproductive. Once you and your child get the hang of strength-based discipline, you may find your child steps up with insights and improvement that will surprise you:
One day in assembly I noticed five sixth-grade boys giggling in the back row. I was upset because the first graders were presenting at the time, and it was important that the older students model good audience behavior. After assembly, I asked the boys to meet me the next day and to bring the VIA Surveys they’d completed as part of the school’s strengths project. They looked a bit worried—and I was happy to give them time to reflect on their behavior.
Five of the six boys had humor as their greatest strength. When we met, I asked what they thought this might mean. Immediately one answered that they were allowing their strength of humor to take over. I asked what they planned to do to make sure that their humor didn’t dominate them at inappropriate times in the future. They were full of ideas and agreed that it would help to couple their humor with another strength to moderate it. One chose kindness; others teamwork; another self-regulation. The last boy said his strength was humility. The others asked him to remind them to consider others if their humor took over again. Their self-awareness and goal setting were so mature that I asked them to share their learnings with the other students. They became the speakers at the next assembly.
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Visit http://bit.ly/2rVxhCF for a printable version of this worksheet.
Table 2: Discipline Style
Essentially, there are two broad approaches to correcting your childrens’ behavior: by inducing shame or by inducing guilt.
Shame makes a person feel bad about who they are. It is deeply rejecting because it rejects the person as being, in essence, bad. Shame-inducing statements might sound like this:
In contrast, guilt makes a person feel bad about what they did. It rejects the person’s actions but not the person.6 Guilt-inducing statements might sound like this:
Remember the psychological process of projection that we looked at in Chapter 2? I believe that most parents who use shame as a form of punishment are doing so because of projection. They see a quality or behavior in their children that they themselves have and are ashamed of. Instead of dealing with their own shame they project it onto their children so as to avoid discomfort. But you need to think twice if you are doing this, because shame leads to self-doubt, anxiety, and depression.7 What’s more, it’s not even an effective form of punishment. When a child feels shame, he will withdraw from others. Shame is so deeply painful that the child’s only choice is to avoid (i.e., ignore) whatever caused the shame; thus, no learning can take place.
Shame is damaging, but guilt, while uncomfortable, serves a purpose.8 Guilt is a powerful part of our evolutionary wiring. Guilt leads to regret and empathy. When a child feels guilt, he can amend and repair. His regret and empathy motivate him to act differently in the future. Guilt is, in a word, prosocial: It fosters bonding within a group, helping us know when we’ve done something wrong toward someone else and causing us to feel bad about it so that we will repair it and not do it again. Thus, it sends a developmental message that promotes improvement, or development, of our higher capacities: the self-control, good judgment, and kindness needed for appropriate behavior as part of the human family (and our own families).
Far from telling a child he is bad, guilt can be a powerful way to communicate to your child that he is better than his bad behavior: “I’m disappointed to hear that you teased the new student in your class. I wouldn’t have expected that of you. I know you can do better.”
But how will the child figure out what “better” is? Here’s where strength-based parenting takes discipline to the next level.
I think the moments when our children make poor choices and get into trouble provide opportunities to talk to them about where they forgot to use their strengths or what strengths they need to call forward. It can be an opportunity to build social intelligence.
I couldn’t say it better than this parent. Whereas guilt-based discipline tells children what not to do, strength-based discipline goes a step further, letting our kids know what they can do—reminding them of strengths they possess to address the problem. We show them how to reach within to find the resources for change, rebound from setbacks, focus their attention on repairing the problem, and move in a more positive direction.
If this sounds like we’re helping kids become mindful of their actions and building their ability to activate their nervous system’s pause-and-plan mode, which can stand between them and their impulsiveness or lapses in judgment the next time around, you’re absolutely right. That’s the kind of discipline our children really need.
For all of the reasons above, I often talk with parents about reframing children’s challenging behaviors as lapses in strength or as strength breakdowns. Rather than thinking, This kid is a problem, it’s about thinking, for example, This challenging behavior is happening because she forgot to use her strengths of fairness and kindness. Rather than punishing your child, it’s a time to teach her how to better use and fine-tune her strengths. Reframing in this way keeps you from shaming your child and makes both you and your child feel that this is something the child is capable of fixing.
Here are five questions you can ask yourself to diagnose a child’s strength breakdown:
Humor and playfulness are among my husband Matt’s top strengths. When I met Matt in college, he had a way of lifting my heavy heart with his quick wit, big laugh, and ability to see the lighter side of life. To this day, he still lifts my heart and makes me laugh—big belly laughs—regularly. I’m not the only one who appreciates his humor and playfulness. He’s regularly asked to be master of ceremonies at his friends’ functions, and Nick is proud that his friends think he has a funny dad at school.
Everyone enjoys Matt’s humor.
Well, almost everyone. He tells me that it used to get him in trouble with the teachers at school. What was an appropriate display of this strength in the schoolyard was not appropriate in the classroom. In one context, Matt’s playfulness was appreciated; in another, it was viewed as disrespect. Understanding the social landscape is important in deciding when and exactly how much humor to let out to play. Many strengths are like that. Curiosity can be viewed as overstepping into nosiness; persistence can be seen as stubbornness; planning and forethought can show up as rigidity; kindness can become subservience.
We’ve all been guilty of misusing a strength and getting into trouble. When we look at behavior this way, it constructively changes how we respond.
A strength-based parent taking a child to task for overplaying humor could say, “You’ve got a great sense of humor, but when you overplay it, you get out of control and it’s not a strength anymore. It leads to bad outcomes. What can you do to fix this situation and make sure your humor doesn’t get out of control next time?”
Looking at misbehavior from this perspective teaches kids strengths flexibility: how to switch gears between strengths depending on the situation they’re in and the people they’re with. We tend to fall into the habit of over-relying on our core strengths. This doesn’t sound so bad, but it can lead to negative consequences.9 Even virtuous qualities like forgiveness can be overplayed and lead to negative outcomes, as this mom explained:
I have a strained relationship with my own mom. She can say and do things that are extremely hurtful. It’s always been like this, and my dad has always asked me to forgive my mom so we can mend things. I have a forgiving nature, so I’m the one who makes the peace. When my daughter was born, my mom continued to do hurtful things, but this time toward my daughter. My husband pointed out that the downside of my forgiveness was that I was not setting clear boundaries, which allowed my mom to keep being hurtful. Forgiveness only works if the other person is prepared to change their negative behavior. So I decided to work more through fairness and courage to let me be brave and stand up to my mom and let her know that it wasn’t right for her to be so hurtful toward me or my daughter. Things will always be strained, but my new approach has helped to move things forward for us.
Is strength overuse causing problems for your child? This parent noticed that her son’s overuse of persistence was leading to frustration:
Ben has always loved building with Lego—a process he approaches very methodically, always studying the pictures on the box, reading the instructions, and, as he says, “preparing his build area” before he starts. When he was about ten, I asked him why he thought he was such a good Lego builder. He said it was because he just stuck with things until he got them done.
Ben used to try to complete his Lego building in one session and wouldn’t take a break or stop until it was finished. Toward the end of a build, he often got tired and frustrated if he made a mistake. I saw this as an overuse of his perseverance. I began telling him that he knew he would always finish building because of his perseverance—but he needed to take a break to refresh himself.
This seems to have developed into some effective study habits: He always completes his work, and he paces himself with short breaks.
In another situation, strength overuse affected a child’s test performance:
Zoe’s top strength is appreciation of beauty and excellence. She was struggling to complete math tests in the time frame allocated, until we figured out that she was handing in the neatest, most beautifully written test papers, but not the fastest. She was focusing too much on the “beauty” of her presentation, to the point of not meeting the time requirements. This was a great insight in helping her improve (although she still hates rushing her work!).
This parent’s strength-based reframing helped her work with her teenage son to repair a situation with an angry teacher:
I was just about to leave for work when my son Alex’s math teacher called me. She didn’t sound happy. I asked how I could help her.
“Alex needs to learn a thing or two about manners and stop talking back to me in class,” she snapped.
I felt my indignation rise in defense of my son, but instead of retorting, I said I was just leaving for work and suggested we discuss the issue at a more appropriate time, and after I’d spoken to Alex.
That night, the teacher’s words were still ringing in my ears as I asked Alex what happened. While he recounted the situation, I kept in mind that his top strength is fairness.
After listening to Alex’s version of the story and seeing it through his lens of fairness and justice, what had transpired made a lot of sense to me. Speaking to his strengths, I told him I understood why he would have felt unjustly targeted. That gave both of us perspective on the situation. I then used his fairness to help him see the situation from his teacher’s point of view. After all, it’s only fair to see both sides of the story. Using fairness as the anchor for our conversation, we talked about a more constructive way for him to communicate his ideas to the teacher. The next day he was able resolve the issue with her without rancor.
It was a parent-child conversation I was proud of. In the past, I might have simply started with his teacher’s accusations, laced with my own disappointment. Coming at this difficult conversation from a strengths perspective made all the difference.
Asking your child whether she might be underusing or underplaying a strength is a much more positive way to help her reflect on her behavior than fixating on what she did wrong. Consider these contrasts in parent-child conversation:
Shame based: “I heard you were teasing the new student at school. I’m so humiliated that everyone knows about this. Typical of you to be mean. When will you ever change?”
Strength based: “I’m disappointed that you were teasing the new student at school. I see kindness and generosity in you so many other times. Last week you got up from watching TV to help your grandmother up the stairs and carry in her packages. I was so touched and proud to see how you noticed she needed help and you stepped forward. Your kindness is such a good quality in you. Is there a reason why you aren’t using it with the new student?”
Or:
Guilt based: “Why did you quit the team after you lost the game? That’s not like you. You know that’s poor sportsmanship.”
Strength based: “I’m curious what made you decide to quit the team after you lost the game. That just doesn’t seem like you. What do you think might have happened if you had brought forward some of your strengths of perspective, teamwork, or fairness?”
Helping children see where they might be underusing their strengths builds their mindfulness about their behaviors. It’s also empowering: Kids realize that it’s not a matter of their being “bad” but rather that their best self was not present in a particular situation: I didn’t do this because I’m a bad person. I just forgot to bring in certain strengths. I know I have those strengths inside of me. If I bring them in next time, this situation won’t happen again.
Strength underuse, like overuse, becomes easier to address the more you become a strength-based parent. As your child begins to see that she has many strengths available to her, the two of you will find endless combinations of how she can use her strengths to stay out of trouble and move forward positively in all sorts of situations.
Sometimes what we see as a problem is really the flip side, or what psychologists call the “shadow side,” of a strength.10 In those situations, we need to help our kids learn new ways to regulate or express their strengths:
Mia asks questions incessantly. It can be exhausting. While I want her to learn, grow in wisdom, and always be curious, at times I just want some peace and quiet! I have been speaking to Mia about how much I love her curiosity and the way she is interested in so many things. I suggested to her that it would also be good to be curious in other ways—without talking. She could be curious about people and what is around her. Together we have worked on showing curiosity about people’s body language, i.e., how to tell when someone is looking distracted or, let’s face it, getting annoyed with all the questions.
Mia now sees that her curiosity about people and their body language could help her to know when it is a good time to ask questions and when it is best to stay quiet. When it isn’t a good time, she chooses to feed her curiosity in other ways, using her other senses. This has helped her to become more aware and know when quiet is required.
Even what we might consider highly challenging behavior might be better handled if we can flip our view to see it through a strength lens, as this teacher discovered:
I thought I knew my eleventh graders pretty well—I had known them for their entire lives at school and taught some of them at some stage. However, talking with them about their strengths surveys allowed me to see them in different ways. For example, we teachers often found one girl challenging. She would do anything to get out of things she didn’t want to do, and her mom backed her up all the way, which was frustrating. She always questioned things, challenged school rules, asked why she had to do things, et cetera. She wasn’t nasty, just obstructive and needed careful handling, otherwise she could get very argumentative and sometimes rude.
But looking at her strengths and discussing them with her enabled me to understand where she was coming from, and to have a conversation about some of the things that had gotten in the way of our relationship. Her top strength, by far, was curiosity. Her second was fairness. Her third was honesty. She wasn’t challenging; she was curious. She wasn’t obstructionist; she was honest. If she felt she, and other students, weren’t being treated fairly, she was going to tell us!
It was as if scales had dropped from my eyes. In our conversation, I could also express my frustration that she got out of things by using notes from home and how I felt that wasn’t fair. She took that on board and, honestly, it hasn’t happened since.
Sometimes it’s our children who focus on the shadow side of their strengths and need our help to see themselves more positively:
Annalise was a little embarrassed at having appreciation of beauty and excellence as her top strength. She thought it sounded “flaky.” That changed in ninth grade, when the students were told they had to conduct research (including generating new data) and produce a “product” based on their findings.
Annalise was interested in the relationship between music and emotions. She developed a product called the “Positivity Playlist,” a playlist of ten songs she selected for their positive impact on mood. She surveyed students to identify what genres of music they listened to and then spent a lot of time assembling a playlist that met her criteria for genres, tempos, lyrics, and continuity within the playlist. She took a beautiful photo of yellow daisies for the playlist cover and used it as a brand image on all of her supporting materials, wrote an excellent report, and got an A for her efforts!
In talking about the experience with Annalise, I said that her strengths of appreciation of beauty and excellence and her creativity were evident in the originality of the idea and the care she put into getting just the right look and feel for the playlist and accompanying materials. Many students and teachers had commented on her creativity and attention to detail. She felt really proud of her work.
This very positive experience has led to some fantastic learning developments: This year she’s taking a course called History of Aesthetics and is loving it! She’s at the top of the class and was singled out for the quality of one of her essays. Her academic confidence is overflowing into other subjects, too. So many positives—and it started with honoring her strengths.
A blocked strength can cause a strong emotional response. When we can’t live in a way that feels authentic to us, it feels wrong and we get angry. How many of us have been hard to live with at home when we feel undervalued or underutilized at work?
Remember the story I told in Chapter 3 about my writer friend who had tantrums because she didn’t yet know how to read? Not everyone feels the depth, richness, magic, and joy of playing with words, but that child had an inborn strength she was struggling to cultivate, and her strength was blocked because she grew up in an era when kids weren’t taught to read before first grade. If your child is acting out, ask yourself if his strengths are being frustrated or blocked in some way.
It’s almost a cliché in the business world: A talented achiever gets promoted into a management position that’s a far cry from the original tasks in which she excelled and from which she derived great satisfaction. Even if she’s a good manager, she’s miserable because her new job forces her to constantly use learned behaviors rather than work from the energizing flow of her strengths. And if management skills are weaknesses for her, let’s just say that she won’t be the only one who’s miserable on the job. Being forced to use weakness or learned behavior could lead to bad behavior.
It’s exhausting and stressful to be in a situation where we must constantly use a weakness. Also depleting is being repeatedly required to use a learned skill that we know how to do—and may even perform well and be praised for—but that doesn’t energize us and isn’t balanced by the opportunity to flex our strengths. If it’s hard for us as adults to handle this, imagine how a child, lacking the coping skills of a mature adult, might feel and react in such situations. If your child’s behavior is frequently challenging, look at what his typical days are like. Perhaps the bad behavior is a result of him having to over-rely on weaknesses or learned behavior.
It takes only a few minutes to think through the questions above and get a sense of how your child’s strengths are playing out (or not) in a given situation. Once you’ve got a handle on what might be happening, here are four tactics to try:
You learned about these in previous chapters. They can really help us and our kids replenish self-control by calming the nervous system and shifting thinking from the emotion-driven limbic system to the rational frontal lobe, a driver of self-control. You can still let your child know his behavior was unacceptable, but the discussion will be more effective if you use these tactics to downshift to a calmer mode before addressing the situation:
I introduce the idea of dialing up and dialing down strengths to the teachers and parents I work with. It’s effective in the classroom and one-on-one.
Basically, you suggest to the child that she needs to turn up or turn down the “volume,” or intensity level, on her strengths to address specific issues she’s dealing with. You’ll discover which strengths need to be dialed up or down by asking yourself Questions 1 and 2 above about strength overuse or underuse. Doing this with your child helps her learn to regulate herself and understand that different situations call for different behaviors:
Claire and I spoke about what a wonderful strength bravery is, but how, if overplayed, it could make her too bossy with her sisters and result in clashes. We talked about how she could turn this strength down if she felt it wasn’t serving her so well. We also talked about other times she gets to do things her sisters can’t because she’s “brave.” And we talked about how she is someone who sticks with things—and that sometimes that’s good, but at other times it’s dialed up too high and becomes stubbornness.
You might even find that your child eventually turns the tables on you!
Henry is a social, rambunctious five-year-old with a boundless enthusiasm for life. We ask him to dial up or down his strengths in situations—e.g., kindness when he has hurt another, forgiveness when another has hurt him, patience when he needs to wait for what he wants—almost every day! One day when he noticed me impatiently flicking the radio stations in the car, he informed me that I needed to use more of my strength of patience!
This tactic can create constructive dialogue around even serious behavior problems, as this school psychologist explains:
A tenth-grade boy at our school was getting into trouble, socializing with the wrong people, and he had just been caught shoplifting. He had already been suspended a few times and we were not expecting him to complete tenth grade. He and I did the VIA Survey of Character Strengths and identified, among other things, that leadership was one of his signature strengths. This discovery and our conversation about it proved pivotal. First, I think it was the first time he had ever received feedback that he had all of these good qualities inside. He was so touched to hear about them that he cried. Secondly, we were able to focus on fostering his leadership strength in healthy ways. We learned that outside of school he was a great rugby player and was the captain of his team. We were able to cultivate his leadership strength in school, and he successfully finished the year.
This family made a ritual of celebrating achievement rather than nagging about who was falling short:
We reward achievement and results with a family celebration dinner. We give our sons their favorite meal and include a special cake. At the dinner, the effort and achievement of our sons are honored. This tradition acts as a motivator.
A friend of mine is a remedial massage therapist who always starts by working with the healthy tissue before she addresses the inflamed and injured area. If she starts directly on the injured tissue, her patients become rigid and the healing isn’t effective. Similarly, if you go straight for your child’s weakness, your child will naturally become defensive. You can help your child work on her weaknesses more effectively by starting first with her “healthy tissue”—her strengths. When Nick or Emily comes to me with a problem, I’ve trained myself to swap in a strength and ask: “What is a strength you have that can help you fix this?”
I wasn’t always so quick to take this approach. Emily would be the first to admit that impatience is a weakness of hers. When she was in the first grade, her teacher told me Emily was talking too much in class. It turns out Emily was finishing her work more quickly than her classmates and became impatient waiting, so she talked to her friends as they were trying to finish their work. I spoke to Emily a number of times about this and asked her to wait patiently. She didn’t exactly take my advice to heart. When she was sent to the school principal, I needed a new tactic.
I realized that I was framing the issue in terms of her weakness—the fact that she lacks patience. Instead of trying to minimize a weakness, I decided to maximize a strength. So I turned on my Strength Switch and thought about the positive feedback I’d gotten from her teacher at the parent-teacher conference the previous semester, when the teacher had praised Emily’s cooperative nature, her love of learning, and her kindness. Emily has been kind ever since she was very young, when she would share her toys, include people in her games, and go out of her way to make others feel good. Kindness is one of her core strengths.
I talked to Emily about how she could show kindness to her friends by letting them finish their work because it would make them feel good to have that sense of accomplishment, just as she felt good about her own love of learning. I also suggested that she could show kindness and cooperation to her teacher by not disrupting the class.
As soon as I turned on my Strength Switch and reframed the situation through her strengths of kindness and cooperation rather than harping on her weakness of impatience, Emily immediately understood what she needed to do, and her classroom behavior improved.
There are times, of course, when you’ve got to confront weakness head-on. Maybe your child struggles in an academic subject but needs to achieve a certain grade in order to meet his educational goals. I wasn’t good at math, but I had to do well enough to get into graduate school for psychology, survive statistics, and get my PhD, so I set about getting extra tutoring. Or maybe your child is impatient like Emily and needs to learn to manage those feelings better. After all, we all have weaknesses. Matt and I think patience is such an important trait that we are working on it directly with Emily.
The key to working with weaknesses is to make sure your focus doesn’t become too deficit oriented. Remember the clay-modeling exercise we did in Chapter 1? Use gratitude, mindfulness, and self-control to ensure that your attention hasn’t been overly drawn to the holes in the clay. Do what needs to be done to address the weakness so that it’s not getting in the way of goals, good behavior, or performance, but don’t expect your child to turn a weakness 180 degrees into a strength.
At home and in my work with parents, I find that a three-pronged approach I call the Three Ps—priming, present-moment, and postmortem—can be effective in working with weakness.
What it is: In priming, you give the child a heads-up that he’s going into a situation where he will need to work with a particular weakness.
Success tips: Be calm and matter-of-fact. Life happens and we all sometimes have to deal with things we don’t like to do or aren’t good at. Ask the child what strengths he can draw on to manage his feelings. Suggest some circuit breakers the child can use if he starts to feel stressed. If possible, do your first priming processes in low-stakes, low-pressure situations, when both of you are feeling even-keeled and rested, so your child’s self-control—and yours—is likely to be strong.
What it is: There are two levels to choose from. Level One is simple mindfulness—flagging the issue for the child as the situation is happening to help the child prepare. Level Two is actively working on the weakness in the moment. The more your child practices addressing her weakness in present-moment situations, the less dominant it becomes.
Success tips: Ideally, practice Level Two at a time when you and your child are feeling rested and able to practice mindfulness, unlikely to lose your tempers.
What it is: Here you talk with your child after the fact to identify what happened, discuss how things went, look at what needs improvement, and agree on steps for getting there. A postmortem might happen a few minutes, hours, or days later (when everyone’s feeling cooler): “OK, let’s talk about what just happened/this morning’s test/the game last night/what happened the other day.”
Success tips: The goal here is to help the child become mindful about how events unfolded, how she was feeling, how she acted/reacted, and what she can do differently next time: “What was it about that situation that made you feel this way/do or say what you did? What strengths do you think might help you manage better? Is there a strength that needs to be dialed down or up? What do you think we could try so things might go better next time?”
I’ve only gone skiing once in my life, but when I did, I learned an interesting fact. I remember standing at the top of the mountain, snow sparkling all around. In front of me were two runs down the mountain. One side of the mountain was flatter and smoother. It would be a slower, more scenic, and, in my novice opinion, more enjoyable ski run. The other side of the mountain was distinctly steeper. It provided a faster, bumpier, and more dangerous ride. The distance between the two? About ten centimeters. All I needed to do was point my ski tips ten centimeters in a different direction to have a very different experience of that mountain.
Strength-based parenting is about angling your ski tips just a little differently at the start of the run. As you practice SBP, it’s not as though misbehavior will go away or that life challenges won’t continue to happen for you and your child. You still have to make it down the mountain, but you’re navigating a very different path through those challenges—one that I think will be smoother and will open up beautiful vistas for both of you. What’s more, you can access these powerful experiences through the small moments of parenting we encounter every day.
Imagine having a child who can draw on her courage to make a series of small adjustments to her actions and ultimately form a different circle of friends—a huge life lesson in setting boundaries, knowing one’s own worth, and stopping disrespectful treatment from others:
Eva has bravery as one of her top strengths. When she was eight, she was having trouble with friends who were being bossy, not taking turns, and excluding her. Initially I asked Eva to reflect on whether there was anything she was doing that might not seem fair to the others. Then I told her she had a choice: She could give the power of her happiness to that group of friends to control, or she could take control of it herself and try a new group.
First she decided to use her bravery to tell her friends how she felt when they weren’t being fair. Things didn’t really improve, and Eva often cried after school. Then one day she fell and cut herself. One friend went to get help, but two others stood around discussing what game to play next and did not help her.
After that, Eva decided to use her bravery to make new friends. The new friends she wanted to make liked to play a Harry Potter game. She read the books to learn the characters, learned the new game and rules, and used her bravery to join the new group.
She’s never looked back and is one of the happiest ten-year-olds I know. She now feels a great sense of empowerment and connection to her top strength and has a much bigger group of friends because of it.
Imagine a kind and sensitive child who also knows how to change the direction of his skis just a fraction so that he can feel deeply, yet still manage his emotions:
Benny is seven and one of the sweetest boys you’ll come across. He can be oversensitive sometimes, getting upset at things other boys his age don’t. I want him to retain his kind soul, so I make sure to acknowledge his strength of kindness, but when he feels overwhelmed by emotions, I’ve helped him learn to take some deep breaths and to walk away if he needs to. We’ve also worked on how to use this time to figure out what he is upset about and how to let others know what is going on. I didn’t want him to just toughen up, but to be able to use his strengths of kindness, love, and social intelligence with wisdom while also feeling strong and confident.
. . . and children who know how to dial up their appreciation of their parents:
During one family vacation when our sons complained about having to share a room, I explained, “Dad has worked very hard for us to be able to have this trip, and we could draw on our gratitude that we have this great opportunity.” The boys really changed their attitude after that.
Imagine children who step up to new roles and responsibilities during life transitions:
When Daniel’s little brother was born, we pointed out to Daniel how kind and loving he was when he did things to help with his new brother, e.g., grabbing the pacifier off the floor, cuddling and feeding his brother, or offering his newborn brother his own snuggly toy for comfort when he was crying. We also praised and pointed out in four-year-old-speak when he displayed patience, self-control, and teamwork. We feel this approach helped Daniel bond with his new brother and take on the role of being a big brother, probably reducing the resentment he felt about no longer being the center of attention.
. . . children who learn how to lead, a little at a time:
Sarah has always thrown herself into everything. A very high achiever, her core strengths are love, leadership, fairness, judgment, and kindness. Sarah experienced some social challenges in tenth and eleventh grades when school awards, leadership positions, and competitive natures led to some jealousies and conflicts with her classmates.
We discussed leadership—some people don’t like to be led; some hard decisions hurt some people; friendship and leadership can be hard to reconcile: “If you want to lead, Sarah, maybe you will need to accept that you will sometimes have conflicts with others; how might you better handle those conflicts?”
Sarah came to understand that competing for leadership roles would mean that, from time to time, friendships could be compromised. So she worked with love and kindness on developing friendships with people she was not in competition with, and practiced kindness toward people with whom she was competing.
Sarah enjoyed her year as student body president and is now a sophomore in college, doing well in her studies, and volunteering two days per week with an organization that tackles global poverty. She hopes to one day hold an executive role in a similar organization. She continues to keep in touch with her high school friends.
As a parent, I found strengths very useful to help a smart and self-motivated teenager through some challenging times on her own terms.
. . . children who know how to say “I’m sorry”:
We were at my brother’s house for a family event, and Samuel (thirteen) pulled out the chair on his older brother, Ethan (sixteen), causing Ethan to fall to the floor. While Ethan wasn’t hurt, all of his uncles saw this and laughed, causing him some embarrassment. While normally Ethan and Sam are fierce friends, Ethan refused to speak to Sam afterward. For three days I kept telling Sam he needed to apologize to Ethan, but Sam wouldn’t budge and the house remained fairly chilly.
After taking a step back, I realized that Sam hates to do anything wrong and has quite a strong shame response if he gets in trouble, so asking him to show humility might be tough for him. I thought about Sam’s strengths. Without question, he’s known for his kindness: Little children love him; he is gentle and patient and so generous with his kindness. I approached Sam again and talked about repairing his relationship with his brother, as it was the kind thing to do. Incredibly, less than thirty minutes after that conversation, he mended fences with his brother.
. . . and children who cope with tribulations by sharing their learnings with others:
An eighth grader in our school was diagnosed with chronic fatigue that she symbolically described as a combination of an anchor and a cloud. We talked with her about how she could use her strengths to help her cope with the anchor and cloud. Her top strengths were creativity and kindness, so she decided to create a children’s book about her experience in the hope of helping others.
Moment by moment, strength-based parenting creates small and achievable shifts that can positively change your child’s trajectory through life. I have seen many transformational outcomes in families in my years of developing and teaching SBP. My hope for you and your child is a future fueled by strengths and filled with inspiring journeys of growth, adventure, and joy.