How to Celebrate Your Struggling Child’s Strength if their School is Focused on Skills
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How to Celebrate Your Struggling Child’s Strength if their School is Focused on Skills - Episode 074
Many times, when your kids struggle at school, you forget how awesome they really are. But it’s important that you talk about your child’s strengths and celebrate them. Kids shouldn’t be defined by their grades or how early they turn in assignments.
A lot of parents in the Parent Lab have been talking about this topic lately. We’re looking at helping kids identify their strengths and build upon their weaknesses.
In this episode of the podcast on School Counselor Gone Rogue, you’ll find out:
Why it’s important to celebrate your struggling child’s strengths
How to recognize, celebrate, and nurture your child’s strengths
Finding a balance between your child’s grades and their great qualities.
What’s the Purpose of School?
From history, we know that school was designed to help people get jobs, mainly jobs with redundant duties such as listening and sitting down.
But the world has long moved beyond the need for people who are super skilled at doing repetitive tasks. Of course, there are people who are capable of doing these. But not kids. We shouldn’t program kids to sit still and do repetitive activities. Kids are naturally curious and this shouldn’t be taken from them.
If you’re the parent of a curious child who likes to question things, how does your child maximize these skills at school? How can you recognize as well as celebrate their curiosity in the classroom if the classroom has restrictions on them?
How do children with a strong affiliation for justice or beauty get to develop these skills during school hours? Do they have the right opportunities to express themselves? And back home, how do you respond to the call that your child isn’t performing too well because they’re acting out?
It’s almost natural to want to find out what the problem is and fix it right away. But that’s only a reaction to the school’s message that your child isn’t fitting as expected.
Rather than jump to fix what you think is the problem, take some time to be curious about what is really going on. Inasmuch as you’d like your child to know that their present actions will affect their future, you also should consider the fact that they don’t have as many choices as you.
In essence, you shouldn’t just tell your child to fix their problems and do the right thing because of the future. Your focus should be helping your child rely on their strengths even in moments of frustration.
Helping Curious Kids
As a curious person myself, I always recommend that students get curious. Instead of looking for a quick fix, think about how this could affect their lives in general. For instance, many of my students and students with ADHD express justice and fairness.
Many of them are quick to observe a situation when someone is being treated unfairly, and they want to defend them right away. They have this wonderful quality and I can trust them to defend me if I was ever in a situation where I was being treated unfairly.
However, this strength isn’t necessarily celebrated in school and such students don’t get to feel appreciated for exhibiting their feelings of fairness and justice. How do you find the balance between expressing these strengths and recognizing the fact that such strengths may not fit into a school setting?
Nothing is wrong with the student or their thought pattern. So, we can’t shut down their feelings. But you can help them to do something with it.
Talk About their Strengths Now
Admit that those strengths have moments when they really matter even if it’s not within their 12 years in school. Putting off the conversation about their strengths in school won’t be the best option.
Instead, you should consider talking about what their strengths would be like in school and how it would play out in their lives overtime.
More importantly, grades and behavior sometimes overshadow their strengths. But how do you remind them of the good inside of them?
Even if strengths can help them make good choices, school was measuring other criteria such as the ability to turn in assignments and giving grades. Schools may never pay attention to the other qualities that make students terrific.
While school measures students with grades and GPA, there are other good things that make you an amazing human being. Students are not defined by their grades or school measurements. They need to know that there’s nothing necessarily wrong with them.
Celebrating Your Struggling Child’s Strengths
The goal here is to build the self-esteem of students who have been made to feel little because they were struggling. Help them see that they have other strengths and awesome qualities, and that their worth isn’t dependent on their grades.
Visit the Parent Lab to be part of the Workshop at the end of the month. I’d like to hear what you think. You can also take the mini course and assessment to help you and your child figure out their strengths and make the most of them.
In This Episode
VIA Strength Survey
Strength based parenting
How to recognize, celebrate, and nurture your child’s strengths
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Marni Pasch| Host of School Counselor Gone Rogue| Academic Coach | Team Pasch Academic Coaching
I work with students in grades 6th and higher, who struggle with academic confidence and motivation. I help them survive school with less stress by helping them create concrete goals, tackle procrastination and learn creative study techniques. I empower students to take charge of their education and reach their goals. I do this through individual or group coaching so students achieve success in life, school, career readiness and their social endeavors. I provided in person academic coaching in Orlando, FL, but work with students across the country through Zoom!
