To discover your child’s strength, it has to be a process of self-reflection on their own. As parents, you are there as their guidance in developing their positive and creative thoughts. This will help your children to decide on their true passions in life later.
There are things that you should do and shouldn’t do too. The most important one is to treat every child of yours as a unique individual different from their other siblings and appreciate them for who they are and want to be. Never try to compare them to any other kids or even their own siblings as this would only lower down their confidence level and thinking that they would need to compete with other kids all the time but instead compliment them and the more you do this at the beginning of their childhood, the better.
Don’t evaluate everything and overstate your expectations neither should you be setting strict rules for them to follow but encourage them to give their best to avoid them being lazy and taking things for granted. Explain to them that this would also avoid them from regretting not doing their best when the results are out. Give them a goal to achieve and evaluate their performance from time to time but don’t force them as your goal is to be their guidance in achieving their success.
Meanwhile, give them as many options to choose from as this gives them the chance to explore while gaining more experiences and knowledge. Encourage them to be open to new options and being adventurous to try new things as this would open more doors for them to explore other than their own strengths, their interests and weaknesses as well. They would eventually learn to adapt fast to rapid changing environment especially in today’s society.
Keep an eye on their interests and activities daily as this would help you to pick up the right options for your kids to try out. You may keep a journal on their strengths by jotting down your kid’s behaviors or things they do that strikes you. Playing would help to develop cognitive thinking and also emotional growth which would help your children to express them freely. During play time, insert some imaginative playing with them like role plays and watch them play with other kids too as you get to learn their preference and socializing skills.
Children would have more strengths than interest naturally. Do help them to discover both as with interests there are strengths. As the saying goes; you can pull the horse to the water but you can force it to drink the water. You can share your experiences and encourage them in doing as many of activities as possible but in the end, let your child be the one who decides on what they choose to pick up on. Only by this way would they learn to discover their own strengths and also their weaknesses instead of needing to forgo their own desires just to please you.
