My heart sank as I pulled into the driveway. For what seemed like the millionth time, my eight-year-old son Nick had left his new bike by the front door instead of putting it away. Just the day before, I’d snapped: “You need to put your bike where it belongs! I’m getting tired of reminding you!” Then I felt like a horrible parent when I saw his face, smiling and happy to see me, fall...
“I love my kids, so why do I always zoom into their faults? Why do I criticise my kids so much?” If you are working with families you probably get these questions a lot from parents. As a psychologist who aims to bring about positive change for both parents and their children, I try to help parents to understand their thinking first, so that they can then shift their focus more to the positive attributes of their children. A key message for me is our ‘negativity bias’ – the ancient survival mechanism hardwired into our brains that focuses on what’s wrong as a way to keep ourselves and our tribe safe. When parents understand this bias they can stop blaming themselves for being so critical and can begin to find ways to counteract their brain’s penchant for finding fault. By teaching parents how to shift their focus to a child’s strengths, we can help them override the negativity bias.
A strength is more than just something a child is good at. Psychologists define a strength as something the child does well (high performance), happily (high energy), and often (high use). So far, researchers have identified more than 100 strengths that can be measured and improved. There are strengths of talent such as sporting, music, artistic, communication and IT abilities and there are strengths of character such as grit, curiosity, courage, humour and kindness. I sometimes recommend a free library of over 100 strengths and other free resources (www.strengthswitch.com) as a useful tool to help parents to become more strength-focused.
Three decades of psychological science confirms that focusing on strengths helps children develop wellbeing. A 2009 study of over 300 middle-school students in the United States, published in the Oxford Review of Education, found that teens who undertook a school-based strengths curriculum had significantly higher engagement and enjoyment at school (as reported by the students themselves) together with better social skills (reported by teachers and parents) than their peers who did not go through this program. A similar study of over 300 middle school students in the United Kingdom, published in The Journal of Positive Psychology in 2011, found that teens who undertook a school-based strengths curriculum had significantly higher life satisfaction than their peers who did not. In a 2011 Australian study with elementary school children, students had higher hope and engagement at the end of their school-based strengths curriculum. Similar results have been found for students in New Zealand, Israel, Japan and China.
“Psychologists define a strength as something the child does well (high performance), happily (high energy), and often (high use)”
In my research, which focuses on families, children and teenagers, those who feel their parents focus on their strengths are less stressed, better at handling friendship issues, better at meeting homework deadlines and get better grades – important results in light of concerns about teen depression, bullying and underachievement.
Focusing on strengths doesn’t mean ignoring problems or lavishing kids with excessive praise. It shows kids how to use what they’re good at to work on what they’re not so good at. A way that I explain it to parents is to say, “Try writing your child’s name with your non-dominant hand. Tough, right? Expecting kids to fix their weaknesses without using their strengths is like asking them to produce beautiful art using their non-dominant hand.”
To shift gears, I ask parents to choose a strength their child already has and suggest how their child could use it to handle the situation. I use my own personal story in which I remembered Nick’s good organisational skills. I commented on how he’d used them to put his other belongings away after school. I asked him to use those skills now and in the future to put his bike where it belonged. Result? He felt good about himself – and I got the bike put away.
One mother described how she stopped an argument with her teenage daughter before it got started: “My daughter’s on the heavy side. Recently she came home from the gym in a bad mood and grabbed a can of Coke. The last time I called her out on this we’d had a screaming match. I took a deep breath and realised that I was more focused on the Coke than on the fact that this was her third workout in a week. It said a lot about her persistence. Coke’s not great, but she’s exercising – and that’s more important to focus on.”
How to get parents started? Ask them to begin by noticing one strength in their child per week and have a conversation with their child about it. As challenges arise, parents will find they can more easily shift out of fix-it mode and into strength focus. Another way is to work with parents to incorporate strengths into the questions they ask their children. Instead of asking “How was school today?” they could ask “What strengths did you use at school today?” When a child has a big project or event coming up parents could ask them, “What strengths do you have to help you with this?” If they’ve had a fight with a friend “What strengths do you think were missing that may have led to the fight? What strengths will help you make up?”
Strength-based parenting starts with parents looking for their own strengths. In a recent study, parents were split into two groups using a quasi-experimental waitlist design: a group who undertook my strength-based parent training course and a control group who continued to parent as usual. The course showed parents how to identify and build strengths in themselves and their children through various techniques such as strength spotting, strength mapping, strengths diaries and strengths surveys. Parents who went through the training were happier and more confident about their parenting skills after the course compared to their pre-course levels and compared to those who did not go through the course.
By learning about and being comfortable using their own strengths, parents are able to draw on their own personal assets and have more energy and enjoyment in the parenting role. For example, psychologists can encourage the creative parent to put that strength to work by helping make costumes for their child’s school performance, invite the prudent parent to help their teenager set a monthly budget, support the sporty parent to coach their child’s sporting team and so on. Just as every child has strengths so too does every parent. Parents can learn about their own strengths by completing the strength survey at www.strengthswitch.com.
While our negativity bias may help us to survive, it’s our strengths that help us thrive. Families who learn how to harness their strengths in good times and in bad are setting themselves up for better adjustment and wellbeing. Psychologists can play an important and motivating role in connecting parents and children to their own unique strengths and, thus, helping families flourish.
Professor Lea Waters will give the keynote address sponsored by TALI Health at the 2018 APS Congress. For more information visit apscongress.com.au