6 Personal Strengths to Help Your Children Develop
Generally, psychology has been focused on identifying and treating pathologies and behavioral problems. Fortunately, in recent decades, it’s beginning to address the more positive and functional aspects of personality. Those traits and characteristics can lead to a full and satisfying life. Today, we’ll share 6 personal strengths you should work on with your children to bring them closer to happiness.
The concept of happiness is subjective and, as experts have demonstrated, doesn’t depend solely on what happens to a person, but their ability to deal with it. Therefore, it’s important to help young children develop skills that allow them to enjoy the positive and face the negative in an appropriate way.
Six personal strengths
1. Wisdom and knowledge
This strength speaks of the natural and genuine interest to learn, discover, and experience. It’s about having curiosity, the desire to learn a little more each day about the world, and the satisfaction that acquiring knowledge causes. This personal strength is typical of people with active and creative minds who are able to find innovative solutions and come up with surprising ideas.
It also includes the virtue of having critical judgment and personal opinions. Having perspective, analyzing, and understanding. Expanding their horizons of knowledge enthuses people with this strength.
To enhance this quality in children, it’s important to give them access to information about different topics, support them, share their interests, and praise their knowledge and desire to learn.
2. Courage
This includes the feeling of passion, energy, and the joy of living. It includes the willingness to take risks and accept the possible consequences. Also, it involves working hard to accomplish your dreams and personal goals and persevere in them, without being discouraged by setbacks. In addition, this strength involves knowing yourself deeply and defending your integrity and values without fear.
Courageous people perceive life as an exceptional adventure and aren’t afraid to live it, showing themselves just as they are. To promote courage in children, you must teach them that mistakes are part of the journey. That you can always get back up and that you have to believe in yourself.
3. Humanity
People with this strength consider deep relationships to be valuable and enjoy emotionally bonding with others. They perceive others as worthy of attention and respect and are able to understand both their own and other people’s feelings. To encourage this strength in children, you have to be their biggest role model and treat them with love, understanding, and respect.
4. Justice
Here we’re talking about solidarity, empathy, and protecting others. This strength also encompasses loyalty, the ability to cooperate and work together, and being understanding and compassionate with others.
People with this strength are good friends, good people, and good leaders. You have to teach children to put themselves in other people’s shoes to try to understand their situations and emotions. Motivate children to accept and be tolerant and sensitive to others.
5. Temperance
This strength consists of the ability to have flexible thinking. Likewise, it also involves the ability to interpret other people’s circumstances and behaviors with benevolence, without the need for vengeance.
It includes the ability to recognize their own merits and achievements but also realizing that everyone has something to contribute. Also, it highlights the ability to control impulses and act in a way that’s most beneficial in the long run.
To develop temperance in children, you have to teach them not to react but to act calmly. You also have to teach them to take into account the consequences of their actions and analyze everything before acting.
6. Transcendence
Finally, we must mention the ability to feel peace and gratitude for all the good things that surround us. This is the ability to identify the positive and enjoy it. Similarly, transcendence also involves a sense of humor, the ability to relativize the negative, and hope that the future will be pleasant and successful. To do this, you must encourage children to make it a habit of detecting the positive events in their life, to boost optimism.
Personal strengths and happiness
Making an effort to develop these personal strengths in children doesn’t mean they won’t have negative experiences in their lives. However, it’ll help them learn to appreciate the positives, learn from adversity, and live their lives with optimism and confidence.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Nogueras-Campillo, M. T. (2016). Medidas de evaluación de las fortalezas personales.
- Sánchez, G. (2019b, 7 septiembre). Ser flexibles para adaptarnos. Recuperado 8 enero, 2020, de https://lamenteesmaravillosa.com/ser-flexibles-para-adaptarnos/
