Cater to Your Children's Strengths

Have you heard of the 'strengths' movement? (Why everything today is a movement I don't know, but that's a post for another day.) Apparently it's catching on that we should actually encourage our children's strong areas and get over it when they're bad at something. Say, for example - spelling. I was skeptical at first. Was this one of those touch-feeling, Johnny's-good-at-kickball-because-everyone's-good-at-kickball-and-we-all-get-a-blue-ribbon kind of philosophies? But no.

Strengths are defined in three key areas:

• Activity Strengths, the tasks that make you feel engaged and energized.
• Relationship Strengths, the things you do for and with others that make you feel valued and competent.
• Learning Strengths, the unique ways we approach and understand new information.

Those areas are extremely different. Every child is unique, but schools sometimes don't want to (or can't) deal with this. I have been told by an elementary school principal that the goal of our system is to get everybody through it in the normal range - meaning no one is below average, but no one is above either.

What if kids were allowed to fall below in some areas and excel in others? I don't know if that's practical, but what if? That's the way it is out here in the real world. Check out the Parent Bloggers Network today to find out what other bloggers are saying.