Faith in Parenting

This week we focused on how to cultivate our children’s strengths. If someone asked you right now what your kids’ strengths are, what would you say? What ideas would immediately roll of your tongue? What sets them apart from others?

Some of their strengths are immediately obvious. Perhaps your child is great with numbers, is naturally athletic, or is extremely empathetic with others.

Now, dig a little deeper. What are some of the under-developed aspects of your child’s personality or character that you might be able to help him or her cultivate? What potential do you see? And what might be the natural result of these characteristics without your intentional guidance?

During the call (which you can listen to online by selecting “Support Call Archive” in the sidebar to your right), I shared that my daughter is a very passionate person. At 4, I can tell you that this sometimes poses a challenge for me. But when I shift my focus off of the inconvenience of her being passionate about - say, her perspective of what’s “fair” - to envisioning the potential that’s wrapped up in that part of her, I begin to look at things a bit differently.

Instead of passionate and dramatic, I’m thinking of how she has the potential to grow into an extremely compassionate young woman, able to put herself into another person’s shoes and even stand up for those around her.

And the beauty of it is that when I see the challenges of tempering her passion (at times) through that lens of potential, it changes how I deal with it in the moment.

How about you? What are some of the more challenging aspects of your kids’ personalities, and how might you be able to influence them for good in how you choose to respond?

Also, how can you honor your kids where they’re at, and how might that free them to further develop their unique strengths? For more on this topic, listen to the entire support call recording.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 9:35 pm and is filed under audio, worry, support, parenting, children. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.