Wellbeing strengths in teenagers

What has been your most important achievement? What did you do to achieve it?

Our achievements are linked to boosting what we already do well. It has to do with combining what we like doing with how easily it comes to us. What is that thing you know how to do well and with ease? Maybe it’s painting, dancing, doing sums, managing the household budget, planning the family’s activities, and so on.

There is a parable called Soar with your strengths by Donald Clifton and Paula Nelson, from 1992. It talks about how education has focused on fixing or improving the areas where children struggle. In other words, when you were at school, teachers used assessments to identify the topics where the class needed to improve. Without realising that doing the opposite is actually better for students. What would happen if you could tackle anything that feels difficult by using what you already do well – whatever that may be?

Strengths help us develop tools for life. They are the qualities we all have and that, if we are able to recognise them, we can use in any situation to our advantage.

How can I find my strengths and my children’s strengths?

You can start by observing your children’s interests: what they pay the most attention to on a regular day, what they play, how they behave when they play. If you see them focused and having fun, that’s an important clue to discovering their qualities.

You can also take an online test on the VIA Institute on Character website (https://www.viacharacter.org/). There you answer a series of questions and can find out what your main strengths are.

The strengths we’ve been talking about were developed by the father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman. These strengths are:

They are grouped into universal virtues. Virtues are moral qualities that people can develop or use constantly to act well, choose what is best and align with their own values.

Read through the list of strengths again and first think about which of them you might have more developed, according to how you are and how you act – you could mark them. Then think about which strengths your children might have more developed. It is important to say that we all have all of them, but we do not all have them developed to the same degree. The key, when you take the VIA Institute test, is to identify your top 10. Do not worry about the ones that are less developed; you can create a plan to work on them. But the idea behind these strengths is that they feel natural, do not require a huge effort and help you experience greater wellbeing.

What do I do with my strengths?

Strengths contribute to our wellbeing, to feeling good about ourselves and realising that we have some “superpowers” ready to be used. Use your strengths to be authentic, positive and to increase your happiness.

What matters is that you can share your strengths and put them at the service of others. You can help someone by acting through one of your strengths. Using one strength does not overshadow the others.

Strengths are observable; they include each person’s character traits, but they do not define you. They are there for you to use to solve problems or grow as a person.

With us, your children build on what they do best in their classes. We design activities that boost their wellbeing so they can gradually notice their own qualities, getting to know themselves through what they do at school – with others and on their own. It is important to us that they feel safe, so their strengths can emerge when they are needed.

That is why one of the fundamental pillars of their education is guidance for their future. We want them to explore their strengths in a guided way, through real experiences and by recognising their abilities. All of this prepares the way for the school years ahead.