Every child has academic strengths and weaknesses. Hence, if your child is academically gifted, they would have areas they excel at and others in which they don’t perform well. In many cases, parents often spend time trying to convert a child’s weaknesses into strengths or at least trying to better the weaknesses. Unfortunately, this is often an exercise in futility. Invariably, focusing on a child’s weaknesses ends up making the children have strengths that are not fully developed. A better approach would be working to identify and better any areas of academic strengths a child has exhibited.
Some parents may not know how to identify their children’s academic strengths. Hence, this article achieves two things. First, it will show why focusing on your child’s academic strength is the best path. After that, we reveal the best routes to discovering your child’s academic strengths and how to make these academic strengths work.
The Importance of Focusing on Your Child’s Academic Strengths
Why should you focus more on your child’s academic strengths? Here are a few reasons:
1. Prepares Your Child to Succeed in Life
The truth is that your child needs to excel in their areas of strength to succeed. Sure, they need to be able to pass Math to get through middle school and high school. However, their Math skill will eventually be inconsequential later in life if the child’s career path has no intersection with Math. So, when you focus on your child’s academic strength, you will take the long view. You, this way, better prepare the child for whatever career path they decide to take.
2. Provides Better Guidance for the Child
When you focus on your child’s strengths, you can better provide the guidance and motivation your child needs to succeed academically. As mentioned in the introduction, the chances are that your child may not be so good in certain areas. If you are fixated on the failures, you end up discouraging and demoralizing the child. This could even affect the areas where the child was performing excellently in. Thus, focusing on strengths instead of weaknesses makes the most sense.
3. Reveals the Best Learning Approach to Employ
Children have different learning styles. The learning approach best suited to a child could be related to their academic strengths. So, if you pay more attention to your child’s strengths, you could better prepare yourself for fixing whatever academic challenges they may have.
How To Identify Your Child’s Academic Strengths and Make Them Work
Some of the ways you can identify your child’s academic strengths and make them work include the following:
1. Pay Attention to Your Child’s Interests
This is perhaps the easiest way to get to know a child’s strengths. This is because children sometimes first exhibit their strengths by exploring their interests. So, pay attention to your child’s passions, especially in their formative years. Observe the subjects your child is most interested in, which come naturally to them. For example, a child who loves debating might have excellent communication skills, and a child who wants to go into politics probably has good social skills. Do not dismiss your child’s interests or deem them a phase. Your child’s academic strengths may well be hidden behind the interests they explore as children.
2. Make a Strength Chain
Creating a strength chain is a fun activity that also serves as a reflective exercise for children. Here, you cut up pieces of paper into small squares. Then you sit with your child and brainstorm what they think their academic strengths are. Next, write down the answers you arrive at with your child. Then, loop the papers together to form a chain. Once the chain is complete, set it somewhere. Your child will be able to see it at all times.
3. Enroll Your Child in a Learning-Based Program
A learning-based program teaches a child to improve in any area they’ve shown interest in. In this instance, the learning-based program you choose should seek to improve your ward’s academic strengths. Here also, you should factor in your child’s interests. For instance, if you discover that your child loves drawing, you can enroll them in camps where they will do a lot of drawing or be open to having art lessons generally. Other learning-based programs include debate lessons, having them take acting or art lessons.
4. Start an Accomplishment Box
This is a beautiful way to keep track of your child’s growth over time. It also introduces the child to the importance of keeping records, mementos, and the like. An accomplishment box can be any box. Your child places anything they consider an accomplishment into the box. This could be anything, ranging from awards, stories, school report cards, etc. As the items in the box grow, it will become evident where the child’s academic strengths truly lie.
At Explico, we are all about your child’s academic strengths
At Explico, we work with parents to identify their children’s strengths. We offer assessments across different subject areas to discover children’s areas of strengths. Based on our assessments, we go a step further to recommend the perfect approach to get your child to perform optimally. Reach out today so we can get started.
