IDENTIFYING YOUR CHILD’S STRENGTHS (Areas To Focus On)
- John Nolan
- Aug 12, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 1
OK you’ve become a dad, and you now have a child relying upon you for food, shelter, and safety, but they are only the physical needs of the child. Have you considered that this little person also has emotional, mental, and spiritual needs as well? What areas will they be interested in, and perhaps even be gifted in? Identifying Your Child's Strengths will help you by finding proven areas to focus on in this search.
IDENTIFYING YOUR CHILD’S STRENGTHS
For your child to grow into maturity being well-balanced and prepared for the life ahead, we as fathers ensure that all areas of their needs are satisfied.
Ultimately every father hopes that their child will live a healthy and happy life, and our role is to help as best we can to bring that to pass. It is important to have a broad parenting plan that includes some of the parenting issues we will face.
From birth, our children have many character traits hard-wired into their identity and physical make-up, traits that make them unique and individual. Some have blue eyes while others have brown, some have advanced coordination abilities and may become athletes while others exhibit an aptitude to become musicians. Some children are shy and need lots of encouragement before they venture out into society, while others are the life of every gathering and enjoy being in the limelight.
Understanding how each child is hard-wired is important if we as fathers are to be able to provide the correct stimulus required.
It’s no use shelling out for ballet classes when your daughter wants to play soccer and score goals on a football field. Nor is it advantageous to continually push your son toward sports if he prefers to play with a chemistry set and dreams of curing cancer one day.
Identifying Your Child's Strengths- Areas Of Focus
But how can we know in which direction our child’s gifting and abilities reside, so we don’t continue to push them into areas they are ill-equipped to succeed in? I believe the answer lies in 3 main areas:
1. Communication
2. Observation
3. Trial and Error
Communicating gently with the child and encouraging them to express the desires in their own heart is often a first step toward identifying areas of strength. However, it may take patience and understanding to identify the real areas, as opposed to the whims of childhood.
Observing your child as they play can also be advantageous in helping us identify natural abilities and aptitudes in certain areas. Some children excel at an early age in areas like computers or mathematics; some may show artistic flair in painting or the ability to speak confidently in front of crowds. All these are markers along the path that we as fathers need to follow to help us find our child’s areas of gifting.
It’s only through continual Trial and Error that we as fathers will be able to confirm that we have indeed identified the areas that may play a major part in our child’s life. Exposing your child to a broad range of activities over the developing years gives fathers a statistically better chance of identifying areas of gifting. This may mean financial investments in football boots this year, buying a musical instrument next year, paying for a chemistry set or workshop, or investing in a new computer program on Engineering.
By staying flexible in our desires for their future roles in society, we open the door for them to follow their dreams, because ultimately, what every father hopes for is their child’s happiness.
God Bless
John Nolan
If you found this helpful please consider
Comments