What Are Your Child’s Strengths? This Is What You Need To Know
Parenting a child with learning and attention issues often involves focusing on issues of remediation or accommodation. Basically, how to make things better. Or how to cope with or manage certain situations. This is a problem-oriented way of thinking. And there’s certainly value in that. To the extent problems can be solved, they should be solved.
But, focusing on perceived problem areas shouldn’t be the beginning, middle, and end of defining someone’s life.
Indeed, focusing on your child’s perceived areas of weakness can create its own problems. This type of attention can leave them feeling demoralized and reduce their motivation to try.
We also need to seek out and cultivate the good stuff that’s already right there, even if we don’t see it yet. A child’s strengths, interests, and talents can build the foundation for a productive and joyful life. And focusing on and cultivating your child’s strengths will help build self-esteem. Something that often takes many hits for a child with learning and attention issues.
Focus on What Are Your Child’s Strengths
Sometimes it can be quite a challenge to identify your child’s positive qualities. It’s often easier to see the negative before the positive. Plus, our society narrowly defines strengths. This can lead many kids with ADHD and/or other learning and attention issues to feel like they don’t have any strengths.
To help your child achieve his or her full potential, you must learn to identify and support his or her abilities. Many of these may be hidden, making this task difficult. For instance, it’s easy to see the negative in attention-seeking behavior. The reckless class clown who makes all kinds of silly noises on the playground demands that other kids “look at me” when he hangs upside down on the monkey bars. But there can be some positives buried there too.
One of the potential strengths of a class clown is that he influences others. This is a quality of a leader. Instead of thinking about what doesn’t work, focus on what is right. Shifting the spotlight into areas where a child shines can bring about dramatic improvements in motivation and behavior.
Another benefit to identifying and focusing on strengths rather than perceived deficits is that it can help both kids and those who interact with them with a more positive and productive way of viewing various challenges.
Here’s something that surprised even the researchers. A 2025 study asked the caregivers of 686 children, one simple question at each child’s first developmental assessment, to name their child’s strengths. The areas parents named most often, thinking, learning and social connection, were the very same areas usually flagged as a child’s deficits. More than 44% of parents named a cognitive or intellectual strength, and over 40% named a social or interpersonal one. The strength and the struggle often live in the same place.
What Are Strengths?
The concept of strengths can be a tad squishy. Essentially, they are skills, abilities, or talents that are personal to an individual and have some potential value in the world. Depending on the context, the concept of strengths can span many different categories. Spanning the realms of the emotional, intellectual, physical, and more.
According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the attributes employers most want to see are problem-solving and teamwork, followed by written communication, initiative, strong work ethic, and adaptability. In the intellectual realm, schools and colleges may focus on strengths such as attention to detail, creativity, critical thinking, enthusiasm, problem-solving, visualization, perseverance, and flexibility.
And we also have the traditional character strengths of honesty, kindness, helpfulness, empathy, loyalty, hard work, resilience, and independence. According to strength-based psychologists, strengths are things that you are good at doing or could be good at doing, that you enjoy doing (energize you), and that can benefit or contribute to something beyond yourself.
What Are Some Examples of Strengths?
You can find many different versions of a list of strengths. But generally speaking, strengths are often evaluated in different categories or buckets. Personal, emotional, social, physical, intellectual/academic, and creative or artistic. The social/emotional bucket generates qualities such as belonging, friendship, kindness, curiosity, confidence, courage, hope, happiness, independence, resiliency, compassion, playfulness, delayed gratification, and spirituality. The personal bucket generates traits such as optimism, generosity, energy, empathy, honesty, organization, planning, communication, memory, curiosity, powers of observation, listening, leadership, and charisma.
How To Identify Strengths
Strengths are a combination of talents, knowledge, and skills. According to Dr. Donald Clifton, dubbed the Father of Strength-Based Psychology by the American Psychological Association, “talent naturally resides within you, while skills and knowledge must be acquired.” So start the search for potential strengths by looking for areas of natural talent.
And “talents” can cover a wide range of activities, not just the kind of talents you would see in a talent show. Being able to connect with people quickly is a talent. The tendency to be undaunted by obvious risks. Organizing and planning complex activities with ease. Communicating ideas in an understandable way. Being able to motivate, influence and lead others can each be an independent talent. So, how can you recognize your child’s strengths? Here are some sources for potential clues.
How Do I Know My Child’s Strengths?
What’s considered a strength can vary across context and setting. Familiarize yourself with both some common and uncommon strength areas, then launch your investigation. Here’s a roadmap to potential strength areas:
- Natural attractions & affinity – Activities or experiences that your child gravitates to without prompting or is eager to engage in. So, for instance, if he sees that someone needs help, does he automatically offer assistance without prompting? Or, when it’s time for a group project, is she always the one who jumps in to coordinate or moderate?
- Natural learner – Are there activities where your kid seems to pick up things very quickly and with ease? Such as chess or musicals.
- Epic joy – Moments when your child has boundless enthusiasm. Activities that he is always excited to do.
- Limitless attention – Activities that are so engrossing that time ceases to exist – at least to him. Some kids with ADHD may experience the phenomenon of hyperfocus. The repeated object of hyperfocus could be a clue to a potential strength area.
Ask Others Who Know Your Child Well
Gather information about your child’s strengths from his or her teachers, other parents, and relatives. Hearing from others what your child’s strengths are can be an eye-opening experience. They might see or observe things that you miss.
Ask Your Child
Your child may have his or her own idea of what his or her strength areas are. Depending on the age and self-awareness of your child, this may or may not track with reality. But, at the very least, it gives you a starting point for investigation.
You may be surprised by what you learn. In a very small 2025 study, researchers sat down with children with ADHD, ages 8 to 14, and simply asked what they liked about themselves and what they were proud of. The kids had plenty to say. They named real, specific things: their energy, their ability to lock in and hyperfocus on something they love, their creativity, being good at a sport or an instrument. One boy said his ADHD “makes me energetic and makes me better at baseball and sports, and I can cheer my teammates on at every single pitch.”
What’s worth noticing is that these are not always the things the adults around them would flag first. Parents and teachers tend to name what a child struggles with, while a child could be paying attention to something else entirely. That said, some of the kids interviewed were unable to name any strengths. Which is not surprising.
If your child doesn’t really have the ability to answer questions like that, there are other concrete questions that you can ask that will lead to helpful information. Such as: “What did you do that went well today?” A response to a question like that can yield lots of insight into potential strength areas.
So, for instance, perhaps your child was pleased that he was finally able to figure out something in math that he didn’t understand when he asked his teacher for help, or perhaps she was pleased that she got to pick the game or toy or story during social circle and all the other kids loved it. These responses in context could suggest strength areas of perseverance, assertiveness, communication, or empathy.
Examine Your Own Weaknesses
Your child could excel at something that you are terrible at or that you hate or dislike. Avoid projecting your likes, dislikes, and skill sets on your child. Consider whether your own biases/preferences are blocking him from reaching the heights of his natural abilities and interests.
Look For Hidden Strengths
Sometimes the path to identifying a child’s strengths is by examining perceived weaknesses/problem areas. This could be a potential strength that is being expressed in a negative manner, but that could be re-directed/channeled in a positive manner. The weakness could be the extreme version of a positive strength that needs some moderation.
- The child who is obstinate constantly argues, badgers, and harps — deep well of determination.
- The child who is bossy and dominating — confidence or leadership
- Glass half empty, negative and critical — analytical, observant
Keep a Strength Journal
If you are having trouble identifying or keeping track of your child’s strengths, consider a strength journal or diary to jot down your observations. There’s good support for this kind of deliberate tracking. When researchers in that survey of 686 caregivers asked one simple question, they surfaced 61 distinct strengths grouped into six broad areas. That single open-ended question is a great prompt to keep at the top of your own journal:
- What does your child do best? This is the exact question the researchers asked, and it pulled answers ranging from memory and music to kindness and persistence.
- What things does your child enjoy doing every day?
- When given a choice, what does your child choose?
- How does she spend her free time?
- Is she kind to others? How does she express this?
- Does he stay focused on painting or drawing for long periods of time?
Potential Strengths for Kids with Learning and Attention Issues
Another place to look for clues to potential strengths is looking at patterns of strengths often associated with different learning and attention issues. Obviously, these traits don’t apply to every kid with learning differences, but consider it as food for thought as you’re exploring your own child’s strengths.
ADHD
You can often find information about handling challenges associated with ADHD, such as discipline issues, intense anger, and issues with managing a defiant child. But ADHD often has a wide range of associated strengths as well. For instance, ADHD is often associated with non-linear thinking. This can yield abundant creativity and innovation. Other traits often associated with ADHD include a strong sense of humor, musical or artistic talent, adventure, risk-taker, curiosity, charm, charisma, tenacity, and independence.
Dyslexia
Strengths often associated with Dyslexia include strong memory for stories; spatial reasoning; puzzle solving; conversationalist; abstract thinkers; thinking outside the box; critical thinking; seeing the big picture; problem-solving; team-oriented; and persistence.
Dysgraphia
Dysgraphia symptoms often make the written communication of language quite difficult. Poor handwriting may be obscuring strong ideas, strong verbal skills, creativity, humor, reasoning ability, and deep knowledge. Traits that could be displayed in other forms of communication.
How To Nurture Strengths
Here are some tips to help foster your child’s abilities. Lea Waters, an Australian psychologist who writes about strength-based parenting, recounts this insightful anecdote about Steven Spielberg’s childhood.
Spielberg was not diagnosed with dyslexia until late into his adult life – age 60. As a child, he struggled through school and was often bullied. He found refuge in filmmaking, and his mom actively supported his interests and gave him opportunities to explore his strengths. So, for example, when he wanted to make a home movie involving a volcano, she helped him experiment with exploding baked beans in the backyard. Are you the mom who helps bake the beans or the one who instinctively puts the kibosh on backyard explosions?
Devote Time and Attention to What Actually Works
Your child doesn’t have to be good at everything. Figure out the areas where “good enough” is acceptable and spend more time and attention on areas of positive strength. The fertile ground is likely to yield the best fruit.
Does math homework bring your child to tears? Spending hours upon hours drilling math facts is probably not the best use of your time. In a world filled with cheap calculators, not being able to instantly recall the product of 8 times 9 will not be a lifetime burden.
Accepting “good enough” for areas that will never be a strength frees up time to grow the ones that can be awesome. And clearing the “good enough” bar is easier now than it used to be. Taking pen to paper is just one way to tell a story. A child with dysgraphia who struggles to get his thoughts into a handwritten essay may astonish you when he expresses those same ideas through a keyboard, dictation software, or the language of film. Speech-to-text and read-aloud tools can carry a child over the “good enough” line in a weak area, leaving more of his time and energy for the strengths worth building. So rather than spending hours on rote penmanship, put some of that time into learning to keyboard instead.
Lean In Towards Areas of Strength
You may have heard the popular idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill. Researchers have since challenged that exact number, but the underlying lesson holds. You will help your child get much farther spending that time practicing or honing skills and traits that they are good at and like rather than those they struggle with and hate. People who rise to the top of their field have usually capitalized on their strengths rather than focusing on eliminating or shoring up weaknesses.
To return to the Steven Spielberg example: Reading the written word is not a strength area for him. By his own report, it takes him twice as long to read a script as most other people. Perhaps he would be a faster reader today if his mom had made him practice his phonics at the kitchen table rather than practicing stagecraft in the backyard. But it seems highly unlikely that those extra hours building up reading skills would have led to the same phenomenal outcomes.
Give Strengths Room to Grow Outside the Classroom
For many kids with learning and attention issues, school is where they hear what they can’t do. Activities outside the classroom can flip that. Sports, art, volunteering, a robotics club, or a part in the play are all activities that give your child a place to be good at something and to be recognized for it, instead of getting the same steady stream of corrections they often get in academic settings.
A 2026 study of more than 3,500 teenagers, including nearly 600 with ADHD, found that those who participated in extracurricular activities more often tended to report higher well-being and stronger social skills. The researchers framed it as cultivating strengths rather than just keeping kids busy. The link held about the same for teens with and without ADHD, though it’s worth noting this kind of study can show a connection, not prove that the activities caused it.
One caution before you sign your kid up for everything. The same research found that not all activities pay off the same way, and that more is not automatically better. What mattered most was fit: the right activity for this particular child, at a pace that doesn’t tip into overload. A child who comes alive on a soccer field and one who lights up backstage need different things. Also, a packed schedule creates its own stress for everyone.
Help Your Child Develop Self-Awareness
Your child probably has plenty of hidden strengths, which are things that they don’t recognize as strengths. Notice strengths about your child that they might not see as strengths. Help your child recognize that strengths are more than just being a good athlete or having an aptitude for math. Teach your child how to identify their own strengths and weaknesses. This will help them develop a vocabulary for self-awareness. They will then learn to put a name to their strengths and talents.
This habit of naming strengths is worth building early, because it may offer lifetime rewards. A large 2025 study of 400 adults, half of them with ADHD, found that the people who could recognize their own strengths, and who actually put those strengths to use day to day, reported higher well-being and a better quality of life. This held true whether or not a person had ADHD. Knowing what you are good at, and leaning on it, mattered for everyone. The study looked at adults, but the skill it points to starts in childhood, and some of the most valuable strengths to help your child name are the ones hiding inside a trait that usually gets treated as a problem.
For instance, a behavior that’s frequently associated with autism is the tendency to focus energy and attention on a specific topic area – also sometimes referred to as “restricted interests.” As discussed in one study about strengths, participants with autism scored higher in the area of “love of learning” than other groups. What is often viewed as a challenge carries a very different connotation from this strength perspective. As the researchers noted, reframing the trait of restricted interests “as a love of learning may be beneficial as it could help autistic individuals, as well as others, understand how this trait may benefit society as well.”
Talk About and Document Successes
When your child is successful at something, talk about it. Instead of simply saying, “great job,” help your child identify what things made her succeed. Those things are strengths. So, if she made the track team, talk about how she did not give up even when things got very difficult. She is persistent, which is a strength. Taking time to document and memorialize moments of strength helps reinforce your child’s positive self-image in her own eyes. As well as yours. This doesn’t necessarily have to be “achievement” oriented or a social media brag wall. It could be something simple. Like recording short videos of your child when he is doing something he loves.
Build Strengths Into the IEP
If your child has an IEP, the strengths you have been identifying do not have to live in a separate world from the plan itself. A strengths-based IEP weaves what your child does well into the goals and supports, instead of cataloging only what needs fixing. Understood.org walks through how this approach works.
Say your daughter Maya is a strong listener who can retell a nature documentary in vivid detail and lights up around animals, but decoding words on the page is a real struggle. A strengths-based plan might have her build reading skills using audiobooks and articles about animals, and let her show what she understands by explaining it out loud before she has to put it in writing. Her strength becomes the on-ramp to the skill she is working on, not an afterthought.
Closing Thoughts
At the end of the day, most folks want their kids to lead happy, productive lives. The odds of reaching such a state become exponentially greater if the road being traveled stems from building on strengths rather than filling in and paving over potholes of weakness. When you identify and nurture your kids’ strengths, you are providing them with a way to achieve their greatest potential.
