How to Know if You’re Helping Your Child Maximize Their Potential
Potential is having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future. Potential implies possibility. It also implies the existence of undone work. To know if you’re helping your child maximize their potential you must know what undone work your child must complete.
To identify this work, I like to use the Gallup StrengthsFinder approach as described below:
When people supplement their talents with knowledge and skill to the point that they can provide consistent, near-perfect performance in a given activity, they have a strength. And in applying and further refining their strengths, they move closer to fulfilling their natural potential as individuals.
With this in mind, your first job in helping your child maximize their potential is to help them know their talents. A talent is something that helps your child reach a goal while energizing them because they naturally enjoy it. For example, being competitive is a talent, organization is a talent, and relating to others is a talent. There are many different types of talents. Gallup categorizes them into 34 themes.
Next, it comes down to helping your child turn these talents into strengths. This generally cost money and time. Children need teachers, coaches, and experiences to facilitate the process of turning a talent into a strength. Moreover, this process is far more likely to lead to a child maximizing their potential when they are also in an environment with peers and friends who nurture their talents.
A Checklist to Verify if You are Helping Your Child Maximize Potential
To sum up the answer for how to know if you’re helping your child maximize their potential I will end with this simple checklist. If you are doing these three things, you’re what I would classify as a parenting rock star.
- Helping your child build self-awareness so they know their talents.
- Investing in your child’s talents by paying for courses, private coaching and lessons to turn those talents into strengths.
- Consistently putting your child in environments with mentors, friends, and peers who nurture their talents.