April 20 | 8:30 - 9:30 am in the school cafe
Chapters 8-10
Memories of Wounding Words - Take a moment to think back to how you were spoken to by your parents. What was the ratio of positive to negative remarks that you remember? What were some key phrases but positive and negative that were part of how your parents communicated with you? What were some ways that your parents could have used the language of strengths in how they spoke to you?
Unpack the different versions of praise... generic...process and for character. Then write down your understanding of strength-based praise.
Definitely try to do the two exercises at the end of chapter 8: Strength-based praise makeovers and write your child a strengths letter.
Go through the Five Questions for Diagnosing Strength Breakdowns (pp. 256 - 264) with how you use some of your strengths. Then try it with your children.
Strength-Based Discipline in Action (pp. 265 - 269). Analyze a recent behavior incident with your child that led to some form of disciplinary action. Review the provided tactics to see which one or all that could have helped in that situation.
Put on your "philosophizing hat" to do a little thinking about where and how our society can benefit from a strength-based approach to how we do things.
Family Mission Statement - The approach doesn't apply PosPsych but it can support family wellbeing. :)
Family Wellness Plan - Steps to follow to enhance family wellness.
Family Digital Wellness Plan Creation Workshop - Work through the slideshow to write your plan.
Family Wellness Progress Reports - Look to design your own template to prompt reflection and action.
How Is My PERMAH Today? - Use this plan to assess your well-being (unscientific).
PERMAH Pivot Plan - To help in making big changes in one's life.
Strength-Based Intentions to Actions - This plan can guide you to bring more SBP strategies into your parenting toolkit.
Strength Coaching Plan - Use this plan to engage with strengths that your children want to "exercise".
Supporting Your Elementary Student at Home - A list of home support strategies.
Tips for Student & Family Wellness During Virtual School - Take care of yourself and your family during VS.
Workspace Wellness - Guidelines to support your physical and mental work routines.
The Strength Switch website where you can take a course from Dr. Waters.
Whole Group Share: How are you feeling about your parenting now that you read this book?
Book Return
Table Share: Go through the following questions>
Open this SBP Intentions to Action document. We will spend a few moments to get you started in listed some intentions in how you will bring Strength-Based Parenting into the lives of your children. We will take turns sharing while offering some action steps to help with follow through on the intentions.
How can you teach your children about their character strengths?
Table Share: Ideas to Action
Any thoughts that you would like to share as we wrap up this book club?
The following are some takeaways from the reading along with some of my ideas. They are written in note form so the grammar might not be so terrific!
Chapter 8: This chapter is so loaded with insights and strategies that one really misses out by not reading the entire chapter. Here are just a few of my takeaways.
Growth mindset really needs to be adopted by parents regarding strengths. Work to use language that focuses on the process of practicing/engaging the strengths. As with GM, don’t fixate on the end results and accomplishment that the strength helped the child get to. Unpack how the child uses strengths, analyze with questions and active listening feedback to help your children their awareness of how they use the strengths in general and in specific instances.
Generic Praise- great job, awesome, etc. not so helpful for building strengths.
Process Praise - She cites Dweck. “By focusing on the processes your child undertook to succeed, you give her a shot of good feeling while also helping her see what she did to succeed so she can ‘own’ her success… it stands to reason that a person who understands the processes she’s used to succeed will be more optimistic about future outcomes and better able to deal with challenges and setbacks (i.e., be more resilient). (pp. 232-233). Then on p. 236 she points out that process praise is so much about reaching the strength goal “you are not there yet” that it misses the point that we are not going to be able to optimize all of our strengths. We need to remember that we are on a continuum with each strength knowing that our lower ones just are not going to be a big part of who we are. We can draw on them in specific situations though. “Strengths are dynamic and can grow.” p. 237 thus we stick with the growth mindset acknowledging our work on them.
Strength-based praise (pp. 235-247) - Look to spend time unpacking the information here to then come up with a few starter strategies to practice with your children. The "Makeover" section (pp. 242-243) provides helpful examples to then write new versions of how you currently praise your children.
Chapter 9 is so loaded with strategies to add to your parenting toolkit that one really needs to read it word for word. As you read, look to take notes to reflect upon how you can apply the provided strategies in your parenting.
Chapter 10 provides a big picture view of where and how we can use a strength-based approach to several aspects of our society.