Why we love to Discover Your Strengths

This activity is about noticing and celebrating your child’s strengths. This a wonderful way to boost their self-esteem, resilience, happiness and confidence.

Discovering and noticing strengths

If your child is 10 years or older, they can discover their strengths scientifically using the VIA Strengths finder quiz on the All Right? website. But, see below for our guide for doing this first.

If your child is younger than 10, the best way to do this activity is to use our strengths cards which you can either print or recreate, and chat with your child about which top five strengths you see them as having, and why.

Believe us - kids love this! And sometimes they’ll reverse this and do the same for you!

Tips for using the VIA strengths finder online

Setting up the tech side of things before you get started is really straightforward.

  • Firstly head to the All Right? Strengths webpage
  • Have a look around, then press the ‘take the quiz’ button.
  • From here you’ll set up an account. It’s really quick and easy.
  • When taking the quiz, just answer as instinctively and honestly as possible. There are no right or wrong answers as all strengths are positive!
  • We’d suggest you take the VIA Adult Survey (120 questions) yourself, so you can discuss your similarities and differences. It will also make you feel good!
  • If your child has already taken the survey at school, you have all the information you need! If not, make sure they take the Youth Survey (70 questions).

Once you’re both/all complete, you might print them off or use our strengths cards (print or recreate) with your top 24 strengths. Encourage your child to check out the information about their strengths (rather than focussing on just the ‘names’) as, some of the names seem ‘strange’ but their meaning gives lots more context and can really help us understand what our top strengths mean.

Let your child know that while they have top strengths, they actually have all 24 strengths – some are just stronger than others. Just because a strength is number 24 on the list, doesn’t mean you don’t possess it, and we can all grow and develop strengths.

It’s also handy to know that behind the scenes, you might have two or three strengths come out with the same top score! It’s better to focus on your top five, aka your ‘signature’ strengths then to get too hung up on what comes in at number one.

Ways we can use our strengths everyday:

  • Ask your child to describe times in their day – quiet times, fun times, challenging times, worrying times — and let them the strengths you think they used, to help in each situation.
  • Discuss times when we can ‘tap into’ specific strengths and use our strengths to reach goals, form strong friendships and face issues that come our way.
  • Discuss whether they knew these were their top or ‘signature’ strengths and how do they feel about them?
  • Look at old photos for examples of when they've used different strengths and you may be able to see these in action!
  • Ask whether they have any goals and together discuss which of their strengths could use to help reach these.
  • Are there any strengths they’d like to work on or develop? What are one or two ways they could do this? We can grow our strengths - it just takes practice, so over time our top 5 strengths can change.

What next

We find tamariki are usually pretty chuffed with their results. If they’re looking for more information and how to use their strengths, guide them here.

For another Sparklers activity that can be adapted for home use, check out: Use Your Strengths