What does it mean to be successful? Is there a way to predict how successful your child will be? Can you teach your children to be successful?

One researcher, Paul Tough, has identified a handful of traits associated with successful people, and you may be surprised to find that IQ scores are not as valuable an indicator as many have believed. In fact, one of the most important ingredients of success may actually be failure.

Paul Tough refers to these important predictors as "character strengths":
  • perseverance,
  • grit,
  • gratitude,
  • optimism,
  • curiosity,
  • self-control, and
  • social intelligence.
These strengths are predictors of how well children will do in school and beyond. They are the skills children need to succeed.

Teaching Character Strengths

The important thing to note about these strengths is that they are malleable. Kids can learn them. Teachers and parents can teach them.

As parents there is little that we want more than to provide for and protect our children. It seems counter-intuitive to set up situations where children must struggle and possibly even fail, but this is the only way perseverance can be taught. It is also how children learn that if they do not succeed they should try again.

Children are going to have different strengths and weaknesses. In my own family, we have a gritty child who is not afraid of failure and another that struggles to take even the slightest risk for fear of failure. That same child, however, has very high social intelligence, and the risk taker is lacking in this area. Our job is to not only identify and encourage their strengths but also develop them in their areas of weakness. Learning these character strengths is as important as the academic education we provide for our children at home.

Moving Beyond the Page

Moving Beyond the Page is an academically rigorous program. It is designed to stretch children. We tell our own children all the time that if everything is easy, then we are not doing our job. We want them to be academically challenged. All kids will benefit from a certain amount of struggle in their academic pursuits. This teaches perseverance and grit.

In addition, a project-based education like Moving Beyond the Page offers is a great way to reinforce character strengths as well. In order to do a project, there has to be a level of curiosity. Because children are forced to bring their own ideas into projects, it requires a level of risk-taking. Projects also take perseverance.

To Learn More...

If you are interested in learning more about these character strengths, here are three ways to learn more.