Lea Waters || Strengths-Based Parenting

The Psychology Podcast

Professor Lea Waters, PhD is an Australian academic, researcher, psychologist, author and speaker contributing to the field of Positive Psychology. Most people see improvements as eliminating what's wrong with us, but Lea's work in Positive Psychology expands what we mean by improvement and growth. Her latest book, The Strength Switch, offers parents resources to better build the strengths of young people.

In our conversation, we talk about how Lea has used her strengths in research and storytelling to help parents recognize what biases might be influencing how they parent, and offer techniques for making the switch to a strengths-based approach.

We also dive deeper into the benefits of a strengths-approach by exploring such questions as:

• How do we identify our child's strengths?
• How can we tell when a strength is underused?
• How can we condition ourselves to stop focusing on weaknesses?
• What is the difference between strengths of talent and strengths of character, and how can each be used in a strengths-based approach to parenting?
• What is the importance of communication?

This episode is for the parents that listen to the podcast. We hope that this is a thought provoking episode, and that you walk away with both the desire to shift your attention towards building your child's strengths and the desire to use the tools to get there.

There’s a ton of strategies here and we had a lot of fun recording the episode.

Relevant Links:

More info on the book, to register for Lea's forthcoming Strength-Based Parenting Online course, and for other free resources.

[Free Resource] Glossary of Strengths

[Free resource] Strength-Based Quiz

Lea's website

Lea's twitter

Link to episode on communication with Alan Alda (mentioned)

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