How Strength-Based Discipline Helped Five Boys Understand How to Behave Appropriately (And the Five Questions That Can Help You Overcome a Child’s Strength Breakdown)

Learning how to assess the inappropriate behaviour of school children can be helped through strength-based discipline.

It was a school assembly. First-graders were presenting and the older students were expected to model good audience behaviour. However, five six-graders begged to differ as they kept giggling in the back row.

Their teacher became upset with the boys, so she asked them to meet her the next day with their survey results that were part of their school’s strength project.

When she checked their results, oddly enough, all five boys had humour as their dominant strength.

So, she asked them to think about what that might mean. One answered that they were letting their strength of humour take over in the assembly. The teacher then asked them to think of ways to prevent their strength from becoming dominant during inappropriate times in the future.

As they exchanged ideas, they concluded that it might be best to combine their dominant strength of humour with another that can balance it out. One of the boys went for kindness, the others chose teamwork, self-regulation, and humility. The group asked the boy who had humility as his strength to remind the entire group to consider other people in the event their humour is to take over again.

With this, the boys showed such maturity and self-awareness that the teacher asked them to share what they had learned with their classmates. And they also became speakers at the next assembly.

What happened with the five boys is that they were overusing some of their strengths and under-using others, which led them to misbehave during the assembly.

The reality is that these ‘strengths breakdowns’ may happen quite a bit with schoolchildren. But the good news is that you can deal with these challenges.

And it starts by asking yourself the following five questions to determine whether or not the child may be experiencing a strength breakdown. That way, you can make the necessary corrections to address the behaviour.

The Five Questions

As teachers, we all have moments when we have to guide or correct our students’ behaviours.

When that happens, what you can do is to reframe the challenging behaviour as a possible strength breakdown, rather than labelling the student as “problematic”.

You can teach your students to fine-tune their strengths and show everyone that they are capable of fixing the issue. But you may have to determine first whether or not they are having a strength breakdown.

The following five questions can help you do just that.

Question #1. Is This a Case of Strength Overuse?

My husband, Matt, is a great example of strength overuse.

He’s relied on his humour as a core strength ever since childhood. In fact, it was Matt’s humour that first attracted me to him and it’s a quality I still love to this very day.

Everyone appreciates Matt’s humour - except for his teachers back in school. While he appropriately used his humour in the schoolyard, he also let his strength take over inside the classroom. His teachers would see the funniest joke he told in recess as a form of disrespect when uttered in class.

This taught Matt the importance of understanding the social landscape in which it’s okay to let his strength of humour out.

And the same is true for many other strengths.

When you notice a strength dominating your student’s behaviour at inappropriate times, you can point out to them that overplaying may allow their strength to get out of control and reach a point where it may not be a strength anymore. Strengths like curiosity, leadership, and zest can all be taken too far in class.

This can teach your students to be flexible with their strengths and to switch them on and off depending on the situation.

Question #2. Is This a Case of Strength Underuse?

There may be situations when a student may be underusing their strength.

Let’s say you discovered that your student was hurtful towards a fellow student who’s new in school. If you wish to take the strength-based approach, you can help your student remember the times when they showed kindness to others. For instance, when they offered a jacket to their classmate who was feeling cold. It is best to remind them that their kindness is a beautiful quality and ask if there was any particular reason why they didn’t use it with the new classmate.

This approach can empower your students and can help build mindfulness regarding their behaviours. With a strengths-based approach, they may understand that their strengths lie within and that they can learn to use them in the future to avoid unpleasant situations.

Question #3. Could This Be a Blocked Strength?

Blocked strengths may cause a strong emotional reaction. Just like adults, children can feel angry if the way they live seems wrong and inauthentic.

If you notice your student acting out, I suggest that you ask yourself if the learning environment is inadvertently blocking their strengths.

Question #4. Am I Seeing the Flipside of a Strength?

An 11th grade teacher thought she knew her students well, having been around them all these years. That was until they did a strength survey.

There was this one girl who appeared to always find ways to get out of things, question them, or challenge school rules. After discussing her student’s strengths, which were curiosity, fairness, and honesty, the teacher finally understood the situation.

Suddenly, that particular student didn’t appear to be problematic anymore.

The girl was curious. She was fair and honest and would step forward if she or other students weren’t treated fairly. In turn, the teacher seized the opportunity to express frustration for what she believed were unfair actions on the part of the girl.

With this newfound discovery, surprisingly enough, the situations that frustrated the teacher happened way less frequently.

Sometimes, behavioural problems can lie on the flip side of a strength. That is when we can teach children to regulate their strengths.

Question #5. Is This Because They Are Forced to Overuse a Weakness or a Learned Behaviour?

Imagine being in a situation where you’re asked to use your weakness or a skill you’re comfortable with but doesn’t energise you. Adults might have developed skills to help them cope with these situations, but we might not be able to say the same for children.

If you notice that your student is often exhibiting challenging behaviour, I suggest you have a look at his typical days. Is the student being forced to his weakness often or is it because they’re asked to repeatedly do a behaviour or skill that they were taught to do, which psychologists like myself call ‘learned behaviour’?

Overcoming Strength Breakdowns

The path of strength-based teaching may not always be straightforward. There may be times when your student experiences strength breakdowns, which is totally normal. How you approach these breakdowns, however, can make the difference.

Our typical response is to react, but you can adopt a different approach by using the five questions from this article to respond more constructively.

Approaching the issue from another perspective can teach your students to understand their strengths better and be more flexible in the future.

While you’re at it, I’d also like to invite you to complete my Visible Wellbeing (VWB) Quiz. In the VWB approach, strength is the first pathway you learn about.