Identifying ADHD Strengths: What is Your Child's Superpower?

As a parent, one of your jobs is to help your child identify his strengths -- or as we like to call them, his "superpowers"!

What is your superpower?

I don't mean the ability to crush steel with your bare hands or to leap tall buildings. I'm talking about a gift you were born with, something you do better than just about everyone else. That is your superpower.

Each of us has at least one, maybe even a few. Identifying your superpower(s) is essential, because superpowers can either work for us or against us. In the wrong environment, our superpowers become our kryptonite. But if we play to our strengths, everything becomes easier.

In school, we spend most of our time focused on what we can't do. That's especially true for those of us with ADHD. We have a lot of guilt when a teacher or parent says, "If only you'd put as much effort into geometry as you do on the football field!" (or on video games, or whatever our passions might be). What parents and teachers don't understand is that it's not an "effort" thing; it's a "superpower" thing. When an environment or activity allows us to use our superpowers, the task feels almost effortless.

Discover Your Superpowers

Few people can identify their own superpowers. These abilities come so naturally to us that we don't recognize them as anything special. We almost always need feedback from others to identify them.

> Have you ever received a compliment for something you did, but brushed it off?

"Oh that was nothing; it was simple." The compliment was probably pointing to one of your superpowers. I had a student who was a gifted painter, but he always shrugged off compliments. "Oh, it was easy." It was so easy that his works of art didn't seem special to him. His superpower was hiding in plain sight.

- - - - - - - - - -

To finish reading the full story, visit the ADDitude Magazine website: http://bit.ly/1PT3XmI.

EndFragment