The Strength Switch
How The New Science of Strength-Based Parenting Can Help Your Child and Your Teen to Flourish
Unlock your children’s potential by helping them build their strengths.
This game-changing book shows us the extraordinary results of focusing on our children’s strengths rather than always trying to correct their weaknesses. Most parents struggle with this shift because they suffer from a negativity bias, thanks to evolutionary development, giving them “strengths-blindness.” By showing us how to flick the Strength Switch Lea demonstrates how we can not only help our children build resilience, optimism, and achievement but we can also help inoculate them against today’s pandemic of depression and anxiety.
As a strengths-based scientist for more than 20 years, Waters has seen how this approach enhances self-esteem and energy in both children and teenagers. Yet more on the plus side: parents find it a particularly exciting and rewarding way to raise children. With many suggestions for specific ways to interact with your kids, Waters demonstrates how to discover strengths and talents in our children, how to use positive emotions as a resource, how to build strong brains and even how to deal with problem behaviours and talk about difficult situations and emotions. The Strength Switch will show parents how a small shift can yield enormous results.
NAMED ONE OF THE TOP BOOKS OF 2017 BY
THE TOP NEW RELEASE IN THE PARENTING CATEGORY ON
RANKED A TOP 5 BEST BOOK ON HAPPINESS FOR CHILDREN BY
Do Lea’s Strength Switch Online Program
What your family will learn and experience:
Help you find a new and positive way of seeing the qualities and talents in each other.
Create an energizing and fun approach to parenting and family communication.
Give you a lens to understand the perspectives and motivations of other family members.
Provide ways to uncover new strengths in each family member that you may not have seen before.
Foster a bonding family approach that builds warmth, trust and happiness.
available in English, Japanese and Spanish
This course, by Professor Lea Waters AM, Ph.D is made up of 5 sessions, done over 5 weeks. Each session is made up of
a) an online Parent Lesson with Lea,
b) Family Time and
c) Keeping It Alive activities where you get to practise your new skills during the week.
We also give you extended learning opportunities and share the underlying science behind the lessons, if you want to learn more.
The course is broken into 5 key learning sessions as follows:
SESSION 1: Understanding Strengths
SESSION 2: Seeing Strengths
SESSION 3: Using Strengths
SESSION 4: Growing Strengths
SESSION 5: Celebrating Strengths
Order Lea’s Book Now!
American
Australian/NZ
French
UK
Hungarian
Chinese
Japanese
Taiwanese
Korean
Russian
Spanish
Arabic
Free Resources
Visible Wellbeing e-Resources
For virtual classrooms and parents
Strengths Games
Games to play
Strength Exchange
Learn more about strengths
Strengths Resources for Teachers
Strength-based teaching support
Strengths Library
Strengths definitions
SEARCH Family Wellbeing Activities
A collection of activities to do with your family
Parent Manifesto
Get Lea’s Parent Manifesto
Find out your Strengths
Take the free VIA survey
Parent Quiz
Are you a strength-based parent?
Good Books
Books to read
Helping Teens Cope with Anxiety
Strategies to help anxious teenagers
Visible Wellbeing Family Assessment
How does your family score against the SEARCH pathways?
What Others Are Saying About The Strength Switch…
“Lea Waters’ expertise, hope, and heart shine through the pages of The Strength Switch. She deftly draws on the science of positive emotions to help readers appreciate the vital role positivity plays in moving through hard times. This book will be a game-changer for unlocking your child’s potential.”
— Barbara L. Fredrickson, PhD, Author of Positivity and Love 2.0
“Practical tips for parents from the wise and wonderful Lea Waters! So many parents, including me, struggle to translate scientific research into real-world strategies. This terrific book not only helps us understand ourselves and our children better but also makes that understanding actionable!”
— Angela Duckworth, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Grit
“As parents, we often obsess about fixing our children’s weaknesses and neglect the importance of developing their strengths. This book is full of concrete ideas on how to change that."
— Adam Grant, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Originals & Give and Take
“This book will help you do something groundbreaking for your children – shift your view to see their best and help them develop their unique strengths. Follow the wisdom here and you will bring deep, lasting benefit to not only your child but yourself. Thanks to Dr. Lea Waters, strengths-based parenting has arrived!”
— Ryan M. Niemic, Psy.D, Author of Character Strengths Interventions
“Waters comes off as a thoughtful parenting realist...supporting her ideas with a mix of parental anecdotes and pointers to psychological research.”
— Publishers Weekly (USA)
“The Strength Switch gives parents hope that they can build their children’s creativity. By sharing parts of her own story of overcoming hardship, and presenting the latest science of positive psychology, Dr. Waters not only inspires parents to bring out the best in their children, but she inspires us all to be the best version of ourselves. A wise and warm book!”
— Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD, co-author of Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind
“Lea Waters points to a needed shift in the way we are parenting our children and teenagers. The Strength Switch rejects the current fad that drowns children in self-esteem and replaces it with research-based practices to help parents identify and develop their children’s best qualities. Inspiring and timely."