Nourishing Your Child's Assets

But what about your child's developmental nutrients? What assets or strengths are nourishing your child at home, in school and out in the community, contributing right now to a healthy future?

The Search Institute_® is a nonprofit organization that has been exploring that very question for the past 50 years. Originally founded with a focus on youth in religious settings, its mission today is broader to do research; offer networking, training and support; and provide other resources that help promote health and competency in children and youth from all walks of life.

To provide a framework for parents, schools, and communities, the Search Institute _® has developed a list of 40 Developmental Assets _® that are strongly correlated with positive, healthy behaviors, including success in school and reduced involvement with drugs, alcohol, or criminal activity. The more assets these youth possess, the more successful their development tends to be.

What do these assets have to do with learning?  They appear to play a significant role in academic achievement for students from a wide variety of backgrounds.  Research shows that students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds with high levels of assets were about 5 to 12 times as likely to be successful in school as those with few assets.  In fact, the higher the students' asset levels, the higher their GPA.

What are these assets so essential to our children's all-around success?  Here is the list developed by the Search Institute for elementary-age children, ages 6 - 11.  You can find separate, but similar, lists for younger and older age groups at the Search Institute Web site.

External Assets

Support

1. Family support
2. Positive family communication
3. Other adult relationships
4. Caring neighborhood
5. Caring out-of-home climate
6. Parent involvement in out-of-home situations

Empowerment

7. Community values children
8. Children are given useful roles
9. Service to others
10. Safety

Boundaries and expectations

11. Family boundaries
12. Out-of-home boundaries
13. Neighborhood boundaries
14. Adult role models
15. Positive peer interaction and influence
16. Appropriate expectations for growth

Constructive use of time

17. Creative activities
18. Out-of-home activities
19. Religious community
20. Positive, supervised time at home

Internal Assets

Commitment to learning

21. Achievement expectation and motivation
22. Children are engaged in learning
23. Stimulating activity and homework
24. Enjoyment of learning and bonding to school
25. Reading for pleasure

Positive values

26. Caring
27. Equality and social justice
28. Integrity
29. Honesty
30. Responsibility
31. Healthy lifestyle and sexual attitudes

Social competencies

32. Planning and decision making
33. Interpersonal skills
34. Cultural competence
35. Resistance skills
36. Peaceful conflict resolution

Positive identity

37. Personal power
38. Self-esteem
39. Sense of purpose
40. Positive view of personal future

The sad truth is that the average youth surveyed in the United States experiences only half of these assets. Of the two million youths surveyed by the Search Institute since 1989, almost 60 percent had 20 or fewer of the 40 Developmental Assets _®.

What can you do as a parent to promote these strengths in your child? First, it may help to remember that you can't do it all by yourself. Your child needs a web of support to be successful; teachers and coaches, aunts and uncles, neighbors and mentors, friends and shopkeepers. There is, indeed, something to the adage, "It takes a village."

Then take a look at the lists of Developmental Assets _® and find a few to focus on first. Here are samples of concrete action steps you can take to help build your child's assets:

Building Support