What a Speech Therapist from Nigeria Taught Me About Parenting with Your Strengths

Joy and me celebrating at the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA) 2025 conference

I went to Washington D.C. last week for my professional conference. The plan was simple: earn my continuing education credits, attend some presentations, maybe network a little. Check the boxes. Stay current. Go home.

I did all of that. But I also came home with something I didn't expect.

Her name is Joy.

I'd stopped at a display celebrating the centennial anniversary of my profession—100 years of speech-language pathology and audiology. I wanted a photo for Instagram. There was a woman standing nearby, focused on her phone, and I asked if she'd take my picture.

She did. I took one of her. And then, as they say, the rest is history.

Over three days, Joy and I became fast friends. We attended sessions together, shared meals, swapped stories about our work with children. She's a speech-language pathologist (SLP) from Nigeria, navigating government corruption, safety concerns that make her home city dangerous after dark, and plans to relocate her four children to the United States while she pursues her PhD.

And through it all, she kept saying the same thing: "We're doing the best we can."

Not in defeat. Not in resignation. In strength.

I watched Joy embody resilience, hope, and gratitude in real time. And it hit me: This is what character strengths look like when they're not just personality traits on a survey. This is what they look like when they're what keep you going.

When You Think You Can't, Yes You Can

On the second day of the conference, I attended a presentation by Margaryta Kuzmin, an SLP passionate about recruiting providers into early intervention work with infants and toddlers.

Her message was urgent: "Across the US, thousands of infants and toddlers are placed on waitlists for speech-language services due to a shortage of EI providers."

And, the point she drove home? Babies are waiting.

But Margaryta wasn't guilt-tripping her audience. She was vision-casting. She spent her entire presentation addressing the negative self-talk that keeps qualified SLPs from entering this field:

"I'm not good with little ones." "I don't have any experience in EI." "I don't think this is for me."

And over and over, she countered with: "If you're thinking EI isn't for you, it IS. If you think you can't do this, yes you can."

She wasn't asking people to fix their weaknesses. She was asking them to recognize strengths they didn't know they had.

Sound familiar?

The Helper Identity That Never Goes Away

The third encounter that changed my conference experience came at a poster session—think high school science fair, but digital and professional. Dr. Patricia Lawton presented research on the professional identity of early intervention SLPs.

Her finding? Every SLP goes into this "helping profession" because they like helping. But here's what caught my attention: These people were "helper-types" long before they decided to become SLPs.

Dr. Lawton also found something fascinating: School-based SLPs often struggled to maintain their sense of identity as helpers because so many job demands didn't feel like helping (staff meetings about math curricula, endless report writing, administrative tasks). But early intervention SLPs felt more aligned with their core helping nature.

The problem wasn't that school SLPs were bad at their jobs. The problem was misalignment between their daily demands and their core character strengths.

When I told Dr. Lawton I'm a parent coach working to help parents "gel" their pre-parent identities and strengths with their role as a parent, she literally said, "We should do that research!"

I got her business card. We might actually do that research.

But here's why this matters for you right now, today: Your daily parenting demands might be clashing with your core character strengths. And that's why parenting feels so hard.

Your Strengths Profile Is One of a Kind

Here's something that will blow your mind: There are more possible character strength profile combinations than there are people in the whole world.

Let that sink in. Your strengths profile is truly one of a kind. So is your child's.

The VIA (Values in Action) Survey of Character Strengths doesn't put you in a box. It highlights what's strong, not what's wrong. Built on well-established research in positive psychology, this free tool identifies your top character strengths from a framework of 24 strengths that shape well-being, motivation, and meaning.

Unlike personality typing tools like the Myers-Briggs, character strengths can be developed through deliberate interventions. You're not stuck with who you are. You can actually build the strengths you need.

Research shows that boosting the strength of gratitude through exercises like counting blessings or writing gratitude letters actually works. Character strengths are malleable. They respond to practice.

Find the Long Cut Using Your Highest Strength

In my University of Pennsylvania positive psychology course with Dr. Martin Seligman (the founder of positive psychology), he gave us an exercise that changed how I think about hard things.

He said:

1. Close your eyes

2. Think of something at work you don't like doing

3. Open your eyes

4. Knowing your highest strength, think of a way of doing this thing you don't like doing while using your highest strength

Then he shared an example: A grad student who had to walk through a dangerous neighborhood every night after studying until midnight. He hated the walk. But when he decided to use his highest strength of humor and playfulness, he got a timer and some roller blades. He turned it into a game, timing himself like he was setting Olympic records. When he beat his "best time" for the direct route, he went out of his way on a longer route and tried to beat that record too.

Seligman called it "finding the long cut."

And then he added the research that made this more than a cute story: "When people do this, six months later they're less depressed and they have higher life satisfaction."

Six months. Less depression. Higher life satisfaction.

Just from redesigning the things you hate around the strengths you already have.

What This Means for Your Parenting

Let's get practical. Think about the parts of parenting you dread. The tasks that make you feel like you're failing, the moments when you're convinced you're just not cut out for this.

Maybe it's bedtime. Maybe it's picky eating. Maybe it's homework battles or sibling fights or the endless pile of laundry that somehow represents all your inadequacy as a human being.

Now imagine redesigning those moments to use YOUR highest character strengths.

This isn't about becoming a better parent by fixing what's wrong with you.

This is about becoming a joyful parent by using what's already strong in you.

Design Your Life, Don't Correct Your Weaknesses

Dr. Seligman said something else that's been rattling around in my brain ever since: "Design your life not to correct your weaknesses, but to use your highest strengths more."

For years, parents have been told they need to "work on their patience" or "get better at discipline" or "be more organized." The underlying message? You're deficient. Fix yourself.

Then parenting will get easier.

But what if that's backwards?

What if the path to joyful parenting isn't about correcting weaknesses—it's about leveraging strengths?

Joy didn't survive government corruption and unsafe streets by fixing her weaknesses. She did it by leaning into resilience, hope, and gratitude.

Those SLPs Margaryta was recruiting don't need to "fix" their lack of experience with babies. They need to recognize the strengths they already bring to the work.

And you don't need to become someone else to parent well. You need to become more fully yourself.

Sometimes a stranger becomes family in three days. Character strengths create connection.

Your Next Step

Take the VIA Character Strengths Survey. It's free. It takes about 10 minutes. You'll get a ranked list of your 24 character strengths, with your top 5 highlighted.

Then ask yourself: Am I using my highest strengths in my parenting? Or am I trying to parent like someone else—someone with different strengths entirely?

Here's what I know from watching Joy navigate impossible circumstances with grace, from hearing Margaryta empower hesitant SLPs to step into their calling, from learning about Dr. Lawton's research on identity alignment:

You already have what you need. You just need to know what it is and use it more.

Wonder before you worry. Investigate before you react. And discover that the parent you're meant to be is the one you already are—just more fully expressed.

Take the free VIA Survey at viacharacter.org

Your strengths are waiting to be discovered. Your child's strengths are already showing up in ways you might be calling "problems." And six months from now? You could be less depressed and more satisfied with your parenting life.

Not because you fixed what was wrong.

Because you used what was already strong.

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