How can I help my child understand their own characteristics, including strengths and not just weaknesses?

Self-understanding stays confidence-preserving when it grows together with a felt sense of strengths and likes, not just awareness of weaknesses. Day-to-day, put strengths into concrete words—"you're careful with detailed work," "your memory is amazing." Making an "instruction manual for myself" together—strengths, weaknesses, helpful adjustments, and likes, as a picture or chart—also helps them see their characteristics objectively. Handling weaknesses paired with coping ("when stuck, this method") lets them understand them not as a source of shame but as "how to get along with" them.