2 Fundamental Ideas Central to Affirmation

There are two fundamental ideas that are central to affirmation. The first one is valuing uniqueness and the second is not expecting a child to be like others. This is a critical view that affirms each child's uniqueness. It's important parents don't compare children to other children in their family or other families or children in their classroom. When parents or others compare children to others they send the message that who the child is, is somehow wrong and not valued which causes the child to feel they aren't love-particularly for who the are. The message is sent they need to be like someone else, whether that is the next door neighbor, the child in youth group, one of their friends, someone in popular culture or even who a family member wants them to be in order to be someone who is liked, loved and accepted.  This sends the message that who they uniquely are is somehow wrong and it's not the child who is wrong, it's the adult sending this message to the child that who they are is wrong, who is wrong. This message is wrong.

I believe I've discussed before how my child had a youth leader who tried to teach this message to my child. My child isn't an athletic person. She doesn't  like to watch and particularly doesn't like playing them. Whenever the youth group would have an activity that was a sport the youth leaders would purposefully not tell my child what the activity was so that she would go and they would try to get her to play instead of respecting the fact that she wasn't a sports person. This made my child feel disrespected and unloved for who she was. The leaders would tell her she needed to be more like the girl in her youth group who did like sports which told her she wasn't valued for who she is and she didn't feel like her youth leaders valued her for who she was because they were constantly telling her what she should like and who she should be like. This affected her self-esteem and self-worth until I got it stopped because this was not a message they were going to give my child.

Love, respect and value your children for who they are, for their likes, their dislikes, the things they're good at, the things they're bad at. Let them know you see them for who they are and love them for that.