No one told me to

Right now my 14 yr old daughter is struggling with self-esteem issues and it breaks my heart because she's such a beautiful person. It makes me sad that she doesn't see it herself.

Last night I was talking with her and asked her, "Why don't you like yourself?". She replied "because nobody ever told me I had to." Wow!!! Totally the kind of flippant answer Melissa would give, however, what an insightful answer as well.

We spend all kinds of time telling our children how proud we are of them, how beautiful/handsome they are. How smart and talented they are and what awesome people WE think they are. We also tell our children how important it is to be nice to others, to like others, to treat others well. Some how in all of this we just assume that by doing these things it will MAKE them like themselves. If I had to guess I'd say that Jerry and I are not alone in not thinking of needing to tell our children that they should to like themselves too.

I can't help but wonder if this pain she's going through right now may have been avoided if we had told her when she was little how important it is to like yourself. How you need to love yourself before you can properly love others. It's hard to say for sure, teen years are such a difficult season of life to go through.

Make sure you tell your children how important it is to like themselves. God planned them, He knew everything about them before they were even in their mothers womb. God doesn't make mistakes, and He made no mistake in making each and everyone of us just the way He needs us to be.