If We Want Our Daughters To Love Themselves, We Have To Model That For Them
Whether we have kids or not, most of us have probably thought about the type of parents we’d like to be. We might even have a mental list of things we’d do that our own parents did with us, or even things we wouldn’t.
I had my daughter earlier this year, and from the moment my nurse called me with the results of the blood test, I was consumed by thoughts of things I want to instill in her – like faith, patience, peace, kindness and other virtues – versus the things I want her to avoid, so much of which I experienced myself. From my teenage years to early adulthood, I was overcome and overwhelmed by insecurity and low self-esteem. I hated high school and spent much of college cleaning up that damage in unhealthy ways, and now, the thought of my child seeing herself as anything less than perfect hurts me deeply.