The only thing a child is really entitled to is his parents’ love. Not to keep up with the Joneses. Not a brand new bike or iPad. Just love. Every child deserves to be loved by his or her parents. If a child has your unconditional love, he has the greatest asset in the world. If we as parents can realize it’s love that our children need most, and

Camp director Steve Baskin says,

The gifts of salvation, grace, and forgiveness are free for the taking, but they weren’t cheap. They cost Jesus His life.

One of the joys of parenting is seeing the progress.

I agree with Dan Kindlon, a psychiatrist and author of Too Much of a Good Thing: Compared to earlier generations, we are emotionally closer to our kids, they confide in us more, we have more fun with them, and we know about the science of child development. But we are too indulgent. We give our kids too much and demand too little of them.[1]

There will be growing pains raising grateful kids upstream in a downstream world of entitlement. It will make our kids feel different. It will get harder before it gets easier. It will make them feel alone. It might make you doubt the course. It will probably cause fights and friction. Who’s ready to sign up?

Taking pictures of yourself all the time is a really weird, self-interested thing to do. Especially if you put them on the Internet and expect feedback. It’s asking people to validate how your face looks, not who you are as a person or anything beyond how well you can put yourself together for an “impromptu” snapshot.

It leaves me considering this thought by author and therapist Lori Gottlieb: “Could it be that by protecting our kids from unhappiness as children, we’re depriving them of happiness as adults?”[6]

You are not alone. These four words are the most important ones we can say to our kids, from the first time they experience toddler separation anxiety until we move them into their first apartment.