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Checking on Your Child's Happiness...

When was the last time you checked on your child's happiness? How often do you check on their feelings, their dreams or their fears? We as parents spend hours on end checking the smoke detector for batteries, making sure the iron and curlers are unplugged and checking the checkbook to make sure it's balanced, but we seem to forget to check on our child's happiness. Somehow it slips our minds after we've spent a long day at work, coming home to prepare dinner and get things ready for the next day.

I love children and delight in watching them grow. Nothing makes me happier than seeing children enjoy their lives, their childhood. Of course not all children are happy, but they should be. Oftentimes children carry loads of unhappiness due to the stresses that we as parents put on them. We expect them to get good grades in school, participate in extracurricular activities, have a hobby, do homework after school, do their chores, and then help us complete tasks that should normally be done, by adults. When is there time for them to get to know themselves? When can they be kids? The kids of today carry more burdens than we give notice of, and sometimes we don't realize it until it's too late, and they go into rebellion against us for not knowing or being there for them. Children of today need to be encouraged and praised, whether they are doing good or bad. They need to hear that we love them, and that we believe in them.

School-age children and teens face peer pressure on a daily basis, and won't talk about it unless we ask. I didn't know that my 11-year-old daughter felt she was ugly, until I took time to talk to her about being beautiful inside and out. She shared with me that she thought she was ugly because her peers said she had big lips and short hair. It hurt me to hear this, because I went through the same things in elementary due to my short, short, hair. I told my daughter to be strong and to believe in herself, and to know that she was beautiful. This made her smile, and I realized that I don't tell my children enough how beautiful and wonderful they are. I told her that people who talk about others, usually aren't happy with themselves, so they focus on making others unhappy.

I'm a mother of three, wonderful and unique, daughters and I want them to believe in themselves. I believe I was blessed with them so that I can teach them to love themselves despite what the world says or feels. My mother never told me I was

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