Last night I was doing what I had been intending to do for the last week—I affirmed each member of our family as we sat around the dinner table.  And it was hilarious!  I don’t suppose that’s how I thought it would be but it turned out to be a thing that cracked us up.  Emma was the one that got us started.  I had just finished talking about what I appreciated most about her and was moving on to Audrey when Emma chimed in: “Now let’s hear how great everyone else thinks I am!”

If Emma weren’t seven and the sweetest of little girls, this would have been laughed off as a joke or seen as arrogance or something, but coming from Emma, with her face beaming it was a sincere desire to get more of a thing that made her feel loved—to get more affirmation not only from me but from her mom and sister as well.  Of course Joanne and I cracked up which started the whole family laughing—I don’t even think the girls knew why they were laughing but it was infectious. What fun!

But more than that it got me thinking: affirmation feels so good but I can’t ever remember a time where I really sought out affirmation, when I just out-right asked for it.  I have fished for a compliment and I have requested feedback. But I have treated affirmation as one of those things that just sort of comes along in it’s own time, and when it does it is almost always valuable and appreciated.  But there are times when I have wanted or needed affirmation that I didn’t get it.  But I guess that’s partly my fault because I didn’t ask for it.

I want my girls to be good recipients of affirmation—I want them to be able to take it in and savor it and have it nourish them—that’s not easy for many of us, me included.  And I want them to know that if they ever need it, I am ready and willing to affirm them in the things I know to be true in them that I love about them and who God created them to be. Hopefully I will be in enough of a habit of regular affirmation that they won’t need to come looking for it too often, but if I ever slack off I pray that they would feel comfortable enough to ask for it.

Filed under: PARENTING by toben