A Gift: Love your children for who they are, not what they do.

Tonight I heard a lecture on "Mothering Strategies to Help Kids through Changing Times." The speaker, Lisa McMinn, is a professor at Wheaton College & authored Growing Strong Daughters. She began with numerous examples of messages that permeate our culture and tell our children they will be loved for what they do and what they look like, not for who they are.
"Only the beautiful, strong and young deserve to be loved", is fed to them thousands of times in our media. Parents, without realizing that they too have bought into these cultural values, tend to reinforce them. Especially the myth of "24/7". This myth says that the busier our children ( & we) are, the more fulfilling our lives will be. She quoted from Space for God by Don Postema. "Leisure implies an attitude of non-activity, of inward calm, of silence, it means not being busy, but letting things happen. Leisure is a form of silence...only the silent hear, and those who do not remain silent, do not hear... for leisure is a receptive attitude of mind, a contemplative attitude... the capacity for steeping oneself in the whole of creation. Such an attitude pits us against compulsive busyness, against drivenness. It leads toward solitude and contemplation, toward creating an inner receptivity, a space where we can hear our deepest longings, realize what life is about, penetrate into reality. It can mean making a space for God. It is prayer." (Some of the other blogs I've read resemble this quote. Maybe that's what drew me to blogging.)
These were some of Lisa's points that got my attention:
. Being loved for who we are, not what we do, helps our children be resilient.
. If we love our children for who they are, we will let them fail & then sit with them in their failures.
. Be careful how much we praise our children for "success".
. Tell your child often, "I love you!" and don't add anything to that remark. Your child needs to know she/he is loved, just because she/he is yours. That's how God loves us.