Unconditional Love

By Dr Bill Maier
What's the most important gift you can give your child?
Of course, the answer is unconditional love.
The one thing every child needs to know is their parents love them, no matter what.
Author Max Lucado wrote a children's book that relays this same message. It's called 'You Are Special', and it's a great little story about a village full of small wooden people called "Wemmicks".
The Wemmicks go about their day putting little stickers on each other.
The pretty and talented people get a gold star, while the clumsy and plain ones get a gray dot.
They learn to measure their worthy by the kinds of stickers they have.
As parents, we rund the risk of doing the same thing to our kids.
If we only praise them when they succeed, and cdriticise them when they fail, we're teaching them that their worth is dependent on their performance.
By loving them unconditionally, we're teaching them that they're accepted in spite of their failures or shortcomings.
And that's what kids need most.