Chapter Two

Why Good Kids Don't Feel Good
Principle 2: Be Intentional about Knowing Your Child

If as a mom you equate your child's compliance with self-confidence, you will be sadly disappointed.

Nobody knows a child like his mother.

When we know our kids, we recognize their vulnerabilities and weaknesses. We give ourselves permission to see what is actually there, not simply what we want to see.

When a mother doesn't know her child the way the child needs her to, they both suffer.

When a mother learns from her child, she has greater confidence in knowing his needs, grasping the way he processes and learns, and seeing his vulnerabilities. She learns to understand the way her child expresses and receives love; she learns to understand his quirks and fears. She doesn't allow her own biases to get in the way, and she remains teachable in her attitude.

A "student" mom recognizes that each child is born with individual differences, and some with more difficult issues than others.

An intentional mother doesn't fight the differences or difficulties.

She recognizes that God had something in mind when He gave her each child. She trusts that God wants to show her something through her relationship with her "challenge" child that she would not have learned in any other capacity.

Learn to be a student; it keeps the focus on your child and not yourself.

Allow the difficulties of motherhood to become a pathway to knowing your child better, and you will learn a lot about yourself in the process.

Here is an oxymoron of motherhood:
Focusing on your child will teach you about yourself
Focusing on yourself will deprive you of knowing your child

Children are the sandpaper God uses to refine our rough edges.

The mother's voice is the most prevalent voice heard by a child. Our role in our children's identity surfaces quickly in the formation of our child's self-worth.

Intentional mother's have the privilege of taking the knowledge, information, and insight about their children and feeding it back to them so they can begin to formulate a definition of themselves.

Communicating your child's traits to him or her is one of the most important jobs you will ever conduct during your motherhood journey. Your knowledge of them communicated back to them helps your children develop a sense of value, awareness of their gifts and talents, and insights into their values and beliefs.

We moms must remind our kids that no one in the world is like them, and that we are constantly amazed God chose us to be their mother.

The purest love an intentional mother can have for her child is to know her child's weaknesses, flaws, struggles, and issues, and in knowing, love them with acceptance, anticipation, and hope-with God's grace.