Raising Children Who Know Who They Are in Christ
There is a question every child is quietly asking, long before they have the words for it: Who am I? They ask it on the playground, in the classroom, in the mirror. And the world is never short of answers — most of them loud, many of them unkind, and almost none of them true.
As a mother and an author, I have become convinced that the most important gift we can give our children is not confidence in themselves, but confidence in who God says they are. Those are very different foundations. One depends on a good day. The other holds steady through every kind of weather.
Identity is caught before it is taught
Children rarely learn who they are from a lecture. They absorb it — from the way we speak to them, the stories we read, the prayers they overhear, the small daily liturgy of family life. This is why I write the books I write. A good story slips past a child's defenses and plants a truth deep enough to take root.
When a child knows they are loved, chosen, and called, they have something the world cannot easily take away.
That is the quiet aim behind I Know Who I Am and every book on our shelf: to give children language for their belovedness before anyone else hands them a smaller story to believe.
Three anchors worth repeating
You don't need a complicated framework. In our home, we keep returning to three simple truths — short enough for a toddler to memorize, deep enough for an adult to lean on:
- I am loved. Not because of what I do, but because of whose I am.
- I am chosen. God made me on purpose, for a purpose.
- I am called to shine. The light inside me is meant to be shared.
Say them at bedtime. Say them in the car. Say them on the hard mornings when a little heart is convinced it is none of those things. Repetition is not a lack of imagination — it is how truth becomes a person's native language.
Start small, start today
If all of this feels like a tall order, take heart. Faith at home was never meant to be a performance. Read one story tonight. Whisper one truth over your child as they fall asleep. Trust that seeds, once planted, were always meant to grow — even when you cannot yet see the harvest.
That is the long, joyful work of raising children who know exactly who they are. And it is worth every page.