Monday: Use a Scrapbook to Boost Your Child's Self Esteem

I don't support the whole idea of "everyone's a winner, everyone is special, and we need every color of the rainbow to work together!" While I believe that these ideas have stemmed from a good place, the whole idea is a bit much for me. Our children will, some day, have to hit the harsh streets of reality, where not everyone adores them, plays to their whims, and thinks that they are amazing.

However.

I want my children to know that, regardless of how difficult the real world may be, to me, always, they are the best thing in the universe.

That said, I think it is important that your children know that their mother thinks they are strong, pretty, confident, and wonderful. One easy way to do that is through scrapbooking. The whole purpose of a scrapbook is to single out your child and every special thing they do. Fun parties? Yes. Awards in school? Of course! Drawings, doodles, and everything that is special to them? Naturally.

By cataloging every special thing that your child does in their life, their scrapbook becomes a book of achievements, somewhere that they can always turn to see what they have accomplished and, of course, that their mother thinks the world of them.

My mother kept a diligent scrapbook of me and, aside from some severely odd pictures from my awkward chicken stage, it really has been fun for me to peruse them over the years, sharing them with friends, boyfriends, and eventually my husband. I think, too, that it will be fun for my own children to trek through their pages and see what their mother was like.

Personally, I cannot abide the work, toil, and drudgery of adorable scrapbook pages. That's ok. What I CAN do, however, are online books (like the kind that Wal-Greens and Shutterfly do). You upload pictures and these super user-friendly websites give you all kinds of options to decorate them. That is something I can do. Save up pictures on my computer, and keep ribbons/certificates/awards and, at the end of each year, compile the pictures onto one of these books (leaving some pages blank so that I can paste the various awards into them) and have them printed. Yes, it isn't as creative as my mother's scrapbooks of yore, but each book I make is special, unique, and all about my precious baby girl.



Smashbook!

Find out what works for you. Keepsake boxes filled with photos and various special items. Smashbooks. Online-created printable books (like me!). Traditional scrapbooks. Whatever you choose, stick to it, and continuously create them for your children as a memorandum that their mama does, indeed, think they are the best thing in the universe.

Create it so that your children will have a safe place to retreat when life isn't pure peaches, somewhere that they can spend time and see the good that they are.