“Being a [parent] is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had, and dealing with fears you didn’t know existed.” — Linda Wooten.

We all know parenting is a difficult job, and this job can feel particularly challenging as we navigate teenage years with our youth.  Sometimes we make parenting harder on ourselves. This can be particularly true for parents and families who expect their teens to live by health codes or moral codes that differ from the standards by which their peers live.
One specific way we might make parenting more difficult is by over-emphasizing the worthiness of our youth rather than focusing on their worth.  Worthiness is defined both spiritually and secularly.  Culturally, we measure someone’s worthiness based on external and superficial factors like their achievements in school and sports, their looks, their body, the clothes they wear, the car they drive, etc.  Spiritual worthiness for some is defined by their religion, which may encourage adherence to codes of health (i.e. no alcohol or drug use) or moral codes (i.e. not engaging in premarital sex), and they may consider it sinful to disobey these codes of conduct.
When we as parents over-focus on the worthiness of a child (whether secular or spiritual), we are being driven by our own fears – fear that our child isn’t measuring up, they won’t make it onto the sport’s team we think they should, they won’t have the opportunities we want them to have, they aren’t getting the grades we expect from them, they won’t make it into the college we envision for them, etc.  Maybe we fear our own personal embarrassment if our child doesn’t achieve or live up to the standards we see as necessary to their lives. These fears manifest themselves in the form of anxiety, being controlling, or asserting our “parent card” in an unhealthy way; this creates distance between our child and us, and makes worthiness something they are attaining for us – rather than something that is more appropriately between them and their God, or something that they intrinsically desire independent of our expectations.
On the other hand, if we shift our focus to the worth of our child, our actions become driven by love, by genuine concern, and by a desire for their well-being that is unspoiled by any of our fears, all of which ultimately fosters a greater degree of closeness with our child.  From a Christian perspective, we know we are children of God and that He loves us. 1 John 3:1 says, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the [children] of God.” God loves us regardless of how we look, our educational achievements, and even regardless of our choices.  Joy D. Jones, the General Primary President (the worldwide children’s organization) of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said, “Let me point out the need to differentiate between two critical words: worth and worthiness. They are not the same. Spiritual worth means to value ourselves the way Heavenly Father values us, not as the world values us. Our worth was determined before we ever came to this earth. ‘God’s love is infinite and it will endure forever.’  On the other hand, worthiness is achieved through obedience. If we sin, we are less worthy, but we are never worth less! (Joy B Jones, Value Beyond Measure, Ensign, November 2017).
Yes, we teach our children values and the importance of obedience, we set clear expectations and limits, and we even issue consequences sometimes; but we need to avoid the temptation of turning everything into a formal “teaching moment” – if we hit that drum too often it starts to undermine our kids’ self-worth.  If we implement structured, home-based opportunities to teach our children, they will get the necessary “formal” instruction from us, which frees us to focus on sending clear messages of intrinsic worth to our children during our everyday interactions with them.
As a marriage and family therapist, I have seen parents who are distraught over the choices their children have made or continue to make.  What I have found is that parents who desperately try to get a handle on the situation by taking away their teen’s phone, car, video game system, or any other privilege they can think of (not to mention yelling, demanding, and shaming their child) may find that their own self-worth is shot.  Sometimes they believe that they are terrible parents, and they use their child’s choices as concrete proof of their own diminished worth. Because of their distorted view of their self-worth, these parents may feel like hypocrites at church or in their peer groups, they may feel spiritually distant from God, they may doubt their purpose in life, and they may inappropriately focus on their own inadequacies as reflected by their child’s unworthiness.  As we work in a therapeutic setting to rebuild these parent’s self-worth, I find that they begin shifting their focus to loving their child and seeing their child’s worth as an individual. Their relationship with their child becomes more important than the child’s choices, and the parent/child relationship begins to mend. Paradoxically, the parent often begins to have more influence with their child. Meanwhile, these parents have more hope, peace, comfort, calm, and trust in God, rather than being defined by the child’s choices and achievements.

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