The secret to building a child's self-worth #motherhood #raisingkids #rabbishaistaub

The best thing a mother can do for her kids. There are so many things that mothers provide and especially on the practical side of things, let's be honest, mothers really are the ones who, more than fathers, take care of the day-to-day operations. And all of that is super important. Helping the little kids get dressed and feeding them and putting a band-aid on their skinned knee. All of that's super important. But the main thing that a mother can provide is to teach your children through lived repeated experience that they are worthy of love and that that love is unconditional. From our fathers, primarily, we gain stability, security, strength. From our mothers, primarily, we gain nurture, warmth, affection. But you see, that nurturing, that warmth, that affection that we get from our mothers, the most important thing about it is that it has to be for free. If there's a price tag attached to it, meaning to say, if a woman is only able to provide that love for her children when there's some type of transaction, meaning she does it in exchange for certain behaviors, then it becomes manipulative and it teaches the child to actually become manipulative, to be a game player, to be a codependent, not to have genuine relationships with people. So, the greatest thing that a mother can do is to provide that warmth, but to show the child through lived repeated experience that that warmth will always be provided unconditionally.