Answering Kids’ Hardest Questions: What Makes Me Special?

This article is part of the Answering Kids’ Hardest Questions series.

We Seek God, Not Gifts

What makes me special? This is the very air that our kids breathe today. From very young ages, even if they are not verbalizing it to us, kids are trying to figure out their place. They’re trying to figure out how they stack up to those around them. What gifts do I have? I see my siblings. They’re so good at sports and I’m not. I can’t do anything with a ball. And so they start questioning themselves, thinking Well, what am I good at then?

One of your children may be wonderful in music or they might be funny, or whatever it might be. Especially as kids, there is a comparison that starts to happen and there is an air that they’re breathing that is asking them, What are you going to make of yourself? What special thing are you going to bring to the world? How are you going to make a difference in this world? And that’s a lot of pressure for any of us, but especially our little kids, because they start to look within themselves to figure out what makes them valuable. The problem with that is it’s not what’s in them that makes them valuable, it’s who made them.

To bring down the concept of identity is so important for our kids from a very young age to help them see they were created in the image of God and show what that looks like. What does that mean? God’s a creative God. He’s a God of humor. He’s a God that is kind, that is compassionate. He’s a God of order. Each of us will have different gifts or we may have opportunities that God provides for us that he doesn’t provide for another or vice versa.

The Long Road Home

Sarah Walton

Through the experiences of Wander, this creative retelling of the parable of the prodigal son teaches children ages 6–8 about the love of the heavenly Father and biblical truths about worth and identity.

To look for our value and our worth in what we have to offer is going to be based on how we feel, how good we feel like we did. For example, I have one child that’s into soccer. He may have a good game and feel good about himself, but then the next week he may play terribly and he may be beating himself up and saying how terrible of a player he is. You can see it in his whole mood that suddenly he doesn’t feel valuable anymore.

So we might have a conversation like, Sweetie, what’s your identity? Is your identity a soccer player? Is your identity and your whole purpose in life to become the best soccer player there is? It’s been a good conversation to have.

We can see this in our kids in different ways. I also have another child who struggles to see where she’s gifted. She can look at each sibling and say, Well, they’re good at that and they’re good at that. But what am I good at?

Again, this is an identity issue. What did God create you for? He created you for his glory. That isn’t necessarily going to look like a gift of singing or being the most popular or whatever it is. A child’s world is typically pretty small. They can see what’s right in front of them. It’s hard to see the big picture. So if we can bring that down to their level and try to explain in their little world, Sweetie, I know you want to feel important. You want to feel valued, you want to feel seen and special. You already are, not because of anything you’re good at and not because of anything that you have to bring to the table, but because God literally created and knit you together—every single gene in your body. And so your purpose now is not to figure out who you are; it’s to figure out and know who God is because he created you in his image.

We can help them understand what that looks like by reading the Bible and seeing what God has done in the lives of his people throughout centuries. The good news in that is w e can see we’re not perfect. Many people who we look up to in Scripture had messy lives too. And so if we can help our children be free from this burden that they have to find some way to prove that they are special, it actually enables them to be able to appreciate the gifts they have, rather than them become a burden for them. They don’t have to live up to a standard or prove to us or those around them that they have worth of some sort. That’s a crushing burden.

Your purpose now is not to figure out who you are, it’s to figure out and know who God is because he created you in his image

Especially for kids going up into junior high and high school ages, as they’re being flooded with questions of identity, this message is increasingly important. It’s so important to begin this conversation early to help them see that their identity is fixed in Jesus Christ, not in anything that they do or can accomplish.

It will be so freeing for them if we can help them build from there because the reality is, sometimes the gifts we have can be taken. That happened to me. I was an athlete, and I lost it all through an injury. It completely changed the trajectory of my life.

And so my communication with my kids is now, This is great. Work hard at this, develop this, and find growth. God has good for you in this. But don’t let it become your identity, because it’s not who you are and it’s not the reason that God loves you.

Sarah Walton is the author of The Long Road Home: A Tale of Two Sons and a Father's Never-Ending Love.

Sarah Walton is the coauthor of Hope When It Hurts; Together Through the Storms; and He Gives More Grace, and the author of Tears and Tossings. She and her husband, Jeff, live in Colorado Springs with their four children. You can find more of Sarah’s writings at her website setapart.net.

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