Teaching Children Their Worth

Hillary Ibarra believes that helping our children embrace their God-given worth creates a more loving, respectful, and peaceful world.

Being a parent is a difficult job indeed. You, an imperfect, fallible human being, must raise little humans who have their own imperfections and weaknesses. You must nurture and guide them to grow spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically resilient, ready to navigate the world and future relationships with kindness, confidence, mercy, and respect. Yet while raising them to be decent people, you're struggling to be a decent human yourself, and you fall on your knees each evening, praying for divine assistance, sometimes beating yourself up for your mistakes.

Forming Our Children: A Vocation of Love

The repetition is exhausting as you remind yourself and your children how to behave for love of God and neighbor. Sometimes — just sometimes, mind you — it feels humanly impossible to do this parenting job. The continual forming of children is a vocation of Love. It must be, or it would seem like one of the most pitiable jobs in the world.

But it's not pitiable. 

When you wistfully remember the adorable but helpless creature your child was at birth and recognize that through your care, your child blossomed and learned to become a kind, helpful, thoughtful, and loving person, you realize yet again: It's the best.

Do we realize this when we’re nursing or giving our babies a bottle in the middle of the night — exhausted, emotional, and worried about our responsibilities the next day? When we’re singing a silly song to our toddlers or preschoolers to make potty training easier? While reading a bedtime book to our children when we’re desperate for alone time? When wiping their mouths, cleaning up the floor, and taking their temperature because they have a terrible stomach bug? When driving them to activities every Saturday and cheering them on? When we’re stressing about getting everybody to Mass each Sunday morning and sighing when we finally slide into the pew and pray?

Our Loving Endeavors Teach a Lesson

All our loving endeavors communicate worth, belonging, and security to our children. In the past few years, as my children became teenagers and adults, I realized that it is vital to teach our children their worth before they face the world on their own. If they know their worth, endowed by God, they will honor other people’s worth, too. Society benefits. Every loving sacrifice we make for our children testifies to their worth, including every investment of our full attention.

Knowing their worth will protect our children. It will help them reject lies about their worth and the worth of others. It will help the eschew attitudes on the internet and in the media that encourage gaining the world’s approval at the expense of your soul, as well as comparisons that imply that their worth is less than another’s because they lack sufficient money, looks, power, influence, or fame. It will help them avoid treating others as objects to use or consume. Embracing their worth will help them rise and continue their faith journey after they sin. It imparts “never give up” courage.

When we raise our children to know, love, and serve God, it leads to the knowledge that their worth and every other person’s worth comes from God. It helps them to understand that no one can rob them of their worth. Not even they.

How to Teach Children Their Worth

How do we teach our children their immeasurable worth, so they can stand in grace and welcome God’s love even when others try to make them feel worthless or less than? Does it come from our sacrificial love and relentless but imperfect efforts alone?

No, it is found in Scripture and given by God: We are made in the image and likeness of God, and Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died to save us. Our worth springs from these two awesome truths. We must share them often with our children while honoring these truths in our own lives. We are God’s beloved children, created to thrive in His Love.

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Copyright 2026 Hillary Ibarra
Images: Canva