A friend of mine shared this Halloween story with me and it really made me smile. It’s heartwarming, but it’s also a great parenting lesson.
When her now-adult daughter was a little girl, she wanted nothing more than to be a fairy princess for Halloween. She must have been about 7 or 8 at the time.
Her mom pieced her together an outfit out of her leotards from gymnastics and her father went down to his woodshop and put together a wooden “wand” complete with a star on the top. She loved it. She felt beautiful and twirled and pranced around the house.
On Halloween night, the mother and daughter went to a Girl Scout party where all the other little girls would be dressed up and showing off their best costumes. When they got to the party, her mother immediately noticed that the other little girls were princesses, too! But their costumes were not homemade.
They were the nicest money could buy, complete with tutus, flashing battery-powered wands and gossamer wings. She looked down at her daughter, slightly embarrassed and steeled herself to explain. But her daughter didn’t say a word or even notice. She twirled and proudly showed off her outfit and the wand her Daddy had made for her by hand.
Mom realized that it didn’t matter to her daughter that her costume wasn’t as nice as the other girls. What mattered was the LOVE that went into the making of it.
Your children will not remember the store-bought, beautiful things you buy them. That’s not what makes children feel loved and secure. It is the way you make them feel that counts.
