Right now I’m reading Hollow Kids which is a fascinating book from a secular perspective on how we’ve lost a generation or more to the “self-esteem myth,” by Laura L. Smith, Ph.D, Charles H. Elliott, Ph.D.

“[T]he central problem with placing excessive emphasis on developing high self-esteem is that doing so leads to increased self-absorption. This intense focus on the self lays a foundation for misery…. The way to reclaim a generation lost to the myth of self-esteem and fill the hollow places in our children’s souls [is] with humility, values and grace.” pp. 24-5

Humility?
Grace?
You don’t say.
As a Christian and a Christian parent, I want to teach my children to love and imitate CHRIST.

Just look at Philippians 2:3-11. Paul, under inspiration, instructs: “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.   Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.   Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,  so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

How could my responsibility be anything else, given Ephesians 2:4-10?

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,  not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”