Before the world tells your child who they are …

When Beth Jacobson was growing up, the end of summer brought an aching feeling in the pit of her stomach. School was extraordinarily difficult for her because of learning differences that affected the way she processed information, organized her work, and wrote. By the time another school year approached, she already knew what returning meant. Her parents wanted desperately to encourage her, so they assured her that this year would be different and urged her to get better grades. Beth nodded and tried to end the conversation. Inside, thoughts of failure were already playing over and over in her mind.

Years later, her parents understood something they had missed. Beth did not need them to pretend that school would suddenly become easy. She needed parents who understood how hard it actually was and who could help her face that reality without allowing academic struggle to determine what she believed about herself. Their conversations changed. Before Beth left for college, her parents acknowledged that learning would continue to be difficult while making clear that their pride in her was not dependent upon the grades she earned. Beth later wrote that their changed response gave her the confidence to persevere.

Beth’s experience raises a question worth considering before children return to school this year: Who will they learn they are?

Children will certainly learn something about themselves at school. A child who discovers a gift for writing may begin to see an ability that had never been recognized. A difficult class may expose a weakness. The response of other children can affect confidence in ways parents cannot anticipate. These experiences are part of growing up, and many of them can be valuable. The problem comes when children allow what happens at school to answer a question much larger than the experience itself.

Beth struggled academically. That struggle was real. It did not follow that Beth herself was a failure.

The distinction sounds obvious to an adult reading those words, but it can be extraordinarily difficult for a child living through the experience. Children are still developing an understanding of themselves, so the distance between “I failed” and “I am a failure” can disappear quickly. Once it does, an outcome has become an identity.

Back-to-school pressures are providing children with plenty of other opportunities to make the same mistake. A national survey of 1,007 parents of K–12 students conducted for the 2026 back-to-school season found that 43 percent said their children cared more about brands than they had just one year earlier. Nearly half of the parents admitted overspending on a brand-name item because their child insisted on having it. The pressure became stronger as children grew older, with parents of high-school students reporting the highest rate of overspending.

The survey also found that 36 percent of parents had seen their child cry over something wanted for back-to-school. Those tears are easy to dismiss as evidence that children have become too materialistic, but psychologists who work with children say the desire for what classmates have often intersects with the development of identity and the desire to belong. Social media can amplify the pressure because children are continually exposed to what other people have and what currently receives attention.

That gives parents a different way to hear “Everyone has one except me.”

The request may still require a firm no. Family finances and values should not be surrendered to peer pressure, and children do not need everything they want. But a parent who hears only a demand for another purchase can miss an opportunity to understand why the item matters so much. If a child believes having it will make fitting in easier, the conversation has reached something more important than shopping. The child is beginning to connect what other people think with how he or she feels about being acceptable.

One sixteen-year-old student, Omari Buckner, recently described how students increasingly carry their identities with them at school. As traditional lockers have become less useful in many schools, backpacks and the personal items attached to them have become visible ways for teenagers to express themselves throughout the day. For students whose clothing choices are limited by school uniforms, those belongings can carry even more significance. Buckner described personalizing school items with keychains received from other people and objects that hold emotional meaning.

There is nothing unhealthy about a teenager using a backpack to express personality. The important issue for parents is what happens when expression becomes dependence — when the response of other people begins determining whether the child feels valuable. At that point, a changing trend or an unkind opinion can reach far beyond the object that prompted it.

The same thing happens in relationships. Being left out hurts because children need relationships, and parents should resist the temptation to minimize that pain with “It doesn’t matter what they think.” To the child, it does matter. The better opportunity is helping the child understand what the rejection can legitimately say. It can say that a friendship has changed or that someone behaved unkindly. It cannot establish the value of the person who was rejected.

This is the work of identity, and every child is doing it.

Who am I?
The answer gradually takes shape from what children believe about themselves. If approval becomes the evidence that they are worth knowing, rejection will always possess enormous power. If achievement becomes the evidence that they matter, failure will threaten much more than the thing they failed to accomplish. The child who depends upon appearance for worth enters a comparison that can never finally be won because there will always be another standard and another person against whom to measure it.

Christian parents can give children a far more secure answer, but that requires more than telling them, “Your identity is in Christ.” A phrase can be biblically true and still mean very little to a child who has never been taught what it means. Identity in Christ has to become understandable enough to matter on the afternoon when a child comes home feeling unwanted or inadequate.

Teach them who has the right to define them
A child’s first understanding of worth should begin with the One who gave that child life. David writes: “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous — how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed,” Psalm 139:13–16.

Parents can use this passage to teach something children desperately need to know: their value did not begin when other people noticed them. Before a child had a grade, a friend group, or anything to prove, that child was known by God. David does not describe a distant Creator who merely initiated life, he describes God’s intimate involvement in forming a human being and His perfect and complete knowledge of that life before birth.

That gives parents a foundation for conversations about comparison. When children encounter someone who seems better at something that matters to them, the goal does not have to be convincing them that they are equally talented. They may not be. Children are capable of recognizing differences, and false reassurance eventually loses credibility. A parent can instead help a child understand that another person’s greater ability does not make that person a more valuable human being. Talent can be compared; human worth cannot be ranked that way because its source lies elsewhere.

This is also why Psalm 139 should never be reduced to “God made you special.” Children need more than a sentimental slogan. They need to understand that the God who created them has a claim on how they understand themselves. Other people can form opinions about them, and sometimes those opinions will contain information worth hearing. A teacher may correctly identify an area that needs improvement, or a friend may point out behavior that needs to change. Grounding identity in God does not teach children to ignore evaluation, it teaches them that evaluation has limits.

There is another distinction Christian parents need to make carefully. Being created by God and having an identity in Christ are related truths, but they are not interchangeable. Every child bears the dignity of being created by God. The New Testament’s language of being “in Christ,” however, describes those who belong to Jesus through a covenant relationship. Paul writes, “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” 2 Corinthians 5:17.

For a child who has trusted Christ, identity therefore includes more than knowing, “God made me.” It includes knowing, “I belong to Christ.” That difference matters because belonging is one of the very things children are often trying to secure from the people around them.

A child who desperately wants acceptance from a particular group may understand the doctrine of salvation and still fail to connect it with what is happening at school. Parents can help make that connection. Belonging to Christ does not guarantee that the child will be included by classmates, and Scripture should never be used to pretend that exclusion no longer hurts. It gives rejection a boundary. Other children can decide whether someone belongs in their circle; they cannot decide whether someone belongs to Christ.

Paul gives Christian parents another powerful truth to teach: “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus,” Romans 8:1.

Children who understand only that God loves them may still imagine His love functioning like human approval: stronger when they perform well and endangered when they fail. The gospel teaches something different. A Christian child’s standing with God rests upon Christ, not upon maintaining a record impressive enough to deserve acceptance.

That truth can become especially important for children whose identity has become entangled with achievement. A high-performing child may appear wonderfully confident while privately carrying an exhausting burden. If being exceptional is what makes the child feel valuable, every new challenge carries the possibility of exposure. Eventually there will be a harder class, a faster athlete, or someone whose ability exceeds the child’s own. Parents who continually anchor worth in Christ allow achievement to return to its proper place. Success can be enjoyed without being worshiped, and failure can be faced without becoming a personal catastrophe.

Pay attention to what home is teaching
Parents can unintentionally make school pressures more powerful by reinforcing the same measures of worth at home.

This often happens without a harsh word ever being spoken. A child simply notices what generates the greatest enthusiasm. When accomplishment consistently receives an emotional response that ordinary faithfulness does not, children can begin learning that exceptional performance is the surest route to parental delight.

That does not mean parents should stop celebrating success. A child who worked diligently for an excellent grade deserves to have that effort recognized. What matters is what the celebration teaches. If the attention rests entirely on the grade, the child may hear that results are what matter most. A parent who also recognizes the perseverance involved helps the child understand success differently. The accomplishment remains worth celebrating, but it becomes evidence of faithful effort rather than evidence of superior worth.

Failure deserves the same clarity. Suppose a child receives a poor grade because schoolwork was neglected. Protecting that child’s identity does not require pretending the grade is unimportant. Responsibility still matters. The parent can address the neglected work, require a change, and allow appropriate consequences without communicating that the child’s value has diminished. In fact, a secure identity makes honest correction easier because the child does not have to defend personal worth every time behavior is challenged.

Parents also teach identity through the way they understand themselves. Children hear more than the lessons intended for them. A parent whose sense of worth rises and falls with the approval of others can unintentionally demonstrate the very dependence the child is being taught to resist. The same is true when children repeatedly hear a parent speak contemptuously about his or her own appearance or become consumed with being recognized for success. What children observe in the home can give credibility to what parents teach, or subtly contradict it.

Teaching identity in Christ therefore belongs in ordinary family life rather than in one carefully planned back-to-school conversation. The most useful moments often arrive unexpectedly because a child has already encountered something that makes the truth relevant.

When a child says, “Nobody likes me,” the parent can resist rushing to contradiction. Perhaps someone important to the child really has rejected him. Listening first communicates that the pain is being taken seriously. Later, the parent can help the child examine the conclusion. One person’s rejection may say something about that relationship, but it cannot establish that nobody will love the child, and it certainly cannot overturn what God has said.

The same approach works when children compare themselves with others. Parents do not need to manufacture a compensating compliment every time a child notices someone else’s strength. If a daughter says another girl is prettier, immediately insisting, “No, you’re prettier,” leaves both girls trapped inside the same comparison. A better conversation can help the child recognize why another person’s attractiveness feels threatening in the first place. If beauty has become evidence of worth, the comparison will continue no matter how much reassurance a parent supplies.

This is where Scripture can become something children learn to use rather than merely something they know. Biblical truth gives them a way to challenge conclusions that feel true because emotions are strong. A child can feel rejected and still learn that rejection does not define worth. A teenager can feel painfully ordinary beside someone exceptionally talented without concluding that God somehow made a lesser person. The feeling does not have to disappear before the truth becomes true.

Give them a better question
Children who enter school primarily asking, “What will make people like me?” surrender enormous power to whoever happens to answer. Their choices can gradually become organized around gaining approval or avoiding rejection. Jesus gives His followers a different center for life: “Jesus replied, ‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind,'” Matthew 22:37.

For a Christian child, learning to place God first changes the question behind many decisions. The goal becomes learning to care increasingly about what honors God. That does not eliminate the desire to be liked, nor should parents expect it to. It places human approval beneath a greater allegiance.

That can become very practical at school. A child may discover that joining in when someone is mocked would make acceptance easier. A teenager may feel pressure to become someone different around a particular group. Identity in Christ gives parents a reason to teach that belonging never needs to be purchased by becoming unfaithful to the One to whom the child already belongs.

Paul describes Christian identity in language that joins worth with purpose: “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago,” Ephesians 2:10.

The word masterpiece can easily be turned into another self-esteem slogan, but Paul’s point is richer. The believer is God’s workmanship, and life in Christ is directed toward purposes God has prepared. Children therefore do not need to spend their school years proving that they deserve significance. Their abilities can be developed because those abilities can be used well. Learning can matter because the mind can be cultivated. Relationships can matter because other people are worth loving. Achievement can be pursued without asking achievement to provide an identity.

That understanding also changes the way children can respond to someone else’s success. Another person’s gift no longer has to diminish their own significance. A classmate can be more accomplished without becoming more valuable. Children can learn to admire excellence rather than experience every difference as a threat.

None of this promises a school year without insecurity. A secure identity in Christ does not make a child immune to embarrassment, disappointment, or loneliness. Children are human, and painful experiences will still hurt. What changes is the authority those experiences are given.

Perhaps that is one of the most valuable things parents can send to school with their children this year. Backpacks will wear out. The brand that matters enormously in August may be forgotten by spring. Grades will eventually disappear into old records, and the social world that seems all-important today will change many times as children grow.

But a child who is learning, day by day, “I am known by God, I belong to Christ, and my life has purpose in Him,” is developing something no classmate can award and no classmate can take away.

The world will have plenty to say about who your child is. Make home the place where your child learns whose voice has the right to answer.

Scotty