Answering Kids’ Hardest Questions: Why Do I Feel Like I Don’t Belong?
This article is part of the Answering Kids’ Hardest Questions series.
Who We Are
A question that a child might ask or be thinking to themselves is, Why do I feel like I don’t belong because I’m not as smart as everyone else or not as good as sports as someone else? Fill in the blank with anything.
I don’t know about you, but as an adult, I often compare myself to others. I look at other moms who seem to have their life all together, and I wonder, What is wrong with me? I look on social media and I see everyone’s perfectly curated house, and I see mine being such a mess and I wonder, What is wrong with me?
In all those ways and more, I’m always comparing myself to others. I think that’s part of our fallen human nature to do that, and it’s something our kids are going to automatically do as well. They’re going to look at their friends around them who are faster at a race or who always gets the math question correct, who immediately raise their hand when a teacher asks a question and they know exactly what the answer is, or who are always dressed in the latest fashions. They’ll look at others and they’ll think, What is wrong with me? Why don’t I fit in?
Who Are You?
Christina Fox
Designed for children ages 3–5, this engaging and lyrical picture book encourages kids to ask important questions about their identity while presenting a more stable and fulfilling perspective rooted in their relationship with God.
I think it’s important as parents that we first help them understand that we’re fallen and that our hearts are often looking to these other things to give us meaning, purpose, and identity. Teaching them from Genesis 1 about who they are as God’s child made in his image helps set them on that course to have a foundation of who they are.
Secondly, help them see how the next part of the story is that Adam and Eve fell into sin and they disobeyed God. They know that story from their children’s Bible, but that explains why we feel this emptiness or often have those questions in our hearts or are always looking for that next thing that gives us meaning and purpose or makes us feel special in some way. It’s because we’re lacking that connection with God that Adam and Eve had before they fell into sin.
We are God’s child. We are part of his family. We are made to live for him.
But then we teach them the good news of what happened after that, how God sent his Son to live the life that we couldn’t live and take that punishment that we deserve by dying on the cross for our sins. And in doing so, when we come to faith in Christ and when we believe and trust in him, then we become God’s child.
We become part of his family, and this is where we belong. This is who we are. We are God’s child. We are part of his family. We are made to live for him. And because we belong to him and and trust in Christ as our Savior, we now are able to do so. And so we find our belonging in being God’s child.
Christina Fox is the author of Who Are You?: A Little Book about Your Big Identity.
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