Should children be made to feel special?

I was falling asleep on my Nana Ivy's couch in her tiny, smoke-filled dining room. Within an arm's reach, the grownups were gathered around her little brown table with cups of coffee and packs of cigarettes, playing a mean game of canasta. I drifted somewhere between listening and dreaming. I was 9. I heard someone whisper that I'd fallen asleep, and someone else said, "She says she wants to be a poet," and then Aunt Donna, my great aunt, said, "She's gonna make it, too. She's the only one of us got any sense at all."I felt so special. In fact, I always felt special with my grandparents. For 10 years, I was the only grandchild on my dad's side, and I was lavished with love. Was I spoiled? Well, I don't like the word "spoiled" because it suggests that a child is ruined forever like a container of cottage cheese that fell out of the grocery bag and rolled around in the trunk of the car for a week. So, no, not spoiled, but I was — maybe — indulged. They weren't wealthy, but Nana Pat sewed dresses for me and made me dolls, and Papa James told me I was smart and pretty and listened to me recite bad poetry on an endless loop. When I returned home after spending a weekend with them, I was a brat — standoffish and rude. I stomped into my room and acted like I was better than everyone else, or at least that's what I'm told. Maybe I did do that. To me what felt true was that no one in my house liked me very much — not my mom or stepdad and definitely not my three step-siblings. I wore my grandparents' love like armor, and it protected me for the most part, but it was a lonely way to live. I spent most of my life feeling lucky to have been so loved, to have that armor.And then for a time, as an adult, I resented it. The problem wasn't that I'd been loved deeply; the problem was that my grandparents were gone, and I kept trying to find that kind of unconditional love in a partner — one person who could make me whole and protect me. That person doesn't exist. Or, rather, that person does exist, but that person is me. But that couldn't possibly be true, could it? Because loving myself unconditionally is ferociously hard work, like carrying a slab of stone up a steep mountainside in withering August heat kind of hard work. So even with that knowledge, I didn't learn my lesson, or I wasn't ready to live it. I kept thinking I'd feel special when my next poem was published, when my next book was published, when I was invited to speak at this or that event, when, when, when … but every success was tinged with disappointment because afterward I was still just me. Not special. That's what I started to tell myself: I'm not special. My grandparents set me up for disappointment. They led me to believe a lie, and it has not served me well. What a fool I have been. My grandparents, though, they were good people, and they wouldn't try to hurt me. Also, I'm a good person, and I'm doing my best as a mother, and you better believe I tell my kids they're special. What is the alternative? To make a child feel mediocre? That can't be right. And then an idea gobsmacked me: What if we are all special? What if we are all worthy of unconditional love? Allowed to love ourselves without reservation? I wish you could have seen the fireworks that went off in my brain. It's still not easy, this self-love thing: The weight of the stone is almost heavier than I can bear, and I keep tripping on the loose gravel, but the view from the mountainside is breathtaking. Tricia Caspers is an award-winning writer who lives and leads writing workshops in the foothills. Follow her on Facebook at @patriciacasperspoet