The first thing I suggest you do is very important. Remember, our children are who they had in mind when they coined phrase "monkey see monkey do". Trust Yourself! It's okay to do it your way. There're three components to raising happy kids, diabetic or not. They are Self-Confidence, Self-Reliance, an Self-Control. The more of these components your monkeys see in you, more of these components you will see in your monkeys! I'm going to put out some ideas here but you're boss of your situation. Do it your way.

Upon reading three components you might ask "but where is self esteem?" I'll save that particular ramble for another day. Let me just assure you that if your child has self-confidence, self-reliance, and self-control then self-esteem comes naturally.

What is Self-Confidence? Self-Confidence is:

Trusting your ability to form and sustain relationships

Trusting your ability to complete various tasks well, knowing that others value your abilities

Trusting your ability to manage new siuations

Trusting your own judgements and common sense

As you can see trust is a key element of self-confidence. When our children don't have that measure of consistency and predictability in their lives it becomes difficult for them to gain necessary trust either in themselves or in others to become self-confident. So if our children see that people who are most important to them (us as parents) trust them and will provide them with a consistant environment, they will begin to trust themselves, their judgements, and those of people around them. This is beginning of common sense.(Yahoo!)

How do our children acquire Self-Confidence? Self-Confidence comes from:

Being accepted for who you are

Having someone show confidence in you

Knowing there is something you are good at

Having firm expectations of other people's behavior

Not being afraid of failure

Developing competence with saftey of a parent close by

Seeing others you admire and copy, being confident and happy

Sometimes phrase "happy diabetic kids" seems to be an oxymoron. Often it seems all of dark powers of diabetes universe are aligned against you. You wonder if there isn't some evil house elf behind scenes just making everyone's life miserable on purpose. Not being graduates of Hogwarts School Of Magic we can't just wave a magic wand and make it all better. We must prepare for life with diabetes and we must prepare our children. Self-Reliance is a critical skill for diabetic children to master. Think of all of responsibilities that go into daily diabetes care. We all realize that we must keep responsibilities we put upon our children age appropriate. Non less, in most school aged children ability to take some responsibility for their own care goes a long way in giving them some feelings of control over their diabetes. Last month I mentioned there are three components to raising happy children. Self-Confidence, Self-Reliance and Self-Control. No I still haven't forgotten Self-Esteem we'll get there. I'm still of opinion that with these first three components your child can't help but develope Self-Esteem.

What is Self-Reliance?

Self-Reliance is ability to manage on your own: to know how to manage your time, to function and think independently, combined with ability to solve problems. With self-reliance, there is no need for other people's approval before moving forward or doing something new. It's also un-neccessary for constant guidance on how to achieve a goal. you can rely on yourself. Self-reliance is about tasks and skills -- knowing how to do things, how to achieve things or how to manage things. It also includes ability to be alone and to think things through on your own. Self-reliance is broader than self-confidence. Self-confidence relates to what we can do, to specific skills. Self-reliance is about being independent, creative and self-sufficient; having confidence in our inner-selvs to enable us to adapt and manage on our own.

Self-Reliance helps us become:

Self-reliance is also having confidence in your own ideas. It is about being able to see things through to completion. It is about not being afraid of setting goals, and not being stopped by fear of failure. There is a common belief that world is made up of three diffrent types of people:

those who make things happen;

those who watch things happen;

those who notice nothing until after then ask, "What happened?"