I have written in the past, that helping our children develop self-confidence, self-reliance, and self-control all contribute to the development of self-esteem. While these are critically important skills for our children to have it is equally important for us as parents. The reason for this is the effect that proper self-esteem has on our parenting and so much of our lives. It effects the quality of our relationships, our willingness to try new things, and how we confront life's disappointments. Our personal self-esteem directly effects how we behave towards others. Some of those "others" are our children. When we think about how we act when our self-esteem is either high or low, we get a sense of which direction we are traveling as parents. If we look at low self-esteem we can see the pain we can cause. Then take a look at our actions when we have proper self-esteem, and we realize how good we feel and how that translates into good feelings for our children. Diabetes makes our children feel bad enough, both physically and mentally, they don't need us adding to their burden.