Some Awesome Teenagers

I know you always here bad stories about teenagers and their attitudes, but I wanted to share a good story. I mentioned this back in December....the night we had our ward Christmas party, Lauren had been drawing Donald Duck like usual. She is always so critical of her own drawings, and was really down on herself that night. Brook and I were trying to build her up because she really is great at drawing. We tried to tell her that even though we were her parents, and they usually say that you're good at everything, we really thought she was a great artist. She wouldn't listen to us. We ended up going to the party and Lauren wasn't too thrilled about it so she ended up in the Primary room to draw on the chalk board. There were some teenagers from our ward in the room playing the piano with a friend. Lauren had drawn Donald Duck on the chalk board. I think the friend made a comment about how good it was and they asked her how old she was. She told them and they made a big deal out of it and started snapping pictures with their cell phones. It MADE her day!!! She told me about it afterward and said something like, "I came here thinking I was the worst Disney artist, and now I feel like a great Disney artist.

How cool is that! There are some great teenagers out there that are doing great things. I was so grateful that they took the time to make a compliment and make someone younger than them feel amazing. When she told me about it she said, "They were teenagers!" Sometimes you don't know the impact for good that you can have on someone's life. Something so simple to them, made a huge difference to her.