by Shae Marcus

It’s never the meltdown that gets you. It’s the quiet texts.

“Mom, can I ask you something?”

It comes through in the middle of your day, and something in you knows this one matters.

“Am I good enough?”

Your heart drops. This is your child. The one who walks out the door looking completely put together. The one you know is kind, smart and beautiful in all the ways that matter.

So, you answer quickly. Of course you are. You’ve always been good enough.

But that’s not really what they are asking.

Somewhere between leaving the house that morning and sending that text, something else happened.

Maybe it was a comment. Offhand. Casual. The kind that gets tossed out like it means nothing.

“She’s kind of chopped.” A slang term kids are using now, meaning not pretty enough. In a world of filtered photos and curated feeds, kids are often measuring themselves against versions of beauty that are not even real.

Said with a laugh. Maybe in a group chat. Maybe just loud enough for others to hear.

Your daughter might not react in the moment. She may shrug it off. Pretend she did not hear it.

But later, it loops.

Are they talking about me?
Is that what people see?
Have they always thought that?

That is what sticks. Not the compliments. Not the moments she felt confident.

One word.

It’s rarely just about how they look. It becomes about who they believe they are.

Today, those moments do not stay in the room. They echo. A message left on read. A quick laugh that lingers. A glance across the room. It becomes a silent scoreboard of who is pretty, who is not, who belongs.

Just as powerful as the comment is the silence around it.

The kids who hear it, who feel it is off, who pause for a second knowing it is not right. They say nothing. Not wanting the spotlight to shift onto them.

So, the moment passes.

Except it does not.

It travels home. It shows up later in a text: “Am I good enough?”

More kids are asking this than we realize.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly one in three high school girls report seriously considering attempting suicide. These numbers are sobering, and they also remind us how important it is to stay connected and present in our kids’ lives.

When kids feel they are being constantly evaluated, especially on their appearance, their nervous system rarely gets a chance to fully relax. They are always on, always measuring.

These are not just statistics. They are moments like this. A word. A comment. A silence. Layered together until a confident, capable child starts to question something that was never supposed to be up for debate: their worth.

What they need in that moment is not a perfect answer.

Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is pause. Listen a little longer. Ask one more question: “What happened before you started feeling this way?” Then resist the urge to immediately fix it. Feeling understood often matters more than hearing the perfect answer.

This is not one conversation. It is many. We do not have to have perfect words. What matters is that they know we are a safe place to land.

The truth is, we cannot control every comment they will hear. The world is not always kind, and it is not always fair.

What we can do is help build something stronger than those moments. Over time, these small conversations can help them build a sense of self that does not rise and fall with someone else’s opinion—a sense of self-worth that’s not decided in a group chat, not shaken by a single word and not dependent on who approves and who does not.

And maybe just as important, we begin to talk about the ones who are watching. Kindness is not just about not saying the wrong thing. It is choosing, in small ways, to say the right one. “That is not cool.” Or simply checking in after.

Behind more of these quiet texts than we would like to admit is a child trying to make sense of a world that feels like it is constantly measuring them.

And wondering, quietly and constantly, “Am I good enough?”

The answer has not changed. And when they feel it from us, consistently and quietly, it begins to matter more than the noise around them.

Shae Marcus is the publisher of Natural Awakenings South Jersey and Philadelphia. A mom of two teens, she is currently navigating teenage hormones and her own perimenopause at the same time—sometimes wondering if it’s the universe’s sense of humor or simply her turn to learn a little more patience.