Dad's 690 Sweet Lunch Box Notes Work Wonders For Daughter's Confidence

While this can be easy to forget when we're mired in the world of adult problems, life as a child can be pretty overwhelming.

Because as exciting as new experiences can be, they can also be pretty scary when you're not sure what to expect. And childhood is practically defined by how many new experiences it has in store for us.

So when children feel as though the sand keeps shifting around their feet and they're lacking stability, it's important to know that they have a network of love and support to help them push through the scary times in their lives.

And while one dad was relieved to see that his simple yet powerful idea did exactly this for his daughter, it also made a much larger impression than he ever would have expected.

When Chris Yandle was pursuing a career in college sports, he soon discovered that this meant his family would have to uproot often.

And as Good Morning America reported, this proved particularly hard for his daughter Addison, who had been to her fourth school in five years by the time she entered fourth grade.

Although this constant moving stopped after Yandle lost his job and moved back home to Louisiana in 2016, it was by this point that he noticed how anxious Addison had become over the years when she expressed how worried she was about her new school.

As he put it, "I was blaming myself and felt awful and that's where the notes started."

According to Good Morning America, he started slipping inspirational notes into Addison's lunch box on August 14, 2017 and has found the idea successful and rewarding enough to keep on doing it to the present day.

He said the life lessons in his messages are simply things he's learned the hard way throughout his life and he has one major goal in mind for giving them to her.

As he said, "I don't want her to be this meek, mild, timid woman. I want her to be strong, opinionated and independent."

By this point, Yandle has written over 690 notes for his daughter and while they're known to be full of heartfelt life advice and affirmations, his sense of humor also comes through in a lot of them.

For instance, there's a pretty big difference in tone between the note we see here and his first one that read, "Be nice to others. Not everyone will look like you. Learn to spot the unique and special things in other people. You have the power to change someone's life."

And by the time Addison entered seventh grade, it became clear that these notes were helping as her parents noticed a sudden shift in her confidence and independent thinking.

In Yandle's words, "Seeing how she's growing up and how well she's done at school, her mindset, her attitude, that makes me more successful than any amount of books I could sell -- because if I was able help her find that confidence and mold that change then I've done my job as a parent."

And if you're wondering what books Yandle is talking about, you're about to discover just how far these lunch box notes have gotten him.

Although he just intended them to be something he shared with his daughter, Addison's principal apparently encouraged him to try and raise the funds needed to collect his notes into a book.

Not only was that fundraiser successful but the resulting work — Lucky Enough: A Year of a Dad's Daily Notes of Encouragement and Life Lessons to His Daughter — has since been published.

In Yandle's words, "Each page not only is the message I wrote her, but there's an anecdote or story behind each one."

h/t: Good Morning America

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