Why Do I Sometimes Think My Kid Is Ugly? Parenting Truths No One Talks About
I was sorting through my 7-year-old son Leo’s elementary school picture packets at the kitchen counter last month when the thought popped into my head uninvited: Wow, he looks really ugly here. The night before picture day, he’d snuck a pair of my fabric scissors to trim his own bangs, leaving them so lopsided one side hung halfway over his eye and the other ended three centimeters above his eyebrow. A giant cowlick stuck straight up at the back of his crown, his two front baby teeth fell out two weeks prior so he’s got a gap big enough to stick a Lego through, and the photographer caught him mid-giggle so his cheeks are squished so far up they almost cover his eyes. I stood there holding the glossy 5×7 and felt a hot wave of guilt hit my chest immediately. What kind of mom thinks that about her own kid?
I stuffed the photo back in the envelope and texted a group chat of three of my mom friends, just offhand: “Guys be honest, have you ever thought your kid was ugly? Don’t judge me.” Within five minutes, all three replied. One said her 11-year-old just started getting pre-teen acne and won’t wash his face, so she caught herself thinking it last week when they went for a family portrait. Another said when her daughter was a toddler she had a really unflattering bowl cut that a stylist messed up, and every time she looked at her for a month she thought “yikes that hair makes her look so odd.” The third, my sister who has a 9-year-old, said she thinks it at least once a month when he refuses to comb his hair and his glasses are held together with a rubber band. None of us had ever talked about it before.
We all agreed it’s not that we don’t love our kids more than anything. It’s just this split second, unplanned thought that pops out of nowhere, and then you feel terrible for it immediately. I started thinking about where it even comes from. We’re surrounded by images of “perfect” kids everywhere: the filtered baby reels on Instagram, the toothpaste ads with smiling perfectly straight teeth, the back-to-school catalogs with kids with flawless skin and perfectly styled hair. We don’t even realize we’re internalizing this narrow idea of what a kid is supposed to look like. So when your kid shows up with a self-inflicted haircut, or a pimple, or crooked teeth, or a nose that’s a little too big for their face right now, your brain does that quick comparison, and that’s where the thought comes from. It’s not a flaw in how you love your kid, it’s just the garbage we all absorb without thinking.
A minute after I had that thought, Leo wandered over to the counter and leaned over my shoulder to see the photo. He squinted for a second, then cackled. “Dang, I look terrible,” he said. “Can we get the other one where I’m holding my frog? That one’s way better.” I almost opened my mouth to automatically say “No, honey, you look great!” like I’d been taught to my whole life. But I stopped. Because he didn’t think he looked great, and lying to him wouldn’t change that. So I said, “Yeah, your bangs are pretty wild here. That was a pretty crazy decision to cut them the night before pictures, huh?” He nodded, still laughing, and agreed that it was a bad call. We ordered the silly frog photo, and put the ugly one in the junk drawer to pull out and laugh at when he’s a teenager.
That moment made me realize the guilt we feel over having this thought isn’t the real problem. The problem is what we do with that honesty, both with ourselves and with our kids. Most of us are taught that we have to think our kid is the most beautiful thing in the world 100% of the time, or we’re bad parents. But that’s just not realistic. If you catch yourself having that thought, don’t spiral into shame. Just say to yourself, out loud if you need to: “That’s just the dumb beauty standard talking. I love this kid more than anything, this doesn’t change that.” It takes 10 seconds, and it stops the guilt from sticking around.
For your kid, the rule I’ve started following is simple: don’t rush to contradict them when they say they don’t like how they look. Instead of the automatic “you’re perfect!” that doesn’t help anyone, try saying something that acknowledges what they’re seeing, then adds what you see. If your kid says “I hate my crooked teeth,” you can say “Yeah, they are pretty crooked right now, aren’t they? I love how wide you smile when you’re telling a joke, anyway.” If your kid says “This haircut makes me look ugly,” you say “It didn’t turn out how you wanted, did it? I still think it looks like you, and that’s my favorite thing.”
I saw this play out with my niece a couple years ago. She was 12, had really crooked teeth, and was really self-conscious about it. Her mom would always brush it off and say “You’re so beautiful, don’t worry about it” when she brought up braces. My niece stopped talking about it, but I noticed she started covering her mouth when she laughed, and wouldn’t take photos with the family. Last year, her mom finally just sat down and said “Yeah, your teeth are really crooked right now, that must be annoying. Let’s call the orthodontist next week to get you an appointment.” My niece cried, because no one had ever actually agreed with her that it was okay to not like how something looked. She didn’t need her mom to tell her she was perfect, she needed her mom to meet her where she was.
I still have that split second thought sometimes. Last week, Leo woke up with bed head that was sticking up every direction, and he refused to wet it down to comb it, and as we walked into school I caught myself thinking, man, he looks like a little porcupine, that’s kind of ugly. Ten minutes later, I watched him run over to his best friend, tackle him in a hug, and pull a shiny rock he found out of his pocket to give him, and I couldn’t remember what I was even thinking. The thing is, no one talks about this, but most parents have these little unkind, random thoughts sometimes. They don’t make you bad. They just make you human. What matters isn’t the split second thought. It’s what you do after it: don’t lie to your kid, don’t beat yourself up, and keep focusing on the parts of them that have nothing to do with how they look. It’s messy, it’s not perfect, and that’s okay.
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