Do You Ever Think Your Kid Is Ugly? A Parent’s Honest Take On This Unspoken Thought
I pulled the crumpled elementary school picture envelope out of my 8-year-old’s laundry basket last week, the sticker on the front half-peeled off from being stuffed at the bottom of her backpack for two weeks. I slid the glossy class photo out and scanned the rows of grinning kids for her, and before I could even stop it, a thought popped into my head: She looks kind of ugly here.
I froze, folding the washcloth I’d been holding halfway. What kind of mom thinks that about her own kid?
Her bangs were lopsided, cut two inches shorter on one side after she’d taken craft scissors to her hair two days before picture day. Her big front tooth had fallen out the week prior, leaving a gap wide enough to fit a pea through, and she’d refused to smile for the photographer because he’d rushed her when she stopped to adjust her sock. She was scowling, shoulders hunched, and for half a second, that split second before my brain caught up, that’s what I saw.
I felt a sharp twist of guilt, until I remembered a playdate three months earlier. I was standing in the kitchen drinking iced coffee with a friend whose son is the same age as my 14-year-old, and she leaned in, quiet like she was sharing a state secret, and said, “Don’t tell anyone I said this, but sometimes I look at him and think, god, he’s just so awkward looking right now. Is that terrible?”
I didn’t say it at the time, but I’d had the exact same thought. A year earlier, when my son first hit puberty, he sprouted four inches in six months, his limbs outgrowing his torso by a mile, his face broke out in cystic acne along his jaw, and he insisted on wearing nothing but an oversized gray hoodie that smelled like soccer cleats. I picked him up from practice once, another mom commented on how much he’d grown, and in the back of my head, I thought, He looks like a lanky stranger. All I could see was the awkward, the out-of-sync, the thing that didn’t match the soft-faced little kid I’d had just a year before.
What I’ve figured out since that terrible split second with the class photo is that those thoughts aren’t about your kid being actually ugly. They’re not a sign you don’t love them enough, or that you’re a bad parent. They’re just your brain mixing up a bunch of different stuff: your own old insecurities, the arbitrary beauty standards we all absorb without thinking, and the quiet anxiety that your kid will get teased or hurt for looking different.
The first thing I started doing when one of those thoughts pops up now is I name it out loud, just to myself, instead of shoving it down and feeling guilty. If I think “my kid looks ugly” while we’re waiting in the school pickup line, I’ll whisper to myself, That’s not my kid. That’s my 13-year-old self remembering what it felt like when everyone teased me for my thick glasses. That’s me worrying what other parents will think. That’s not reality. Naming it takes the power out of it, and it’s gone in 10 seconds instead of hanging around and making me cranky or anxious for the rest of the afternoon.
The second thing I changed is I stopped making unsolicited comments about my kids’ appearance, even the ones I thought were positive. I used to say “You look so pretty today” or “That’s such a cute outfit” all the time, but what that teaches them is that their appearance is something worth commenting on, something that matters more than the other stuff about them. Now if they show me a new haircut they did themselves, I don’t comment on whether it’s neat or pretty. I say “I love that you did that all by yourself, that took so much courage.” If they pick out a wild mismatched outfit for school, I say “That neon green really matches your sneakers, that’s a fun choice.” It’s a tiny shift, but it stops me from projecting my own ideas of what looks good onto them before they even get a chance to decide for themselves.
I learned that the hard way with my 14-year-old. I spent months nagging him about washing his face, about picking a different hoodie when the one he wanted had a coffee stain on it, about combing his hair before we went to family dinner. Then one day, in the car on the way to a friend’s birthday party, I made another offhand comment about wiping the excess moisturizer off his forehead, and he turned to me and yelled, “Stop talking about how I look! I don’t care if I’m ugly, why do you care so much?”
That stopped me cold. He’d heard the anxiety under my comments, even when I thought I was being helpful. My quiet split-second thoughts had turned into something that made him feel like he wasn’t good enough, just as he was.
Now we have a clear rule: I don’t comment on his appearance unless he asks me first. If he asks if this pimple looks huge, I tell him the truth, but I also add that no one is looking at it as much as he is. If he doesn’t ask, I keep my mouth shut.
I still get those thoughts sometimes. Last weekend I looked at a group photo my friend took of the kids at the lake, and my middle son had his shirt off, and his little soft belly stuck out from all the popsicles and ice cream he’s eaten this summer, and for half a second I thought, He looks a little chubby there. But now I just correct myself, right away. That’s a popsicle belly. That’s summer. That’s him.
It’s not perfect. I still mess up sometimes, still let a comment slip when I shouldn’t. But I’ve stopped feeling guilty for having the thought in the first place. We’re all human, we all carry around all this unspoken garbage about what people are supposed to look like, and sometimes it leaks out even when we don’t want it to. The point isn’t to never have the thought. The point is to not let it change how you treat the kid standing in front of you.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Do You Ever Think Your Kid Is Ugly