My Son Was Called “Ugly” by Middle School Girls — How We Handled It
I was sitting in the car line when my son opened the passenger door and slung his backpack onto the floor. He didn’t say hello. He just stared out the window. I asked how his day went, and he gave me the classic middle school answer: a shrug and a grunt.
Then, a few minutes later, he said, quiet enough that I almost missed it: “The girls in my PE class told me I look odd.”
I asked what he meant, and he finally turned to look at me. His eyes were a little red. “They said I’m ugly.”
For a second, I didn’t know what to say. My son has the kind of face that should make him immune to that sort of cruelty — piercing blue eyes, dirty blonde hair that flops over his forehead, soft features, average height, average weight. He’s a perfectly normal, good-looking kid. I’m his dad, and I know I’m biased, but he’s genuinely a cute kid. That’s why the word “ugly” felt so absurd to me. It was like someone walking past a perfectly good tree and insisting it was a fire hazard.
But I also knew that my opinion didn’t count the way I wanted it to. When you’re in middle school, the verdict of your peers outweighs anything your parents say. You can tell your kid he’s handsome until you’re blue in the face, but if three girls in gym class decided you’re “odd-looking,” that becomes the truth that sticks.
So I didn’t argue.
I said, “That sounds really painful. I’m sorry. Do you want to tell me what happened?”
He did, sort of. Some girls had been looking at him during warm-ups and whispering. One of them said it a little too loud. A couple of them laughed. The teacher didn’t hear it. Or maybe she did and didn’t know how to handle it. Either way, my son just stood there and tried to disappear.
I didn’t give him a big lecture. I just said, “That was mean, and it wasn’t true. And I know that doesn’t make it hurt less.”
He nodded, and we drove home in silence.
That night, I kept thinking about what to do. My first instinct was to call the school or message the girls’ parents. But something held me back. Not because I thought the girls should get away with it — but because I wasn’t sure it would actually help my son. Middle school kids are good at sensing when adults are trying to run interference. The social fallout could have made things worse.
Instead, I decided to focus on what I could control at home.
A few days later, I found an excuse to talk to him while we were washing the car. It’s easier to talk when your hands are busy. I brought up my own memory of being called “weird” in seventh grade. I told him the exact name a girl called me, and how I could still picture the lunch table where it happened. I didn’t try to turn it into a moral lesson. I just told him that I remembered how much it stung — and that thirty years later, I can barely remember the girl’s name, but I remember that it happened. That alone seemed to help. He looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time.
“Really?” he asked.
“Really,” I said.
We didn’t talk much more about it that day. But I think something shifted. He realized that being humiliated by a peer wasn’t something unique to him. It had happened to me, and I had survived.
The biggest mistake I could have made was turning this into a pep rally about how beautiful he is. He would have rolled his eyes and shut down. Middle schoolers are hardwired to believe their peers over their parents. So instead of trying to convince him he was handsome, I tried to help him build a thicker layer between his self-worth and what other people say about him.
That sounds abstract, but it’s actually pretty concrete. Here are a few things that helped:
First, I stopped asking “How was school?” every day. That became a trigger for him. Instead, I started asking things like “What was the funniest thing you saw today?” or “Who did you sit with at lunch?” It gave him a way to talk about his day without the pressure of having to mention his tormentors. It also reminded him that school wasn’t only the girls in PE. It was still full of small, normal moments.
Second, I made sure he had a thing he was good at. For my son, that’s skateboarding. He’s not a star athlete, but he can land a kickflip, and the other kids at the skate park think it’s cool. I started taking him more often, even on school nights when I was tired. Not as a bribe or a distraction, but because I wanted him to have a community where he was judged by what he could do, not what he looked like. At the skate park, nobody cares if your cheeks are soft or your hair is dirty blonde. They care if you commit to the drop and try again when you fall.
Third, I gave him some language to use if it happened again. Not magic words, but options. I told him he didn’t have to say anything. Ignoring it and walking away is a perfectly valid response. But if he wanted to respond, he could say something simple like, “That’s a strange thing to say,” or “I don’t care what you think.” We practiced saying it without anger. Not so he could win a comeback battle, but so he felt like he had a choice. The power of having a pre-planned phrase is that it keeps your brain from freezing in the moment.
I also told him that some of the girls probably weren’t bad people — they were just being cruel because it made them feel powerful in front of each other. That was a hard thing to say, because I wanted to call them little monsters. But I knew hating them would only make my son feel more like a victim. Instead, I wanted him to see their behavior as an ugly thing they were doing, not a true measurement of him.
One thing I intentionally avoided was telling him that those girls were “just jealous.” He’s a smart kid, and he would have seen right through it. Jealousy doesn’t explain why an average-looking middle school boy gets called ugly. What really explains it is that middle school is a survival game, and kids pick targets to feel safer themselves. Once I started seeing it that way, it was easier to help him — because it wasn’t about his face at all. It was about their fear.
About two weeks later, he was FaceTiming a friend after school, and I heard him laugh for the first time in a while. It was a stupid, goofy laugh about something that happened in science class. I leaned against the kitchen counter and listened, and I felt a knot in my chest loosen a little.
We’re not fully past it. He still checks himself in the mirror more than he used to. He still sometimes gets quiet on Sundays before the school week starts. I don’t think a single conversation can undo the sting of that kind of cruelty. But I’ve stopped trying to “fix” it. Instead, I’m trying to walk alongside him.
Sometimes I still want to say, “You’re the cutest kid I know.” But I don’t. Because he doesn’t need me to be his cheerleader right now. He needs me to be proof that the world is bigger than the girls in PE class. He needs a dad who lets him talk at his own pace, who washes the car with him, who remembers that he survived seventh grade once too.
The other night, he asked me if I ever thought about the girl who called me weird. I told him the truth: not in years, until he asked. And he said, “Do you think they remember you?”
I said, “Probably not. They were probably thinking about their own stuff.”
He thought about that for a minute. Then he said, “Okay.”
That was it. No big revelation. No tears. Just a kid putting one foot in front of the other, the way we all do. I don’t know what the next month will bring, or whether some other girl will say something thoughtless. But I know he’s not walking through it alone. And I know that’s worth something.
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