What Should I Do With My Hair? Parenting Tips For Kids’ Self-Esteem Questions
I’m standing at the kitchen counter spreading peanut butter on whole wheat bread for school lunches when my 9-year-old Lila leans in the doorway, twisting the end of her thick curly ponytail around her index finger, and says, “What should I do with my hair?” It’s picture day, I remember, before I can open my mouth to give the answer I used to give.
Three months ago, the first time she asked this question, I’d wiped my hands on my jeans, tilted her chin up and said, “It’s beautiful just the way it is! I love your curls.” She’d just rolled her eyes, pulled her hood up over her head, and walked out. A few hours later, I found her in the bathroom holding my flatiron, half the front of her hair straightened, the ends of a one-inch section singed. She cried for 20 minutes, said a girl in her class called her hair “frizzy lion mane” at recess, and she just wanted it to look normal for once.
This time, I don’t reach for the generic compliment. I put the knife down, wipe peanut butter off my palm, and walk over to her. I say, “What’s got you thinking about it today? The comment from Mia last week, right?” She nods, picks at a loose thread on her sweatshirt, says she doesn’t want everyone looking at her frizzy hair in the yearbook forever.
I don’t argue that it’s not frizzy, that it’s just curly. I say, “That makes total sense. If someone says something that bugs you about how you look, of course you’re going to overthink it before everyone takes your picture.” She blinks, like she wasn’t expecting me to agree that her feeling is okay. As a 4th grade teacher, I see this dynamic play out all the time. Most of us think our job is to build our kids’ self-esteem by telling them they’re perfect exactly as they are, but that just shuts down the conversation. When a kid asks what they should do with their hair, they’re not asking for a compliment. They’re asking for help with a feeling they don’t know how to sort out.
Last fall, a mom emailed me panicking about her 10-year-old son, Javi, who’d started wearing his hood up every single day, even during recess when it was 80 degrees out. She’d tried everything: telling him his thick wavy hair was gorgeous, asking him why he hated it, even offering to take him to a fancy salon. He just shrugged and wouldn’t talk. I told her what I’d started figuring out with Lila: when kids ask or act like they need to change their hair, it’s almost never actually about the hair. It’s about feeling out of control, or hurt from a throwaway comment, or just trying to figure out who they want to be in front of their friends. The worst thing we can do is turn it into a big lesson about self-love that makes them feel wrong for feeling how they feel. I told her to skip the speech, just offer to take him to get whatever cut he wanted. She took him a few days later, he got a fade on the sides and kept the long top he’d been seeing on TikTok. He walked into class the next morning without his hood, and never wore it to school again. Turned out the only thing he wanted was a little help fixing what felt wrong to him, not a lecture about loving what he already had.
Back to Lila and picture day. I pulled out the hair basket we keep in the hall closet, and laid three concrete options out for her: half-up with the sparkly star clip she got for her birthday, braided sides with the rest down, or I’d help her straighten the whole thing carefully, no burning. She thought for a minute, twisting her ponytail again, and picked the half-up. We did it in five minutes, she adjusted the clip in the mirror, grinned, and grabbed her lunch box. That day when I picked her up, she said multiple people told her her hair looked good. But I also know it wouldn’t have mattered if they didn’t—she felt like she’d done what she needed to feel comfortable, and that was enough.
What I’ve learned, that I wish someone had told me earlier, is that you don’t have to fix the desire to change your kid’s hair. You don’t have to convince them it’s perfect. If they want bangs, book the appointment. If they want to straighten it for a dance, teach them how to do it safely with heat protectant. If they want to wear a hat for a week while they figure out what they like, let them (as long as it’s allowed at school). The only small rule I follow now is I don’t lead with “it’s beautiful the way it is.” I lead with “What do you wish was different?” or “That makes sense, you want to feel good today. Let’s figure out what you want.” That small shift changed everything.
It didn’t stop Lila from asking the question again—she asked it last week before her friend’s birthday party, and she asked it again this morning when we were talking about bangs. We’re getting matching curtain bangs this weekend, actually. I think they’ll look great on her, but if they don’t, they’ll grow back. Some days she loves her curls, some days she wishes they were pin-straight. That’s okay. It’s not my job to make her love every part of herself every single day. It’s my job to let her decide what to do with her hair, and help her do it. That’s the real answer to the question, I think, more than any compliment or lesson about body image could ever be.
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