Brave Parents Conversations: My daughter's friend told her she wasn't pretty
Jan 02, 2023“What do I say to my daughter about beauty? Her little friend told her that my older daughter, her sister, is beautiful, but she is not.”
To raise a girl who likes herself, she needs Seven Essential Foundation Pillars. We're going to need to strengthen three of them to help this girl deal with this situation: Power Perspective, Body Confidence, Strong Relationships.
If you’d like a FREE copy of the Body Confidence Family Health Check we talk about in the video, you can download it here.
Transcript
What do I say to my daughter about beauty?
Her little friend told her that my older daughter,
her sister, is beautiful, but she is not.
Okay. This is a complicated one.
So for this,
there's three prongs to this answer. So there's three pillars.
So we talk about, to raise a girl who likes herself,
she needs seven pillars and so we're going to need three of them to answer this question.
The first pillar that we talk about is a Power Perspective,
and that is the idea that we all individually,
your daughter, get to decide if she is okay.
She is the one who judges her.
So she needs to be able to, when people say things like that, to her make her own decision.
And one of the strategies that we talk about in module one,
The Power Perspective, is The Giraffe.
And that is if somebody calls you a giraffe, does that make you a giraffe?
Yes. It does. No. So even a young child,
everyone except Chris, knows the answer to that question.
And so if somebody says you're not beautiful,
does that make it true? You get to decide if
what they say is true and you also get to decide whether or not you get upset by that.
So an example is, someone might say to me,
well, you can't sing very well. And it's true.
I can't. So that bit is true.
But I get to decide whether or not I'm gonna be upset by it.
And that is the same thing with the beauty comment.
It's very tricky for a girl. It's very tricky for a grown woman as well.
But that's the Power Perspective. And we can reinforce that power perspective as they grow up,
so they're better able to deal with comments like that they're going to get in life.
The second pillar is Body Confidence,
and this is the idea that nobody in today's society wins the beauty game.
The only way you can win it is to not play it
because beauty is something that someone else bestows on you or they take it away.
So this little girl, she has decided that the sister is beautiful
and your daughter is not.
She's decided. It's external. Every single woman on this planet is going to have beauty taken away from them
because that's how beauty works,
Nobody is beautiful enough in today's society.
So we need to help our girls build their foundation on a firmer foundation
than other people's perceptions of their beauty.
So when the world or a little friend tells you that you're not beautiful enough,
it has to not hurt so much
And the way it can not hurt so much is because it won't be part of her identity.
Her identity will be built on things that she can control.
On her kindness, on her passions,
her perseverance, her courage,
all of those things, not someone else's judgment.
And so in module two, we go through some strategies to build real body confidence
and build her identity on other things other than beauty.
And we've also got the Body Image Family Health Checklist,
which is a way to make sure that your home life is building body confidence
and helping your daughter build a solid foundation
and not relying on beauty comments and the perceptions of beauty for her identity.
The third one, the third pillar, to answer this question,
is Strong Relationships, friendship skills.
It's not okay for that little girl to make that comment to your daughter,
and she shouldn't have to put up with it.
So your daughter might need some help in standing up for herself.
So for example, if this comment was said in a way that was mean,
deliberately mean. Then your daughter needs to stand
up for herself with what Dana Kerford, the friendship skills
expert from URStrong calls a Quick Comeback.
And that is a short, sharp statement to let the other child know.
I heard what you said, I'm not okay with it.
And so your daughter might say something like,
“That's not okay” or “That was really mean”,
and then she walks away. And that is restoring her dignity,
her self respect, and she's saying to her other friend.
“I saw it. It's not on”.
So that's the quick comeback that your daughter can practice.
If your daughter's friend wasn't being mean,
she was just clueless, which can happen because kids are,
then your daughter still needs to act rather than just being upset quietly about it,
she needs to pick a quiet moment and have a conversation with her friend and say,
“When you said that, I felt like this because…and I don't want you to talk about me like that anymore.”
And so that's skill of actually addressing conflict head on is a skill for life.
So many women do not learn it.
I learned it when I was forty in a friendship skills workshop for our daughter.
So to encourage your daughter to have those conversations now is really a gift.
But it's also a way for her to maintain
and preserve and develop her friendship with this friend if she chooses to.
Otherwise, she's going to be hurt and the hurt’s going fester,
and that's going to affect the relationship. So there you go,
that's three pillars that need to be strengthened to be able to help your daughter
in that situation.