Tell Her She's Beautiful

We, as Mommies play a big role in building our daughter's self-esteem, most especially if she becomes a teen. My daughter Izah is always conscious of her complexion. She became most particularly aware of this during her grade school years. She has a classmate then who always teased her. We didn't know about this because she's not the kind of child who will run to us crying whenever she's being teased in school. She just kept it all to herself. It was only when we noticed something different about her attitude, like, she didn't want to go to school for no reason at all, that we discovered that she was having problems with some of her classmates, one of whom was even riding in the same school bus with her.

When we learned about it, the very first thing that we did was to reassure her that what her classmate was saying was not true, and that she's very beautiful and there's nothing wrong with her complexion. Her Dad also went to school to talk to the boy who was bullying her.

Once in a while she still tells us that she's being compared to Faye who has a fairer skin, but again, we just reassured her that they're both beautiful in our eyes, and we just keep on telling her not to mind those people who have nothing better to do than to make other people feel low about themselves.

This is one of the most challenging roles of being a parent. We have to instill in their minds that what's important is what's inside their hearts because every person is beautiful if she knows how to care for, love, and nurture other people.