This is all beautifully said. And, yes, your little girl IS beautiful. But if I knew her from more than a picture, I am sure I would see the beauty in much more than her appearance.
I am just hoping for some really awkward teen years.Yeah, and yet I speak from very personal experience when I say, a little girl who was always told she was beautiful, excelled in school, had lots of friends, who then, say, gained weight in middle school and was suddenly told she was ugly and worthless from many directions, lost the friends she had all through elementary school, and ceased to have her intellectual and academic ideas respected purely because of the "decline" in her looks...well, she can have a lot of scarring that may never fully fade. Sadly, society continues to link appearance and worth for women. I was in the same honors classes with the same kids getting the same competitive grades and academic nods we had all always gotten, but suddenly my project ideas weren't worth listening to because of my weight
( ... )
Parenting is definitely not for the faint of heart, that's for sure! I'm sorry to hear you had a tough period in middle school. It sounds dreadfully painful. Kids, especially 13-year-olds, can be exceptionally cruel. I think the hard part to recognize when you're in the thick of it is that almost everyone gets picked on for some reason, and if they can't find an easy target, kids will simply make one up. I had a lovely friend who moved away to a new school in 6th grade, and her new "friends" decided to unfriend her one day for no reason -- literally just because they could.
It's because I know this stuff is coming that it's important to me that E. recognize the important parts of herself are on the inside. The external stuff is fungible (as you note) and people are always going to make incorrect assumptions based on appearance. That's why you need a strong inner core to tune them out.
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I am just hoping for some really awkward teen years.Yeah, and yet I speak from very personal experience when I say, a little girl who was always told she was beautiful, excelled in school, had lots of friends, who then, say, gained weight in middle school and was suddenly told she was ugly and worthless from many directions, lost the friends she had all through elementary school, and ceased to have her intellectual and academic ideas respected purely because of the "decline" in her looks...well, she can have a lot of scarring that may never fully fade. Sadly, society continues to link appearance and worth for women. I was in the same honors classes with the same kids getting the same competitive grades and academic nods we had all always gotten, but suddenly my project ideas weren't worth listening to because of my weight ( ... )
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It's because I know this stuff is coming that it's important to me that E. recognize the important parts of herself are on the inside. The external stuff is fungible (as you note) and people are always going to make incorrect assumptions based on appearance. That's why you need a strong inner core to tune them out.
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