How can I help DD get through being ridiculed for her appearance? - Page 2

[JBaxter]

I have boys but your daughter has my coloring!! I also had a friend in school that was picked on because of her dark hairy legs and arms. Her mom let her use an electric razor when she was ( I think) about 9. She let me try it too one night on a sleep over... We did get snotty with the "cool group" and made comments about them not being allowed to shave their legs

Anyway.. Your daughter is beautiful!

[Skippy918]

I've been there too and it sucks. I went to a small Catholic school from grade 1-8. Add in glasses when I was 7 (4-eyes) and braces (metal mouth, etc) at 11, also being the shortest in class and not being able to fight back. I got called ugly so many times that I felt ugly. Other kids had braces and they never got picked on. The smartest girl in class was pretty so she never got picked on. It was just me. This made me an easy target. I, too came home and cried frequently. I was so happy to get to high school. DH was an easy target too (he was the gifted one), but he knew how to turn it around on the other kids.

[Violet2]

Originally Posted by Calm

Great post with heart, as always, GBG .

I really need to report - I have read that link, Lach and it lead me to the website. It is revolutionary, yet so simple. I feel so empowered by it and feel I can change my daughter's life with it. This is the document I just read: http://www.bullies2buddies.com/How-to-Stop-Being-Teased-and-Bullied-Without-Really-Trying
of which I read all the lessons. Many thanks for that. I will pass it on.

I have read some of that website and some articles by the guy running it and...well, it could easily cross the line into 'blaming the victim'. So I would be conscious of that. I mean, the days the bullies sent their lackeys running after me to beat me up were because I didn't 'ignore' them properly? Or the time they stole someone's backpack and framed me for it by putting it in my locker is because I needed to change my attitude? That's absolute BS in my book.

Also, none of that stuff ever worked for me. I think that sometimes, a bully's motivation can be staked not just in how miserable they make the target, but in how they are richly rewarded for bullying with being crowned king/queen of the hill. Then they aren't going to stop no matter how much the target ignores them. The power payoff of bullying can be external to the target and become just a means to an end, so the target's response is no longer important, it's about what everyone else thinks kwim?

For me, personally, the only way I have stopped bullies (and it has been a long term issue for me, I often say I have bully pheremones) is by being stronger and smarter than the bullies. I don't bully back, but I do tell bullies to shut up and leave me alone and stand toe-to-toe with them, assertively standing up for myself. In corporate situations, I outmanuvered (sp?) bullies with excellent performance and being able to prove what I did or didn't do (most bullies are actually quite stupid and often rely on intimidation and lies, they can easily be outpaced by someone who can think 2 steps ahead).

V

[sunnmama]

My dd got comments, questions, and some teasing about her eyes before she had corrective surgery in May (she had intermittent strabismus--misaligned eyes). Some strategies we used over the years were:

talking openly about difference and honoring different kinds of beauty (size, color, differing abilities, etc). She has had friends with much more pronounced differences (one with major facial abnormalities, for lack of a better description, that have required many surgeries over the course of his life for function and appearance). It helped to keep her difference in perspective. We talked about perspective a lot. Is this a big deal or not? Is their comment a big deal or not? Do their comments have more weight than my own opinions? Etc.

Goofy as it sounds, Hannah Montana has some great songs for being yourself and being "imperfect". She liked the music at 6-7, so we'd talk about the lyrics.

We would give her funny come-backs, that she never have the guts to use, but made her LAUGH! Like "I can fix my eyes. Can you fix your face?" Dh would tell your dd to say "I can shave my legs. What can you do about your face?" IMO, it is competely fair to use such a comeback in the right spirit (standing up for yourself with good humor--not picking on someone's actual insecurity, kwim?). DD gets that distinction, and your dd probably would, too.

Finding role models who've been through similar things, and came through fine. A little digging into the people she admires (IRL, or celebrity-type people) can usually uncover a similar struggle in their childhood. She likes having something in common with the people she admires, even if it is something otherwise undesirable.

The bullying is a different issue. I'd recommend Barbara Coloroso's The Bully, The Bullied, and the Bystander for some of those issues.

As for the actual hair, are very thin, gauzy pants to school an option? I went through a few summers without shaving in FL, and wore long, thin skirts and pants in the sweaty heat without issue when I wanted to cover my leg hair. I was comfortable with my leg hair in some situations, but not others, and so that was a solution for me.

And, yes, she is absolutely gorgeous!

[Super~Single~Mama]

She is really gorgeous!

You know what I would tell her? That she is beautiful, and that they are making fun of her b/c they are jealous. I would talk to her about how mean people can be, and how its usually b/c of their own insecurities - it has nothing to do with her. Just tell her that, and eventually it will sink in with her.

Do things with her that build her self esteem - whatever those things may be. Encourage her to do the things she truly enjoys doing, and praise her.

I got made fun of alot too - and my parents talked to me about other people, and why they say those things. Then they encouraged me to be myself, to do the things I loved, and not to worry about what other people thought of me. I've hit some big bumps in the road, but I know that my parents believe in me, and that goes a long way when everyone else is ganging up on me.

[jtbuko]

Originally Posted by GoBecGo

I wore flowery Dr Marten boots for nearly 2 years,

Reading the thread to collect rather than share wisdom at this point, but just had to reply as say I had the same boots. They were the most empowering shoes I ever owned!

[lach]

Originally Posted by Violet2

I have read some of that website and some articles by the guy running it and...well, it could easily cross the line into 'blaming the victim'. So I would be conscious of that. I mean, the days the bullies sent their lackeys running after me to beat me up were because I didn't 'ignore' them properly? Or the time they stole someone's backpack and framed me for it by putting it in my locker is because I needed to change my attitude? That's absolute BS in my book.

Also, none of that stuff ever worked for me. I think that sometimes, a bully's motivation can be staked not just in how miserable they make the target, but in how they are richly rewarded for bullying with being crowned king/queen of the hill. Then they aren't going to stop no matter how much the target ignores them. The power payoff of bullying can be external to the target and become just a means to an end, so the target's response is no longer important, it's about what everyone else thinks kwim?

For me, personally, the only way I have stopped bullies (and it has been a long term issue for me, I often say I have bully pheremones) is by being stronger and smarter than the bullies. I don't bully back, but I do tell bullies to shut up and leave me alone and stand toe-to-toe with them, assertively standing up for myself. In corporate situations, I outmanuvered (sp?) bullies with excellent performance and being able to prove what I did or didn't do (most bullies are actually quite stupid and often rely on intimidation and lies, they can easily be outpaced by someone who can think 2 steps ahead).

V

I definitely hear what you're saying about "blaming the victim," but I think his strategy is really more about empowering the victim. It's just the nature of people, especially adolescents and children trying to find their place in the world, to establish a pecking order. So while it would be nice to end bullying entirely, OP's more pressing problem is to end the bullying of her daughter.

I think that your last paragraph, where you talk about how you stopped people bullying you, is very much in line with the article I posted. You figured out how to stand up for yourself, and how to make it so that it wasn't enjoyable to bully you. The result is that people stopped picking on you. But it's not like those people who were nasty to you gave up their nasty ways just because you weren't fun to torment anymore. they just moved on to some other target. I think that's just the reality that the article I posted is trying to get at, uncomfortable though it may be to say out loud: there's always going to be nasty kids picking on the weak, and the only thing you can realistically do about it is to try to empower your kid.

Originally Posted by thyra

She is really gorgeous!

You know what I would tell her? That she is beautiful, and that they are making fun of her b/c they are jealous. I would talk to her about how mean people can be, and how its usually b/c of their own insecurities - it has nothing to do with her. Just tell her that, and eventually it will sink in with her.

That's what people always told me, and I never bought it. In my experience, the people doing the teasing were usually the smart, pretty, popular girls. While this strategy is common, IMO it backfires because not only is it totally not true (the Wondertime article I mentioned notes that in studies, bullies tend to have really high self-esteem), it goes against the bullied child's common sense (they can see the people who torment them, and it's usually, IME, kids who have no real reason to be jealous of the smart/dumb/fat/skinny/"developed"/flat/glasses wearing/whatever victim).

When my mother told me that the pretty, rich, popular girls (who also happened to be on the basketball team, starring in the school musical, and not getting a C- in algebra, unlike me) were just jealous of my chubby, poor, friendless self it just made me not want to confide in her, because I felt like I couldn't really trust her to give me honest advice.

[Ruthla]

Originally Posted by Calm

Fast forward, my daughter (7 years old) is much like me. She looks like me and is an absolute one of a kind (only luckily for her we had it picked up on by a teacher and subsequently found out she is highly gifted, had this been picked up on in me, mine may have been a different experience). She finds it hard to blend with her age group, is better suited to older people. To be harsh, the kids just don't get her humour or how she sees the world, she really has to dumb it down to get along.

IMO, this is the REAL problem. Her peers are not on her level intellectually and she simply doesn't fit in with them. They might be selecting physical things to tease her about, but it's the "not thinking like them/not fitting in" that's the real problem.

Other than the social issues, are her needs being met in this school? Is she being challenged academically? Or is she bored and frustrated? She may be a target for teasing because she's already unhappy there.

I would seriously consider homeschooling her, or trying to find a school for gifted kids to send her to. A school for gifted kids would have a class full of kids similar enough to her so that she'd fit in. Homeschool groups tend to NOT focus on age stratifications, and if she fit in with the 10yos intellectually, they wouldn't be likely to exclude her due to her age.

[GuildJenn]

Originally Posted by lach

I definitely hear what you're saying about "blaming the victim," but I think his strategy is really more about empowering the victim. It's just the nature of people, especially adolescents and children trying to find their place in the world, to establish a pecking order. So while it would be nice to end bullying entirely, OP's more pressing problem is to end the bullying of her daughter.

While I kind of agree with "whatever works, works," I think bullying is SO much worse and more complex than "just the nature of people...to establish a pecking order."

I strongly recommend a read of Barbara Coloroso's book on bullying and maybe working with the group to understand their roles, as well as empowering your daughter. Another strategy is to be sure she has opportunities to hang out with people of different ages, and different groups, so she has a lot of places to develop her identity.

[Betleowe]

Your DD is lovely. She reminds me of myself when I was a child, I have the same coloring, not to mention that I was full of moles. When I was a kid and teen I was made fun of, everyhting. Apparently, the way I looked and the way I acted was not right, ever. I'm very very short as well, I was always the shortest of the group and that was funny for the rest as well. I've learned to embrace my shortness and I love it know. I'm 5' on a good day.
I was very hairy too, but I was never allowed to shave, going to school and getting bullied and not included in games or in teenage gossip was something of my everyday life.

Now that I have my DD, I'm scared that she will get bullied. We homeschool but when she has the opportunity to play with other children she rather stay by my side and doesn't seem interested in playing with the others. She doesn't find their games interesting at all. She rather talk with older children.

I won't allow her to shave, becuase that will give the kids another reasons to make fun of her..

[bumblecat]

At your daughter's age, I doubt the other girls are allowed to shave either, so I'm wondering if it's girls or just boys teasing about it. I don't know if there are other things she is being teased about, but for the leg hair thing, I would think a cool "I'm 7. What do you want me to do about it?" would diffuse things.

I have dark hair and was very self concsious about my leg hair at her age. I don't remember being teased about it actually, but I was just embarassed by it and wanted to get rid of it. It's that age when you start becoming aware of adult beauty standards and as a kid, I didn't understand why there would be a certain age for girls to start removing body hair. I just saw the older girls didn't have it and I did. Of couse as a kid you always want to be one step ahead of where you are, developmentally. Anyway, my mom told me I couldn't shave them until I turned 12. I waited and waited for that - then I shaved them for a year. I stopped when I was 13 because I decided it was stupid and I stopped caring if other people liked the looks of my legs. Didn't start shaving them again until I was 22.

I'm not sure what lesson to take from that, but anyway, your daughter is right at the age that I think kids are the most sensitive to teasing. Some kids stay sensitive to it for a long time, but the way you describe your daughter and her personality, I would bet she will not be sensitive to it for long. And it doen't seem like she is someone who would be singled out for excessive teasing. She will get a stupid comment here and there, and at her age, that will bother her quite a bit. But I bet it won't be long until it doesn't, and I doubt she will be affected much in the long term - it seems like she has plenty of reasons to be quite confident.

[DCMama01]

I agree that getting teased is probably inevitable at that age. Kids are cruel and tend to take satisfaction in pointing out other's weaknesses.

My suggestion is to teach her how to throw a retort back! I guess you could say I was teased about being hairy, for having big eyes, and for being a goody two shoes. Very briefly, because I threw it back to anyone who went there with me. The two worst happened to be a girl who I teased back for having a big forehead and a Jay Leno chin and a guy with a big bottom lip and ugly boots he wore everyday. The girl in particular ended up with "Forehead" as her nickname. (We actually became good friends too. lol)They left me alone soon after. I was the only "smart" kid who wasn't teased, because I didn't just take it.

I'm all for affirming our kids beauty and creativeness, but I recognize that grade school is probably the most insecure time of our lives. My parents couldn't have said anything to me to make me feel better about having acne back then. (Fortunately, nobody ever teased me about it, whew!)

My daughter has a really odd last name. It's the name of a body part. I KNOW she will be teased for it. Her father was teased for it growing up, but also "fought back" by teasing and his last name also turned into a cool nickname as a result, because he started introducing himself that way. I am going to teach her not to back down. I can tell she's a smart gal already, so she can be even more clever with her taunts if anyone decides to tease her.

Hell, we might practice before the first day of school. J/k

[DCMama01]

Originally Posted by lach

That's what people always told me, and I never bought it. In my experience, the people doing the teasing were usually the smart, pretty, popular girls. While this strategy is common, IMO it backfires because not only is it totally not true (the Wondertime article I mentioned notes that in studies, bullies tend to have really high self-esteem), it goes against the bullied child's common sense (they can see the people who torment them, and it's usually, IME, kids who have no real reason to be jealous of the smart/dumb/fat/skinny/"developed"/flat/glasses wearing/whatever victim).

When my mother told me that the pretty, rich, popular girls (who also happened to be on the basketball team, starring in the school musical, and not getting a C- in algebra, unlike me) were just jealous of my chubby, poor, friendless self it just made me not want to confide in her, because I felt like I couldn't really trust her to give me honest advice.

Exactly!