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[quote=Anonymous]There’s so much nuance here, it’s hard to give you concrete advice.

On a personal front, I agree with other posters saying you should tell your daughter she’s beautiful. My parents NEVER told me. I think their intentions were good... But I wish I had heard that growing up.

On the flip side, they also never commented on my weight (I was and still am thin due to genetics). I think this was good - I want to be healthy but I never had a fear of gaining weight or thinking that being a size 2 defined me.

The vast majority of kids just look like kids. Not pretty, not ugly, just kids. There is a subset of girls who will get a lot of positive feedback from people for being “beautiful.”  Maybe it’s their complexion, or their clothes, or just that they have a nice composite looking kid face. It doesn’t always translate that they’ll be beautiful as adults. If your daughter does get lots of positive external feedback on her looks, I would make sure she knows she’s wayyyy more than that.

On the flip side, a small subset of kids are just unfortunate looking - maybe a bad combination of mom and dad’s genes - or have an “off” feature. One of my kid’s eyes just look… off. Sort of like Emma Stone or Anne Hathaway. When she was four, she came home crying and saying he hated her eyes. It broke my heart. I’m guessing another kid said something to her. Since then, we have really played up her eyes. We often talk about how much we love them, we find the best hairstyles for her features, etc. She’s only six and already interested in the power of makeup (which I don’t love, but I want to empower her to love or at least accept all her features). So you can learn and adapt as you go depending on your daughter’s genes, what feedback she gets, etc. [/quote]

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