Reply to DD hates her moles and freckles on face

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[quote=Anonymous]OP it sounds like you are feeling caught between trying to convince her that her likes are beautiful (showing her photos of models and actresses with them) and communicating that the are not beautiful and should/will be removed (saying she can have them removed when she’s older, pointing out the mask covers them up).

This might be making your child’s experience more painful. You obviously don’t love then either (she can tell), but she’s basically been sentenced to still having them for at least a couple more years. That probably feels like an eternity to her, especially in middle school when feelings about your attractiveness really ramp up and can feel very central to your identity.

I think you need to go ALL IN on embracing them right now. Find a way to love them, and when she complains about them, validate her feelings (“I know it’s hard to have an unusual feature and I get that you are upset”) but always reiterate that you LOVE her face as it is. Also, pay her compliments about her appearance in conversations that are not about her skin. Take her shopping and tell her how great she looks in her favorite colors. Tell her how nice her hair looks. Lots of praise. Remind her often that you think she’s beautiful.

She will resist and not trust it at first, but she will come around. She might still remove the moles later (which is fine, I totally support her making that choice for herself) but what she really needs right now is to build a sense of confidence around her appearance and learn to feel good in her body. Fixating in her moles and embracing the idea that masks help her cover them up isn’t helping. It’s communicating to her that she is right to feel ashamed of her face. It’s fine if she doesn’t love her moles, but that doesn’t mean she has to hate them, and she can still like her appearance.

- Someone who had terrible acne growing up and whose mother thought she was helping by focusing on my acne when she could have been working with me on my overall self esteem[/quote]

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