Ironic
Last night The Boy teared up and said, "Mommy, today Z said I have girly hair."
This after I wrote the post yesterday on his lovely hair.
This from a 4 year old boy that has always been proud of his "hockey hair".
This from a 4 year old boy that has never made fun of anything regarding the looks of another person, at least not in my presence.
The child that made the comment, Z, is probably the same age as The Boy. He has his head shaved, which is very common here. In my opinion, very few people in this world have such a perfectly shaped head that they can effectively carry this look off. Z is not one of those lucky few.
Being the snarky biznitch that I am, I thought of many remarks for The Boy to spew back. But none of them were very nice, and I don't want him to be that kind of child. So I told him to hold his head high and proclaim, "I have hockey hair because I am a hockey player!"
One of the things I hope to give The Boy is the confidence to celebrate what makes him different. Because he is different. He is adopted. He is Guatemalan. He is not as dark skinned as most from his origin, but he is darker and especially so in summer. He has a unique sense of style and must choose his own clothes and shoes. I want him to be proud of who he is and know that he doesn't have to be a carbon copy of everyone else.
Later, I did take a picture to post on here, which I will do from home tonight if I can figure out how to do it. I combed his hair to take it and he said, "I want to cut all this hair off" while holding the back.
It's only hair. But it's part of who he has become, and it made me sad that one comment from another child changed the way he feels about himself.
This after I wrote the post yesterday on his lovely hair.
This from a 4 year old boy that has always been proud of his "hockey hair".
This from a 4 year old boy that has never made fun of anything regarding the looks of another person, at least not in my presence.
The child that made the comment, Z, is probably the same age as The Boy. He has his head shaved, which is very common here. In my opinion, very few people in this world have such a perfectly shaped head that they can effectively carry this look off. Z is not one of those lucky few.
Being the snarky biznitch that I am, I thought of many remarks for The Boy to spew back. But none of them were very nice, and I don't want him to be that kind of child. So I told him to hold his head high and proclaim, "I have hockey hair because I am a hockey player!"
One of the things I hope to give The Boy is the confidence to celebrate what makes him different. Because he is different. He is adopted. He is Guatemalan. He is not as dark skinned as most from his origin, but he is darker and especially so in summer. He has a unique sense of style and must choose his own clothes and shoes. I want him to be proud of who he is and know that he doesn't have to be a carbon copy of everyone else.
Later, I did take a picture to post on here, which I will do from home tonight if I can figure out how to do it. I combed his hair to take it and he said, "I want to cut all this hair off" while holding the back.
It's only hair. But it's part of who he has become, and it made me sad that one comment from another child changed the way he feels about himself.
posted by Well-heeled mom @ 9:36 AM
3 Comments:
At 12:09 PM,
Anonymous said…
Oh that sucks for him. I hate that we are all so programmed from a young age to point out and make fun of anything that is different from us. How do you teach your kids that being different, unique and original is a good thing when everyone around them makes it so hard? I was just writing about this for a post I'm doing tomorrow.
I'm so sorry he's already experiencing this at such a young age.
At 12:43 PM,
Anonymous said…
What really sucks is that Z. had to have heard this said from someone else, which was probably a parent or older sibling. You gave him the best response for this circumstance.
That Z needs to have "loser" written on his skull w/permanent marker.
At 2:02 PM,
Not-So-Normal-Mom said…
We also have to be careful that who they are is not necessarily what we are making them into. They do need to be unique...but not our versions of it. If he wants to cut it off, I'm sure there is something else that will become his thing that he can be proud of, despite what other people say.
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