To tell my daughters they are pretty?

[Sleepingugliness]

Do you believe, like me, that they will grow up thinking looks matter because thats the world we live in, and I'll be damned if i'm not going to try to protect them from all that hell and make them believe in their own beauty. Cameran diaz has written something on the subject and says we shouldnt tell young girls they are pretty because it reinforces the notion their worth is defined by their looks. I agree we should praise young girls for other stuff too but I know I will tell my daughters they are beautiful, not least because they absolutely are and always will be.

Definitely DEFINITELY - praise your kids for everything. Not, of course, just appearance, but all the other things - kindness, thoughtfulness, working hard at school ...

Alas, my parents were of the opinion that when you had kids, your duty as parents was to belittle, criticise and never, ever praise. If I (rarely) got, say, a mark of 89 per cent in a school math test, my father, instead of saying 'fantastic' (knowing that I had always struggled with maths) would rant: 'How did you lose eleven marks?' Same with being quite good at English - if I had an essay praised, by parents would say stuff like 'Well, the rest must have been pretty awful if your English teacher liked yours.'

I honestly felt their whole philosophy when it came to child-raising was 'we must DESTROY any burgeoning self-confidence we spot in the children.'

I'm in my seventies now and I still bloody SEETHE when I think about this.

Sorry, OP, just gone off an a tangent/rant ... please PLEASE praise your dear daughters and sons, all Mumsnetters [got a bit emotional now

Going against the grain but I think YAabitU if you keep saying they're beautiful as it then makes that important or an issue so that's where Cameron is coming from, as someone where too much emphasis is placed on her looks all the time (disclaimer: I'm not her ) so no, I rarely tell my dd she is beautiful and I focus on other things which are great about her.
I don't think self esteem comes from being told you're beautiful FWIW

I thought I should avoid defining dd by her looks and focussed on praising the brave type stuff. Then, when she was 5, and I'd said something about her being beautiful, she said 'But I'm not beautiful Mummy, you always say I look smart not beautiful.' So I rethought that and have told her ever since that she is!

I agree with onescoop beautiful inside and out is better

Very few girls ds1(10)'s year are pretty. I can be objective because I have ds's.
My ds's are lovely but aren't models!!
So I disagree with all these mothers telling their dd's that they are "beautiful every day, because they are".
I see about 10-20 beautiful women , on a playground, out of about 400 women.
So telling all girls they are beautiful is seriously lying and rubbish isn't it. How is that going to help them? When they get to teenagers and realise they aren't all that attractive.
Some if us are beautiful, some if us aren't that pretty, some aren't very attractive at all, most of us are totally normal - neither pretty nor ugly,
Statistically they can't all be beautiful can they?
So what is it that you all are trying to achieve?

My DD is beautiful. Whether she is attractive or not is subjective and changeable. Her beauty is not.

Not many people are beautiful,don't lie.

It entirely depends on what you mean by beautiful.

I tell my DC every single day that they're beautiful.

I think other posters here (as am I) are saying that you praise your daughters and sons for all sorts of things. That they look great, of course, but other stuff too. Kindness, helpfulness, working hard at school, being nice not just to friends but also perhaps the kid in their class who finds it hard to make friends. To be intolerant of bullies, to be nice to elderly people (as in given up seats on buses and trains), to give a hand around the house ... etc. etc.

All these things, and more, please praise their efforts. It's awfully easy to pick up on things that kids do that disappoint us, and forget to comment on what they do do right. And the more you praise, the more they'll do it.

It's not what you say but how you say it. Tell them they're pretty/gorgeous/beautiful as long as you're not comparing their looks to others or scrutinising them.

KatyMac, I remember commenting how stunning your DD is on your thread about you labouriously applying the sparkly bits to her contume.

I tell my 3 year old DS that he's handsome, and gorgeous, and kind, and clever and a good boy every single day. Sometimes he tells me that I'm beautiful - and sometimes he tells me that he is!

By beautiful I think I mean that she's a lovely, gorgeous little girl. I wouldn't say I mean it technically (eg similar to Audrey Hepburn). Should I only say something that is literally accurate, as in "You're not ugly but I wouldn't say that you're pretty at the moment, a lot of people still mistake you for a boy despite the fact that you have long hair, but that may well change as you grow older"?

I occasionally say to my DD she is pretty . I sense that DD knows she is stunning, although she's not big headed, just happy in her physical self. I tell her she is even more beautiful inside

Tell her she's beautiful. My dad told me this all the time and I believed him. I'm actually very ordinary but was confident about my looks which men found appealing, even though I was nothing special. Confidence is very attractive. Even now, I have very few hang ups about my looks because my dad was so convincing (probably believed it himself, bless him.)

I tend to say "lovely" & "smart" rather than beautiful

I always tell ds hes handsome because he is.

I enjoyed a similar sort of upbringing to oldgrandmama's, and I think the damage done by not feeling as though I was all that special to my own parents was and continues to be incalculable. Children aren't daft, as they get older they know perfectly well whether they're actually beautiful or not, but it's still really important for them to hear how special they are to their parents. Beautiful, kind, funny, hardworking, a good singer, a good cook, a good friend .... keep on giving them loving reinforcement.

I think what should be avoided is the comparison phrases: "more pretty than x," "prettiest in your class." I am hoping to avoid giving the impression you can rank people by appearance, or at least emphasise that different people will rank differently and there is no absolute to aspire to.

I must admit that I do find it an odd thing to mention regularly, especially if it is in general terms. I can imagine saying DD looks pretty when she has done her own hair and tried to make it look nice, for example, but can't imagine a conversation just about looks. If I were to ask my mum if I was pretty, she would look at me and wonder if I'd just had a haircut or something, it is strange to bring up just for its own sake, isn't it? Isn't the normal response to "am I pretty?" to ask why they are asking and if anything is wrong, it can't be a normal everyday question, surely? If it was for DD, then I would be worried she thought looks were more important, judgements less subjective and prettiness less flexible than they really are.

I think it's fine to praise looks, but unfortunately a lot of people have a default setting to tell little girls how lovely they look and to continually reinforce that looks are their primary currency. Just listen to how people greet girls vs boys, invariably there is some comment on the girl's appearance. Girls definitely grow up thinking their looks matter, and sadly they're right. I'd rather my daughter was praised for other qualities to balance things out.

Yes, definitely tell her she is beautiful., whether it is true or not doesn't matter.

Of course not everyone is beautiful or pretty and when she is grown up she will know that but she will also know you think she is beautiful.

I don't know if my parents ever told me I was beautiful when a child /teenager. As adults Dm will say we were beautiful children, but the only comments I remember as a teenager are my mum telling me I was like her as she was always the plain one (she wasn't she was stunning but shy) and my DF making snipes about my weight, and once commenting that I looked pretty in a surprised manner.

People always say how biased parents are so it's hard feeling that despite that bias your parents don't think you're beautiful. You feel that If they don't, what chance have you got that anyone else will.

Sometimes, but I'm more likely to tell them how proud I am. I tell them how proud I am of their school, how hard they work, how talented they are, dd1 has the most beautiful waist length hair and I tell her how gorgeous that is, that she has a beautiful smile where she gets a real twinkle in her eye, and so on ...

So yes I do tell her she is beautiful, but generally as only part of the other things I am so proud of her for .

Thank you MammaTJ - fortunately DD is more concerned with her dancing ability - something I can't effectively judge

IME even the most stunning teenage girls have a list of hang-ups about their looks. You can tell them they are beautiful hourly but it only takes one moron at school to say "your hair's frizzy/skin looks blotchy/bottom is fat" to destroy years of self-esteem building.

Which is why I pass to mine on any compliments I hear from friends and acquaintances about them (both gorgeous, naturally), as they take far more notice of them than of my subjective declarations.

But I don't shower them in compliments daily, because they become meaningless if heard constantly. I tell them if a certain top or hairstyle suits them or if they look particularly lovely one day etc