to wonder if people shouldn't call their own kids ugly?

[DarcieStarlight]

I was at a friends house having a coffee the other day and a bit of a catch up. She's a good friend of mine and she has a great sense of humour which is why I thought the following was her just being daft.
I commented on how cute her 4yo girls hair looked up in a little bun with a bow in.
Her reply was "well I've got to make an effort somehow she's not exactly a good looking kid is she?" I laughed because I thought she was joking and then asked her if she was being serious. She said yes. She also has a 1yo girl and said that her toddler is extremely cute but the older child not so much. She said she hopes that it's a case of the ugly duckling story and she grows up to be attractive but at the moment she doesn't think she is pretty.
I've never, ever, ever heard a parent think their own child isn't cute before.
Is it ever ok to think your own children are ugly? Or any children in general?

I think my DD is beautiful but she can pull some really ugly faces when she is in a mood 😂

Like a pp I was told I was ugly by relatives when I was a child. I’ve never been able to get past it tbh. It wasn’t the only thing that killed any confidence stone dead but it certainly didn’t help.
If you can’t say anything nice...

That is absolutely horrible

However it's a running joke that I was a horrifically ugly baby. Something that's only ever been joked about as an adult, NOT as an impressionable child. Because I really was an ugly baby! I looked like a boiled chicken!

My darling grandmother apparently said to my parents when she first saw me 'dear God what an ugly baby!'My husband didn't believe me when I first told him that story....until I showed him photos. He still insists I must have been a changeling

I remember a cousin being horrified when I said something about how ugly a baby I was, he was indignant that 'you can't say that! All babies are beautiful!' - to which my dad said 'she was the light of our life and the most precious thing in the world to us.....she is a very beautiful adult, but she really WAS an ugly baby!!

That's just joking many many years later. Absolutely not at the time. I started to look more human and less alien from about the age of 4. And ugly ducklings can turn into beautiful swans!

No child in my mind should ever be told (in ear shot especially) that they are anything for beautiful.

I have a now 13 year old DSS who I met when he was 2. First time I saw him I thought he was gorgeous... my opinion hasn't changed over the last 11 years.

But*

How horrible to know your own mum thinks you're ugly at that age.
What s going to happen when she gets into her teens and insecure about spots/weight/hair etc etc. Most mums would reassure their dc but this girl will still have her mum's words in her head.

That is so damaging
WTH would she say that in front if the little girl?
Unbelievably bad
The little girl will find it hard to move past her mother’s view of her

My son as a toddler was hospitalized for an illness and I had a fellow parishioner stop in to visit us and bring lunch to me and right in front of me on the phone with her husband she said "I just met little EKGEMS and he looks like a normal toddler actually he's really cute" and I was flabbergasted that she and her spouse expected him to like like a troll simply because he was a preemie! Anyhow I cannot believe a mom would say that in front of her child!

She shouldnt be commenting on her DDs looks when she can hear. Theres nothing wrong with the mum having a realistic view of the way DD looks but that conversation should have been in private. I suppose it makes a change hearing this rather than those who go on and on about their stunningly beautiful children on facebook when they are just average looking kids. I feel sorry for the little girl in this post she shouldnt have to hear those sort of comments from her own bloody mother.

@scarbados

I know that scenario exactly, I'm sorry you've been through it. I love your username BTW

Oh and my kids are beautiful because they're sweet, kind, generous and adorabl and I see little elements of the people I love in them. Thankfully neither of them look too much like me.

My dad once referred to me as 'the good looking one' in a jokey way. I have one sister and we don't speak to this day, her dh had a go at me and all the reasons dw was better looking than me in his opinion etc but in quite an insulting way. I defended myself and a huge row ensued which we never really recovered from.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

My DD1 was a very odd-looking baby: bald as a coot, high forehead, small eyes too close together. I didn't go around talking about how ugly I thought she was, but I must have looked surprised when other people said she was beautiful. She was of course much loved, and she had a sweet temperament and still does, but I was mightily relieved when she became a toddler who was not only normal looking but actually pretty. I'm afraid I've probably made the mistake of complimenting her looks too often and I do feel a bit guilty about that. Better than openly finding fault I suppose.

I can never get my head around it. I genuinely do think my children are the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen. They're teenagers now and they both think they're ugly and they tease me about my "mummy-goggles", that I have to say they're gorgeous etc. But to my eyes they really are beautiful.

I worked in a children's centre for 5 years before training as a primary school teacher though, and I don't really believe in ugly children. At least I've never met one I considered ugly.

Not generally a soppy person but this one...nope, I don't get it.

I don't quite understand how someons could think of their own child as ugly nevermind say it to others infront of them. I genuinely think my children are absolutely gorgeous. My youngest two look like clones of me as a child, especially DS and i always thought i was an ugly child looking back on pictures but now i don't think that way because of how much i look like my DS or DD

Is there such a thing as an “ugly baby”?

Well looking at my baby photos I was definitely not a cute aesthetically pleasing baby!

I was scrawny and had bulging eyes and an enormous nose and not much hair and looked like a boiled chicken with a beak. I was loved and adored and my family were besotted with me. But doesn't mean we can't acknowledge that I wasn't a looker!

This sort of damaging shit stays with someone for ever. I had a lot of self esteem issues due to neglect and abuse at an early age, I remember asking my relative if I was pretty, got a non commital answer so that told me no basically, liked to get dressed with my curtains closed as a teen as window was at the front, was told 'who would be looking at you', got told by a girl that I had a really massive nose, had 3 years of being bullied by a boy who constantly told me I was ugly, discussing looks with friends and was told that I have a couple of good features in the context of talking about attractiveness (as in I wasn't but had nice eyes and lips). I have struggled with these things for my whole life and hate the way I look without makeup to hide me. I've never really had a problem pulling though so I can't be that bad but it's down to confidence isn't it. Picking away at someone's appearence will leave them with massive issues.

She shouldn’t have said it in eashot of her daughter.

But not all babies or children are attractive looking, same way not all adults are.

What she said isn’t terrible, her timing was though.

My Mil told me this: her mum had told her [Mil] that people had complimented her older sister on her looks, then they would look at Mil and sigh/tut/shake their heads.

I was that HER MUM of all people would tell her that, when she wouldn't have remembered their saying it at the time, she was too young. What sort of mother would do that to one of her children??? Even if you think it, there's no reason on earth to say it!

(My ds was an glorious infant of incredible beauty of course, all the other mums in the ward must have been so jealous with their potato babies. )

Mine is so gorgeous I wonder how someone who looks like me and someone who looks like her dad produced her
Seriously though babies and kids can be odd looking but it never needs to be said aloud.

Is there such a thing as an “ugly baby”?

Yes.

🥺

My eldest is ginger and at 5 isalready tall and awkward, but to me he is still perfect and handsome.

DH and I have already said, lightheartedly that our youngest will be the better looking of the two. He is blond with dark eyes and I actually think he has quite feminine features (he looks more like me I think, which is probably why). But I still look at both of them and think they are perfect, and handsome and love them both so much.

When I first saw a photo of my baby (taken straight to NICU) I said she was ugly. Bluntness no doubt caused by painkillers/hormones but she didn't look great then.She improved a lot by the time I got to meet her the next day.