Could do with some advice … I feel quite sad this evening about something my DD told me. She is 9, just started in Y5. She feels self conscious about her appearance and she has frizzy hair, especially at the front, which she says she hates. Recently she came up with a new hairstyle to deal with it. She twisted the frizzy bits into a sort of thin ponytail with a little knot and tied it up away from her face, and put clips in to keep it secure. I thought it was a clever thing to do and it looked nice. She was proud of it.
One of her friends, who is a bit forthright, said it looked “weird” and told her to stop doing it. The hairstyle lasted for less than a week. At one point, DD put a certain style of clip in to please her friend, but the friend still said it looked weird. DD said this made her feel “low” and she gave up with this hairstyle.
She wants to get her hair cut - it’s quite long and has been the same style for ages. So earlier we were looking online for inspiration and suddenly she said “Maybe I won’t bother because X wouldn’t like it. She would call me weird”. This just made me feel really sad. I feel like on the one hand, she should be more resilient but I’m also really cross that her friend has made her feel this way. This girl can be a bit domineering and sometimes tells my DD to give her bits of her packed lunch. She also pinches and sometimes punches my DD. Not necessarily that hard I don’t think but DD doesn’t like it. DD also likes football, which she has been playing for a year, but this friend keeps telling her that football is stupid and women’s football is not as good as men’s football.
I don’t want to overreact so I’m not sure if I should say something to the girl’s parents or not. I actually really like them both … they are a nice family but I can’t help feeling that the girl is maybe a bit indulged.
I just wish I knew how to help my DD to get her to believe in herself more and realise that this girl’s opinion doesn’t matter.