Is there any subtle way of challenging this?

[Thistledew]

Female friend just posted on FB of her 3 year old daughter how heartwarming she found it to hear "I love my daddy because he tells me I am beautiful".

I would love to say something about the early socialisation of girls without causing too many ruffled feathers.

Suggestions?

Young children learn about relationships that they will have later in life by modelling them with their parents and other adults who care for them. This has been found to be a crucial part of child development by many studies into early attachment behaviour.

There is nothing wrong with a daddy (or mummy) telling a small child they are beautiful.

It is interesting/noteworthy that a small girl has already picked up on being beautiful as something that has high currency in relationships, and it is remarkable that her reaction to being given such praise is to bestow her affections in return.

Maybe it is overthinking the situation, but wouldn't it have been a good response to say "Yes you are beautiful, but daddy loves you because you are kind and funny and clever, and don't you love daddy because he is kind to you?"

No need to make a big scene, but just plant slightly healthier seeds of future relationships, rather than positively reinforcing the message that a girl's key commodity is her appearance and that she can trade superficial praise for affection.

Bit most people live in the moment and faced with a lovely three year old it's hard not to say nice things, In fact if it was hard to say nice things I would be more concerned

As another poster said, you don't need to get your self worth from compliments but going the opposite and going all out to never tell a child they are lovely can also have an indesirable effect

There's plenty if time for the realities of life as they get older, when the world and people are cruel enough as it is

At a particularly low point in my teenage years I do remember telling my mum that 'you only need to be pretty if you aren't clever'. She was aghast! I am too when I look back at what that remark shows about how commodified my ideas about personal attributes had become.

Nowadays I tend to enjoy loveliness for its own sake and look for the beauty that reflects something lovely within.

Maybe I'm branching off a bit from the original topic, but I do wonder if the compartmentalisation of 'beauty' and 'brains' in the upbringing of girls is part of the problem. If a little girl is praised for her beauty she's seen as a princess. If a little girl is praised for her brains or effort she's, um, a geek or a swot, hardly a crowning glory. Our fairy tales are all wrong.

I remember being the precocious reader with short dark hair that got all the narrator/male parts in school plays. I'm not unattractive but never fitted the Barbie-doll model of prettiness, and have difficulty in having fun with my clothes and appearance. I wonder how many others have a similar problem, and whether being limited by others in our childhood make-believe, official (school plays) or unofficial (let's pretend) damages our self-esteem and confidence in our bodies.

The most important thing (in my very humble opinion) is for the child to think they are beautiful themselves, in every way, and to control who gets to evaluate them so that if there ever is a day someone tells them they are not beautiful they know how to evaluate themselves properly (not just on physical beauty).

BUT I do think think that some of how we learn to evaluate ourselves comes from other people at an early age giving us positive messages and if we do not get that we would not learn how to do it.

If that makes sense.

So the 'danger' is that physical beauty is praised more highly than anything else, that someone else gets to evaluate that 'quality' and that the individual hands out that most precious commodity, our love, to people based on what they say about their physical appearance.

But I do not think the friend who posted that comment meant that. I think she meant her child's father thinks their child is beautiful (as does she) and their child loves her father. She may not see anything deeper than that.

I tell my son he is beautiful, and brave and a lot of things, and my daughter too, but I am increasing trying to ask them and encourage them to have a good view of themselves e.g. 'You must feel very proud of YOURSELF for being brave today' etc. "You must know how beautiful you are."

I think the love we feel for parents etc is much stronger than a phrase or word so I am guessing that post is a rather 'cutesy' comment which could be accompanied by a kitten picture and be hanging in someone's loo or the hospital waiting room.

If you want to retaliate I would engage in conversations with the mum around building self esteem for kids etc and not tying love etc into how people look. I think it is a 'parents exploring together' kind of thing rather than a 'there is a phrase I can use to combat this on facebook' kind of thing. If that makes sense.

I do cringe when I see what I consider to be in appropriate stuff on facebook and I agree with you this comment is negative and unimpressive (to me) but I bet others on facebook will like it and think it is lovely and cute!

Oh and agree with Thistledew there is nothing to stop you adding a comment to the comments that says something like
"And she is one smart kid" or "She has brains and beauty" or whatever. or "And I bet there are 101 reasons she loves her dad" (as long as your friend is not going too think that is too personal!

Just as a thought exercise, Thistle ... would your reaction to the post be different if the little girl in question was badly disfigured due to an accident in infancy?

I wouldn't say anything directly but might share something relevant in the hope that it might start to change her view.

There is a Facebook page called A Mighty Girl which has lots of posts on about self esteem, body image etc. Share something off there to her timeline in a few days.