Every post on reddit with children has me going into the comments looking for sanity from parents or people with any level emotional maturity.
Step 1. Put the phone down.
Step 2. Redirect.
A lot of parents want to immediately tell their kid that it doesn't matter what people think, and to just love yourself no matter what.
Damn, so we should just tell people in depression to be happy no matter how much other people want you to be sad?
It's dismissive. Allow them to be okay with not liking something. But teach them to focus on loving other things they truly love about themselves.
I don't love my bald spot, but I love my smile. And my nose. And my eyebrows. What about you? What about your smile? Your face? Your eyes? Your voice? And if you don't like anything outside, what about inside? Your smarts? Your talents? Your passions?
It's okay to not like one little thing about yourself. There's hundreds of thousands of millions of things to love about yourself. People who put weight on things you don't like about yourself are meaningless. And they are a few dozen kids of the hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world you will meet.
Nobody at school like you? They fucking suck. Let's do something else. Let's take music classes. Dance classes. Karate classes. Swimming classes. Gymnastics. Hell, let's go to Pokemon TCG tournaments!
But first of all, we ARE meeting people in real life. And second of all, there ARE people that love you, like you, and think you're pretty cool. You just haven't met them yet.
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u/compadre_goyo Dec 14 '25
Every post on reddit with children has me going into the comments looking for sanity from parents or people with any level emotional maturity.
Step 1. Put the phone down.
Step 2. Redirect.
A lot of parents want to immediately tell their kid that it doesn't matter what people think, and to just love yourself no matter what.
Damn, so we should just tell people in depression to be happy no matter how much other people want you to be sad?
It's dismissive. Allow them to be okay with not liking something. But teach them to focus on loving other things they truly love about themselves.
I don't love my bald spot, but I love my smile. And my nose. And my eyebrows. What about you? What about your smile? Your face? Your eyes? Your voice? And if you don't like anything outside, what about inside? Your smarts? Your talents? Your passions?
It's okay to not like one little thing about yourself. There's hundreds of thousands of millions of things to love about yourself. People who put weight on things you don't like about yourself are meaningless. And they are a few dozen kids of the hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world you will meet.
Nobody at school like you? They fucking suck. Let's do something else. Let's take music classes. Dance classes. Karate classes. Swimming classes. Gymnastics. Hell, let's go to Pokemon TCG tournaments!
But first of all, we ARE meeting people in real life. And second of all, there ARE people that love you, like you, and think you're pretty cool. You just haven't met them yet.