Skin Deep

Q. I’m a dark-skinned Hispanic and my husband is white. Our children have a medium-brown skin tone. However, our youngest daughter (age 5) gets very upset about the color of her skin. She’s cried when looking into a mirror and whines about not being “peach colored” like her friends from school. We’ve told her how beautiful her skin is, but she doesn’t seem to hear us and cries with her hands over her face. Frankly, it’s starting to freak me out a little bit. What can we do?

A: If it wasn’t her skin color, it might be her hair is straight and she wants it curly or her eyes are blue when her best friend’s are brown. This is the age when kids notice and comment on differences between themselves and others, so this is perfectly normal.

However, this sounds like it’s becoming a bigger issue than it needs to be because it’s about skin color, rather than eye color, and skin color can take on so much social baggage. Overall, the problem is that you’re taking her comments about her complexion much too seriously. At this point, you’ve likely said all you need to say on the subject and she’s expressed herself enough on the topic as well. It’s time to pull the plug and stop the drama merry-go-round.

Simply put, you need to stop talking about her skin tone. Talking too much about a subject gives the topic more weight than it deserves, and can convince the child that she’s right to be as concerned about it as she is. Stop talking about it, stop trying to convince her she’s beautiful just the way she is, stop asking her what’s wrong with her skin tone.

If she brings it up—and she will!—tell her that the subject is closed, that you’ve talked about it enough with her. Then walk away and don’t engage her attempts to restart the conversation (which she’ll probably do).

If she starts to cry about her complexion being too brown or whatever, then tell her in a gentle tone of voice that she should do her crying in her room. This is not heartless because you are helping her learn to control her emotions. She doesn’t need an audience for that lesson.

Finally, completely stop talking about her appearance. When she brings up her skin, say, “We’ve already talked about that,” and change the topic. If she persists, remind her that the topic is closed. Repeat these steps as often as you need to and she’ll eventually give up and move on to other things.