How your very tall daughter feels about her height will determined by YOU, her parents!
She will internalize how you feel about her height; be careful what you say.
I’ve read postings by very tall women on a tall women’s site. Some are heartbreaking, and some are from teen girls and adolescent girls.
When a girl feels like a freak because she’s very tall, this means that her parents or primary caretakers have failed to teach her to embrace her height. It reflects trouble in the household.
Tyra Banks, the famous fashion model, was ridiculed to the point of tears when she was a kid, for being very tall. Is it a coincidence that when she was six, her parents divorced?
I can see the lack of family stability here, contributing to feelings of insecurity in a confusing world.
Such a child will go to school not very confident or feeling secure. This child then becomes a focal point of mean kids and bullies.
If there is an outstanding physical trait, it becomes the object of the teasing. The child then learns to hate that trait and feel different, or like a freak.
My brother and sister-in-law have a 3-year-old daughter. The doctor says that the girl is taller than 97 percent of kids her age. She’s as tall, or taller, than the 4-year-olds she plays with. She towers over kids her own age.
Now, get this: Her parents, especially her father, are very excited about this. With this kind of attitude, I’d be shocked out of my pants if my niece grew up feeling like a freak about her height.
My brother is very sports-minded and wants my niece to be an athlete. Not that he’ll pressure her to play basketball against her will, but he will encourage her to love athletics.
The girl’s parents are average height, so nobody knows where the height is coming from.
But he is so excited about this. The maid of honor at their wedding — my sister-in-law’s best friend since childhood — stands six-one.
Thus, the girl will get only positive vibes from her parents regarding her extra height. And from me as well.
What kind of attitude would this little girl have, if her parents were going into this with a “Oh no, I hope she doesn’t get too tall” approach? What if their mindset was, “Dammit, she’s going to stand out. Kids are gonna be so cruel to her. Why does this have to happen to OUR child?”
Imagine the damage this would bring to my niece’s body image. First thing my brother does when he gets home from work is scoop her up and spend time with her.
She is truly Daddy’s girl. She will have a very strong male figure in her life. He never goes out with the boys after work. He comes straight home: a true family man.
I don’t agree with all of their parenting methods, but the big picture is that I foresee my niece having so much self-assuredness built into her, that being very tall will never be a thorn in her side.
Because this preschooler is destined to hold her head high and exude self-confidence, nobody at school will think to taunt her about her height.
Think back to when you were in grade school or high school. Suppose there was a classmate with purple hair.
Now, suppose you knew full-well that this kid loved her purple hair. She swung it, styled it, talked positively about it.
No matter how different it looked, and no matter how mean you felt one day, would you ever make fun of the hair color? I doubt it.
You’d sense it was a lost cause, because you’d know ahead of time that this girl loves her crazy purple hair.
It’s the same with height. When a girl learns to love it, other kids will know this, and it will not be a focal point for ridicule. Kids often are what their parents think they are.
