"Mommy, What's 'Ugly'?"

I learn new things about my four-year-old daughter, Breanna, everyday. For example, yesterday at breakfast I gave the kids their Trix cereal (little balls of fruit-flavored, rainbow-colored, puffed corn). I had not noticed before that Breanna would eat her cereal one-by-one leaving behind the purple-and-blue colored cereals and saving them for last.

For the past two weeks, Breanna’s lips have been chapping. She would pick at the dry skin, which exacerbates it, and causes her lips to crack. I have been applying, or attempting to apply, lip balm to it whenever I could. She would always cry out in protest.

One night, as I again attempted to apply the medication to her lips, she pushed my hands away. Vexed, I said, “Breanna, your lips are… (I looked for a word to explain it in a term she could understand, and couldn’t find any)… ugly.” The word must have confounded her as she succumbed to the administering of the blasted and awful-tasting ointment.

As I generously applied lip balm to her lips, Breanna asked, “Mom, what’s ‘ugly’?”

The question stunned me. In a world where young girls are pressured to conform to what the media and society states as being the standard for beauty, we made it a point that Breanna understands fully that she is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” We repeatedly tell her that she is a beautiful girl and that God has made her special (we’ll deal with issues of pride later, that’s easier than insecurity :P). We would often tease her and call her “our baby” and she would berate us with, “I’m not a baby! I’m a beautiful girl!” You would smile, of course. But she is merely declaring, with all the guileless humility of a child, the simple truth. We are teaching her that God is the Creator of beautiful and special people. She has never encountered the word “ugly” prior to that night.

I fumbled for words to say to make her forget what I had just let fall. In a feeble attempt to turn back time, I mumbled, “Your lips are sick, Breanna, that’s all. There’s no such thing as ‘that.’ You are a beautiful girl.” And shrugged, nervously hoping that what I said was enough. And it was. In childish simplicity of mind, my daughter accepted what I said without question and the ugly word was soon forgotten.

As far as Breanna is concerned, she, and every person in this universe, is beautiful and special as God has made them. We would like to keep it that way and would appreciate it if you would help us keep that atrocious four-letter word out of our children’s hearing. Our God “don’t make ugly.”