Helping Your Child Respond to Comments About Their Hair

Children handle comments about their hair best when they have a small set of rehearsed responses and permission to use any of them, including silence. Give your child three options — ignore, one short line, or find an adult — and practise each. Having a choice is what removes the panic, more than any single perfect comeback.

What these comments sound like

They are rarely dramatic. Most are small, casual, and repeated:

• “Why is your hair like that?”
• “Is that your real hair?”
• “It looked better last week.”
• “Can I touch it?” — asked constantly
• “Your hair is crazy.”

Individually, each is survivable. The weight comes from frequency. A child fielding a version of this every week is doing steady, invisible work, and that is what wears them down.

Give three options, not one comeback

Parents often try to arm a child with the perfect line. It rarely survives contact — the moment is too fast, and if the line doesn't land the child feels they failed twice.

Offer a menu instead:

1. Ignore it and walk on. A complete, legitimate response. Say so out loud, or your child will read silence as failure.
2. One short line. “It's just how my hair grows.” “Yep, it's real.” “I like it.” Flat, unbothered, no explanation offered.
3. Go and tell an adult. Especially when it is repeated or when other children join in.

Rehearse all three. The goal is that in the moment your child chooses rather than freezes.

Don't send them in as an educator

It is tempting to teach a child a full explanation of textured hair so they can inform the person asking. Resist it.

Putting a seven-year-old in the position of teaching their classmates places the burden in the wrong place. Your child's job at school is to be a child. A short flat answer is enough, and “I don't want to talk about it” is a complete sentence.

Separate curiosity from cruelty

Help your child tell the difference, because the two need different responses.

Curiosity is usually one question, asked once, with no audience. A short answer handles it.

Cruelty is repeated, performed for others, or continues after your child has asked it to stop. That is not a conversation to be managed — it is something adults should handle. Tell your child plainly that this category is not theirs to solve.

When to involve the school

Contact the school when comments are repeated after being addressed, when several children are involved, when your child is changing their behaviour to avoid it, or when hair is being touched or pulled without consent.

Be specific in writing: what was said, when, by whom, how often. Ask what the school will do and by when. Vague concerns get vague responses; documented patterns get action.

The part that happens at home

Notice what your child hears you say about your own hair. A parent who sighs about their hair being unmanageable is teaching a lesson they didn't intend.

Notice, too, whether your child sees their hair reflected anywhere — in books, on walls, among the adults around them. A child who has seen their hair treated as ordinary and good in a dozen quiet contexts arrives at a playground comment with something solid already in place. That is the entire reason My Day exists.

Common questions