One of the most important things that we can do as mothers is instill our children with good and positive self esteem, especially in our young black boy and girls. When my daughter was born her skin tone was much darker than of myself, my husband and our son’s skin. I remember my son asking “why is she so dark?” I was upset that my son would ask such a question or maybe I was very sensitive to the fact that her beautiful dark brown skin tones would been seen by some as less than or inferior.

So often we as a black race do such a disservice to our young black boys and girls by not instilling in them a love of self, regardless of their skin color or their hair texture. When my daughter was born I felt an absolute duty to make sure that my daughter knew that she was a beautiful, intelligent black princess.

I can’t stand, no I actually hate when I hear other women discussing their hair or their son or daughter’s hair in negative terms such and “nigger hair”, “nappy hair, “kunta kenta hair” or just plain old “bad hair.” Why are we still passing down this slave mentalities to our children???

I would like to encourage you to help stop this negative self hatred that we have of our hair by passing down the healthy hair torch. I believe that if we can re-educate ourselves by learning how to care for our own hair and come to love our hair just the way God made it, then this will trickle down to our daughters.

Every where you turn we are bombarded with images on television or in the movies with women that are of another race with long beautiful hair or our siztas sporting a straight wig or weave on the music videos or CD covers. Then there is the one big thing that really just gets under my skin with how our young black sons and daughters are portrayed in either print or TV. Is it me or do they always pick the boys or girls with so called curly locs or try to make it appear as if they have naturally curly hair??? What? Are pig tails and cornrows out now because “they” think our children are more acceptable if the have naturally curly hair?

So, just like anything else, we must start at home filling our daughters with positive images of African American women. Making sure that we are not using negative terms to describe our hair. Educating ourselves then passing on the knowledge to our daughters so they can then pass it on to their daughters and before we know it we would have written a new llegacy for our duagthers.  How to  love and nurture their own hair, and accept with great honor the hair that God saw fit to give them.  We should also make sure to have reading materials that accurately reflect our little girls hair and skin color. Lastly, lets make sure that we are always speaking words of life to daughters becasue as so truly stated in proverbs 18:21″ life and death are in the power of the tongue.”

I try to make our hair combing routine something special that my daugther looks forward to because she knows that the end result will have her looking like a princess.  I take this time to speak with my duagther and tell her how smart and beautiful she is and what beautiful hair she has.  Already, at the age of 3 she is very aware of the images of Barbie and Hanna Motanna that I was trying my best to keep her from.  So, I try to balance out the playing field every chance I get with books and dolls that reflect her skin color and hair texture along with loving and reassuring words of affirmation worthy of  a chocolate princess my Mocha-Chocolatta.