Your question for Auklet: Four year old getting called names like baldy by older children, can you advise of ways to lessen the affects of this to my self esteem as this makes me feel sad.

It is understandable that you feel sad when other children call you names. They may be calling you names because they don't know what alopecia is. One idea would be for either yourself or your parent or guardian to talk to the school about someone doing a talk in class about what alopecia is and to explain to the other children how unpredictable the condition is, how it could happen to anyone at any time, and that it is not contagious, etc. This may help to lessen the name calling.

It is also important that you find a way that you are comfortable with that helps you to cope with these difficult situations. This might involve having a response ready for when they next call you a name. This could be 'please stop calling me names it upsets me' for example. It might take a while until you find the response that you feel most comfortable with, so don't worry if it doesn't quite work out the first time. As well as this you could get some some pretty hair bands or bandanas in your favourite colour to wear for school.

It is difficult to ignore name calling and it can have a negative effect on your self-esteem but remember there are many more caring people in the world than uncaring people. You may look a little different to the other children but different is good and you can still be beautiful and confident without hair - regardless of what anyone says!

Hope this helps, kind regards,