How do other children treat those with visible skin conditions?

Children’s attitudes and behaviour towards facially different people can range from
curiosity to abuse.Many children do not understand skin disease and disfigurement
in the sameway that adults do; they often behave inappropriately to thosewith the
skin disease. Children are not socialised to the same extent as adults and so their
treatment of children with skin disease can be much worse than adults’, although
much of their behaviour arises from curiosity as opposed tomalice. Some research
has been carried out to examine the effectiveness of various educational strategies
for changing children’s attitudes to people who look different from themselves. It
was noted that when children were given a 5-hour plan of activities that aimed to
allow them to be put in the position of disadvantaged children, significant positive
changes in the children’s attitudes were found.
Educating children to understand difference should be emphasised in the
classroom setting as well as at home.
Helping children ‘get over’ their curiosity about a condition can help them to
focus on other aspects of the child not necessarily related to the child’s appearance.

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