I was a healthy baby (10 pounds), but a very ugly child. I wasn't apeshit ugly, but definitely not a looker (plagued by allergies that resulted in a semi-permanent swollen look and patches of eczema). As a kid, if I didn't have long hair, I could've been mistaken as a guy. I was also pretty short and dark, which all my mom's other asian friends and relatives would comment on.

My mom always knew I was pretty fugly, but she never gave a fuck. To her, I was an easy going kid (very easy as a baby) that was very smart and listened well. Most of my teachers liked me, because I was a fast and interested learner that loved reading and thinking.

Most of all, she had this old fashioned chinese belief that the uglier the kid, the more beautiful it would grow up to be, so she was actually hoping I would be ugly.

She was right.

All the things that plagued me as a child actually turned out to be awesome during puberty. I had eczema, which resulted in really dry skin, so I never got acne. My hair grew REALLY quickly, so I had nice hair. I was alway really lanky with a high metabolism, so I remained thin. Most surprising of all, I was a huge baby, but balanced out to a little below normal height during my childhood, but during puberty my body suddenly went "oh fuck we should start growing now" and so I'm about....5'7.6" now, really tall for someone who's parents were from Sichuan (province in China known for short stature)

My chubby face full of baby fat is thinning out now, and my bone structure is showing. I'm not sure if I could be called "beautiful", but goddamn I'm much better now than I was as a kid.

So parents should worry more about their kid's character rather than getting caught up in looks, since looks change REALLY dramatically