Children and Body Image: 7 Ideas for Teaching Your Kids a Healthy Self Image
In our image-saturated culture, it’s more important than ever to help your children develop a healthy body image. It’s impossible to shield your kids entirely from images that may sow self-doubt, but you can teach your child how to view these images and what they really mean for him or her.
Here are 7 ideas for helping your children adopt a health body image.
1. Watch what you say.
Parents so often don’t think before they speak. If you make frequent comments about your weight, the calories you consume, or disparaging remarks about your own looks, your kids will pick up on it. Without realizing it, they will begin to apply those kinds of comments to themselves.
2. Compliment what you don’t see.
Give your kids compliments on their character traits and behavior rather than their appearance. Then they will learn not to evaluate themselves and others according to looks, but according to personal integrity.
3. Compliment what you do see as well.
It’s okay to let your kids know they look good. Inside, they may desperately need to hear a complimentary word from you about their new dress or hat. Just make sure it isn’t the only kind of compliment you give your kids.
4. Keep it in perspective.
Talk to your children about how looks are not what determines the value of a person. How they look is so important to adolescent kids, but try to keep a healthy perspective about looks while respecting where your child is in that regard. Looks aren’t everything, even though it seems that way to the average teen.
5. Inform your kids.
Do your kids know that weight gain is normal when they hit puberty? Does your son know that he is not going to have body-builder muscles at age 15? Is your daughter aware that her hips are going to get wider as she comes of age, and that this is totally normal? Let your kids know what’s normal so they don’t obsess over what’s perfectly natural and unavoidable.
6. Restrict and discuss media images.
While you can’t shield your kids from all media images, you can restrict their television and internet viewing. Talk openly about the images they do see. Watch TV with your kids and look at the magazines they’re reading. Discuss the body images in the ads, movies, and so forth. Let them know early on that such images are enhanced and altered, and that no one can look like the people in the pictures.
7. Teach health, not looks.
Teach your kids that exercise and diet are good for their health rather than all about obtaining a certain ideal shape or look. Good health is attractive in any body type.
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Tags: children body image, kids body image, self image
