How To Help Your Child Understand Their Changing Body
Worldwide, an overwhelming amount of the population, children and adults alike, report struggling with body image concerns. In Australia alone, some staggering statistics are:
- Body image is consistently rated amongst the top four concerns by young people aged 15 to 19 years.
- Approximately 23% of women overevaluate the weight and shape of their bodies.
- Approximately 15% of men overevaluate the weight and shape of their bodies.
Our bodies are ever-changing, especially for young people whose weight and shape are frequently changing due to growth spurts and puberty – hormones are at an all-time high. Despite how much our body does for us, body dissatisfaction is something that many people continue to experience. This can seriously affect how they go about their daily lives – the feelings they have, the clothes they wear, who they choose to speak to, and even what events they will attend.
To address the growing number of people who struggle with their body image, many mental health professionals provide strategies that parents can use to promote body acceptance and body respect in their children.
These include:
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- Sharing meal times together; bonding over delicious and nutritious meals that you and your child both enjoy. Cooking together and involving your child/ren is a great way to show them how to nourish their bodies.
- Take small steps to celebrate your child for things that you notice, such as their kindness to others, being helpful at home etc, to normalise that they are more than their bodies
- Arrange activities together that include some type of movement, ie walking, throwing a frisbee, rock climbing, soccer etc.
The aim of this article is to highlight the powerful role that parents play in empowering their child to recognise that their body is something that needs to be looked after and cherished. There are many ways to communicate this message. The two most influential being:
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- As a parent, modelling care for and acceptance of your own body
- Practising healthy habits together.
Remember to remind your child that every body, including their own body, will naturally change and that it is a special part of growing up.
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- Remind your child that you are a safe space for them, and that you are here to listen without judgement.
- Check in on how your child is feeling. Ask open-ended questions such as “What are you feeling right now?”, “How have things been with your friends?”, “How is school going? What do you like or not like about it?”, “What is on your mind right now?”
- Validate that it can be difficult to always feel good about the way you look because negative feelings can creep in comparing yourself to others and on social media etc. If your child voices that they are disappointed with the way they look, endorse the positives of taking care of their bodies from the inside out. Here, the smallest things make the small difference like practising breathing exercises, getting enough sleep, and enjoying snacks and meals.
Engaging in behaviours such as restricting food intake in any way or explicitly labelling certain foods as “good” or “bad” will likely be detrimental to their mental and physical wellbeing in the long-term.
Putting in place a series of healthy habits that you and your child can practice together, such as:
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- Sharing meal times together; bonding over delicious and nutritious meals that you and your child both enjoy. Cooking together and involving your child/ren is a great way to show them how to nourish their bodies.
- Take small steps to celebrate your child for things that you notice, such as their kindness to others, being helpful at home etc, to normalise that they are more than their bodies
- Arrange activities together that include some type of movement, ie walking, throwing a frisbee, rock climbing, soccer etc.
The aim of this article is to highlight the powerful role that parents play in empowering their child to recognise that their body is something that needs to be looked after and cherished. There are many ways to communicate this message. The two most influential being:
-
- As a parent, modelling care for and acceptance of your own body
- Practising healthy habits together.
Remember to remind your child that every body, including their own body, will naturally change and that it is a special part of growing up.