Help your child build a positive body image by modeling body appreciation, celebrating diversity in all bodies, and shifting the focus from appearance to health, kindness, and personal strengths.
"“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” - Thich Nhat Hanh
Key Concepts:
- Research has found that children have beliefs about how bodies should look as early as age 3. These messages can influence behaviors as adults.
- Your child is already receiving lots of messages about how YOU feel about your body (and the bodies of others). The best antidote to this is a focus on body appreciation.
- Appreciating your body (“Wow! Your eyes do so much - they see all sorts of colors”, “Your temperature changes as you sleep. Did you know that? How amazing is that!?”) and having respect for its abilities is associated with positive self-esteem. This is why it’s important for you to have body appreciation in front of your child!
What to Try:
- Help your child notice and recognize patterns in how their body feels to encourage them to see their body through the lens of health education. You might ask “how does your body feel when you eat sugar? What about when you eat protein?”
- Facilitate conversations about the body as neutral. Do this by talking about how bodies come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.
- Model describing people by characteristics of who they are (not what they look like). For example, “Wow. Your friend Ella is kind. It was so nice she invited you to play on the playground.”
- When your child shows you what they're wearing, try saying, "I love what you picked out!" instead of telling them how beautiful or handsome you think they look.
- Discuss food lovingly by recognizing that all foods have a time and place. Do this by openly talking about foods. “Sometimes sugar is delicious! We want to make sure we fill our body with all kinds of food.”
- This one’s tricky! Break generational patterns around body image by making sure that extended family and friends understand how you want bodies to be discussed. Replace “Don’t eat that - it’s bad for you!” with “Maybe we can make a healthier choice that may make our body feel better right now.”