9 Tips for Building Positive Body Image in Your Teen
It can be scary for parents to watch their teen navigate the modern world, exposed to social media, intense marketing and ubiquitous sexualisation of the female form. Young girls are bombarded with messages that equate their sense of worth with how they look. It can be heartbreaking for parents to see their impressionable daughters start to think, talk and act negatively towards their bodies.
Sadly, telling your daughter that they are beautiful no matter what just doesn’t cut it. Here are my top tips for building up your daughter to have the skills and knowledge they will need to value themselves in a helpful way, be critical of unhelpful cultural messaging, and nurture self-respect and self-acceptance.
Model self-love. Notice how you think and talk about the way you look. Be conscious of what message you are sending to your children about your relationship with your body. Talk about what you love about your body, be proud of all it has done and can do, and focus on looking after, accepting and respecting it.
Teach critical thinking. Look at instagram, watch TV and dissect ads with your teen. Ask what they think about the images. Get them thinking about the point of the image.. What are they trying to sell? What are they trying to get you to think and feel? How do they benefit from getting people to think and feel that way? What do you think about that? Do a detox of their social media together by thinking about how the different accounts in their feed make them feel.
Function over form. Shift your teen to thinking about what their body can do, rather than what it looks like. Go through all the different parts of the body and reflect on the role it plays in the whole system. Get them to think about all the things their body can do that they are grateful for.
Brain talk. Ask your teen what they know about how the brain works with the way they see themselves. Do they know that we see ourselves differently to how everyone else does? When we look in the mirror, the image we see is very different to how everyone else sees us. The way we think and feel about our bodies impacts the image we perceive.
Family meal times. If it works in your family, try and have at least one meal a day together. Take the focus off the food, and make a calm atmosphere the goal so that the food becomes part of a positive emotional experience.
Focus on health. Ask your teen what health means to them. Talk about people they know that are healthy and people they know that are not healthy. Have a discussion about what foods and activities nourish the body, and what can stress it. How do they feel after eating certain things and doing different activities? How does their body like to move? What does their body like and not like so much? Balance is an important key here too. We don’t want to cut anything out or restrict things… we want to make choices that nourish our body most of the time.
Notice the stories. If your teen is open to talking about it with you, find out what stories their mind tells them about their body, their weight, their shape and food. Write the different stories down and go over them objectively, without judgment. Our minds can often be pretty cruel, especially when they have absorbed the messaging that is floating around in our culture. What is important though, is that we have a choice about the power we give to certain stories. A discussion around how the different stories make you feel, where they come from and how they impact behaviour and relationships creates a space to reflect on what place your teen would like these stories to have in their life. Often, teens can be more willing to have this conversation with someone outside their immediate family - a family friend, an aunt, a grandmother, or a psychologist.
Focus on diversity. Ask them what beauty means to them. Who are the people they admire and respect in their lives? What are the qualities they look for in friends? When they are 80 years old, what is going to be important to them? How do they want others to remember them? Go through the people they love and get them to identify their different strengths. What would the world be like if everyone looked the same? What do they think the value is in difference and diversity? You’re trying to help them flesh out their identity, value and worth outside of appearance. This can be really challenging if they’re smack bang in the middle of cultural messaging around image as everything. Just gently try and open up questioning that starts to open up alternative ideas and narratives. Make a point of acknowledging their own strengths and qualities independent of how they look.
Get help early if you’re concerned. As a parent, your number one role is to love, love, love. To hold a non-judgemental and loving space for your child so that they feel safe expressing their thoughts and feelings in the security of your relationship. If your gut tells you they need more help than this, the earlier you seek help, the better. Once body dissatisfaction starts to show up as changes in weight and behaviour, professional help is often needed to support change.
