"Mom, I hate my body!": How to Help Your Child Through Body Shame

What would it mean to you to finally break free from the generational legacy of body shaming and diet culture in your family? This is the thought-provoking question we're tackling today as we discuss the complex issue of supporting our children in building a better body image. During our conversation, we'll be answering a question from one of our listeners about their 11-year-old daughter who is currently struggling with negative body image.

Our role as parents is not to prevent our children from feeling discomfort or disliking their bodies—these feelings are natural and part of the human experience. Instead, we aim to offer them a reassuring presence, to let them know they are not alone. We are not here to rescue our children from pain, but to guide them in learning how to tolerate these feelings and co-regulate with trusted individuals who can empathize with what they're going through. 

So, how can we best support our children in their journey towards a healthier body image? It's not about rushing to the quickest fix. It's about acknowledging their feelings and responding with empathy, not empty compliments. This episode emphasizes the importance of building a deeper, more meaningful connection with our children, one that fosters positive body images and nurtures their overall well-being. Join us, and let's explore together the best ways to navigate these challenging emotions and support our children's journey to self-acceptance.

Questions about today's episode or do you have topic requests for future episodes? Please send your feedback via email to hello@crystalkarges.com or connect with Crystal on Instagram.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey there, mama, you're listening to the Lift the Shame podcast. I'm your host, crystal, mama of Five and your family's intuitive eating dietitian, here to help you cut through the diet culture clutter so you can enjoy freedom with food as a family. I'm on a mission to help you end the generational legacy of diet culture in your home so you can experience motherhood free from food guilt and body shame. Listen in weekly for guidance on how you can ditch diet culture, heal your relationship with food in your body and confidently raise intuitive eaters. Let's dive in and live the shame together. Hey Mama, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 1: 0:40

Today I'm excited to answer one of your questions that was submitted by a listener, and I will be reading this question and answering it anonymously, of course, and this is just a friendly reminder that if you ever have questions or topic suggestions or thoughts that you would like to share with me, I would love to hear from you. You are part of this community and you are who this podcast is for, so please don't ever hesitate to reach out. You can connect with me via email at hello at crystalcargiscom, and that email address is in the show notes for you. And this question I wanted to answer today because it piggybacks on our episode from last week, which is how to support your child in building a better body image. And in a society that is inundated with diet culture and messages that will constantly be telling our kids that their body is wrong or that they're not good enough or that they need to shrink or change who they are, I know that it's important for you to learn how to build up your child's body image so that they can become resilient to those messages. So if you didn't get a chance to listen to that episode, make sure to go back and check it out. And again, today's question is similar and is about body image and how do we approach or support our child who is maybe actively or currently struggling with negative body image. So I'm going to read our listener question today and we'll dive into some ideas or suggestions to help support you through this.

Speaker 1: 2:08

So a question reads Dear Crystal, my 11 year old daughter, has shared with me how she dislikes her body. She's mentioned she's unhappy with the way her stomach looks. I'm terrified this will escalate into body shame and I don't know how to support her help and I so appreciate this question. I just want to say thank you, mama, I hear your heart and I hear your concern, and 11 is a rough age. I know in some ways my second daughter or second kiddo is 11 as well, and it can be a challenging stage in life and there's pre puberty, pre adolescence. That's happening, bodies are changing and there can be much more awareness about bodies changing and also what peers are thinking about their bodies or maybe comparing their bodies to their peers.

Speaker 1: 2:55

So definitely a lot happening in this stage and I also know with so many of the mothers that I've worked with that this age group, so pre adolescent age, can be one of those triggering times or you may recognize that that was a difficult time for you as a child and maybe felt like there wasn't anyone to help support you or help you navigate some of the changes that were coming up for you during that time, and so I love that you're curious about this, that you're wanting to learn how to support your daughter as she's expressed maybe some dislike in her body or some discomfort in her body, and this is a beautiful opportunity to show up for your daughter in a different way than maybe you experienced this growing up, and I just want to recognize, too, that many of us are navigating these scenarios with our children and never had this modeled to us before or growing up ourselves, and so it can be challenging and it can be scary, and I just want to acknowledge the brave steps that you're taking to learn these things and to support your daughter in a different way, to really break free from that body shaming narrative that many of us have grown up with and to give yourself grace through the process. You're not going to have this figured out perfectly, and that's okay. It takes some trial and error. You may have to figure out different ways of navigating these conversations or different ways of saying things, and I just want to reassure you that it's okay. It's okay to learn alongside your child, it's okay to heal alongside parenting your child, and we don't have to have it all figured out, and I think allowing our kids to see our humaneness can be so beautiful and impactful for them. So just keep that in mind as we're going through some of these suggestions, and I just want to give you some things to consider and some things to think about and, as always, take care what resonates with you and feel free to leave behind what doesn't. There's never a one size fits all approach and every child is unique and different, and I think some of the best things that we can do as parents is learn to be attuned to ourselves and what's coming up for us in these situations and also to be attuned to our children so that we can better show up for them and what they are needing. And because I am familiar with some of the common default approaches to these kinds of situations, I just want to give you some different things to think about and maybe a different angle to consider.

Speaker 1: 5:16

So oftentimes, especially if you are a parent who has had a challenging relationship with your body, or if you have struggled with poor body image or body shaming, or if that legacy of body shaming runs deep in your family lineage, I know that it can feel very alarming to hear your child express discomfort or dislike or hatred towards their body. That can feel very distressing and for many of us as parents, our alarm bells are going off like something is wrong. And I just want you to remember that the goal here is is for is not to prevent your child from ever feeling those things in their body. That's not the goal and that's not realistic either. Being a human that has a body, we will inevitably experience ups and downs of living in our body, and it may not be because of how our body looks, but different things that our body does or doesn't do that we want it to do. And I know trauma in our body can also be projected as body distress or body shame, or chronic illness or medical issues, like.

Speaker 1: 6:21

There's a lot of different reasons why we may experience shame or distress within our bodies, and so to have the idea that our kids should never feel those things or that we somehow need to prevent them from feeling those things is not the goal. The goal instead is that we want our children to know that they're not alone in those feelings. We want them to feel connected to a safe person who can relate to what they're feeling and can, who really offer a reassuring presence, who's able to sit with them in their shame or in their pain or in their distress. We want them to know that they're not alone and we want to be able to offer connection in those moments. So I wanted to be sure to start by clarifying here what are some of the goals that we're looking at and to just help you see the big picture, because, again, as a mother myself who has had that history of intense body shame. That is something that I never want my kids to experience, and I also have to reconcile with the fact that they may experience that in some way, and them experiencing that is not a reflection of me not parenting well enough or not doing enough. We cannot necessarily prevent our kids from experiencing those things. However, we want them to know that they're not alone and we want them to feel connected to a safe person again who can empathize with what's going on for them, so that they are not isolated in that shame.

Speaker 1: 7:47

Shame and isolation in shame can spiral into many other complex issues, and that is something that we can help prevent. Another helpful way to look at this is that, as parents, it's not our job to rescue our kids from their pain either and I know that's easier said than done because that feels like our job in a lot of ways. If we see our kids in distress, if we see them hurt, if we see them sad, we want to fix it. So many of us have that inherent need to want to fix any problems or struggles that they're dealing with, and we have to remember that that's not necessarily our job to rescue them from pain or frustration or sadness or grief or distress, but rather we want to support them in learning how to tolerate those things so that when they experience those things down the road or in different seasons of their life they don't feel completely overwhelmed by it. And the way that they learn how to do that is by what we call co-regulation. So learning to co-regulate with another safe person who again can empathize and connect. That helps us feel safe in our own frustration and pain, when we know that I'm not alone in this, and ultimately that will help them down the road to be able to self-regulate in those situations.

Speaker 1: 9:04

So again, thinking big picture, long term, if your child's growing, growing up and experiencing maybe a bad body image day or struggling in how they feel about their body, ultimately we want them to be able to have the tools to learn how to navigate that distress that they may be feeling towards themselves so that it doesn't completely overwhelm them. And that really starts with us learning how to tolerate their distress and their discomfort so that we can sit with them in it and help them regulate through it. So that is another way of looking at this situation. Again, we are not necessarily rescuing them from what they're experiencing or the distress that they're sharing with us, but helping them know they're not alone in it. So, with that said, I just wanted to share a couple more pointers here to help you navigate some of these situations or these conversations.

Speaker 1: 9:56

If your child has expressed shame in their body or dislike towards their body and you may not know where to start, here's a couple things to keep in mind. So, as we talked about again, it's not our job to protect our kids from feeling these things. One of the default reactions that I tend to see parents jump to when their child might express I don't like the way I look, I hate the way I look, I hate the way my stomach looks. We can be so quick to jump in and try to dismiss it with a compliment Like oh my gosh, no, that is not, that's not true. You're beautiful. There are different things that we might say along those lines in attempt to jump in and rescue our kids from what they're feeling.

Speaker 1: 10:36

The reason this can become problematic, even though it's done with good intention, is that it can communicate the message to our kids that their feelings are wrong. So we want them to understand number one, that they're safe to express what they're feeling to us and if we are quickly dismissing how they feel and just jumping straight for a compliment and effort to ease their pain, it can make them feel again that their feelings about their body are wrong. And so what I encourage parents to do at the onset is just to acknowledge what your child has shared with you and to express that towards them so that can sound something like thank you so much for trusting me and sharing this with me. We, when we're quick to jumping to the fix it solution, when we're quick to finding ways to help them feel better immediately, that can again dismiss what they're feeling, or it can deny what they're feeling. It can cause them to internalize the message that I don't like my body and I'm bad for having these feelings about my body. And again, we want to keep those communication channels open with our children so that they can feel like they're able to come to us in their distress, in their discomfort, and if we're too quick to dismiss how they're feeling, that can close that door. And so I always say, as a first step, just simply acknowledge what your child has shared with you and thank them for trusting that information with you, and that can sound again as simple as thank you for trusting me with this. Thank you for sharing this with me. I'm here for you and I really appreciate that you were brave enough to share this with me. I care about how you feel, so that is something that I would encourage you to think about just at the onset, especially if those alarm bells are going off and you're feeling flustered and you don't know what to say or you're worried about saying the wrong thing. Just start by acknowledging the courage that it took your child to share that information with you. And the fact that your child is sharing that information with you shows that they're entrusting you with something they feel like you are a safe person in that they can bring those concerns to you. So we want to be intentional about acknowledging that.

Speaker 1: 12:49

The second thing here that we want to think about is how can we express empathy rather than jumping straight to encouragement? So, going back to what we were originally talking about here is that the goal is not to prevent these feelings, but to help our child feel connected to a safe person. So this is why this empathy piece is so important, because it helps us facilitate connection with our children, rather than just giving a compliment and we just dish out a compliment Again. It's well intended and the effort is to help our child feel better, but that compliment can only go so far. It's not going to go to the deeper level of connection that we want to go with our child to help them feel less alone in their distress. So, rather than jumping to compliments, we want to think about ways that we can provide connection and create connection with them, because truly connection is the antidote to shame and helplessness.

Speaker 1: 13:51

When we think about shame and we think about how it keeps us away from people, from relationships, from things that we enjoy, from experiences. When there is connection to a safe person, it helps alleviate that need for isolation. And so this is why we don't just want to go surface level with our kids and start complimenting them about things we love, about their body or how they look. Again, that is surface level and it only reinforces the narrative that how they look is the most important thing about them. And we want to go deeper with that, and that is why empathizing with your child is going to be really helpful in facilitating this deeper connection that's going to be important in preventing shame spirals from happening around their body.

Speaker 1: 14:36

So this can be as simple as acknowledging. You know like. I know this is hard. I know having a body can be really hard sometimes and there's been days when I don't feel good in my body too and it really sucks and I'm so sorry that you're feeling that you are not alone. Something simple like that and I know it's not simple, I know all of this is easier said than done. However, I want you to think about ways that you can maybe rephrase that in a way that makes sense to your child, right, like helping them understand that they're not alone in what they're experiencing, so that they don't spiral into that shame. And this can be so powerful and really helping our kids be able to face what they're feeling and learn ways to move through it, rather than resorting to changing their body as a way of managing their body's shame that they're feeling. So this can be really powerful and really important in modeling this to them. And I think it's totally okay to share, in a way that makes sense for your child, some of the things that you may have struggled with as well.

Speaker 1: 15:40

But again, I think it's really important to be careful with how much we might divulge to our kids. So if you're actively, maybe, struggling with body shame and this is an issue that you've been dealing with, you know maybe not going into all the details and a simple acknowledgement that, yeah, I've experienced this too and it can be really hard. I know what you're going through and you're not alone. I'm here with you. Something that straightforward is really going to be impactful in creating empathy and again creating connection with them. So I just wanted to encourage you with this and help you see this in a different way again, because so many of us rush to compliments or things that we can tell our kids. An effort to help them feel better without going deeper into the connection piece that is going to be very important in supporting them moving through the feelings or distress that's coming up for them in their bodies.

Speaker 1: 16:34

One more piece on this note that I think can be really helpful too in terms of empathy is just helping our kids understand that this time period of their life can be really challenging for multiple reasons, and this is a powerful message that many of us did not get growing up, where we weren't told that, hey, your body is changing a lot right now through pre-adolescence, and I know it's really uncomfortable and it's also normal too, and it won't feel like this forever. This can be a really beautiful place to infuse some of the knowledge and understanding about how and why their bodies are changing and all the different things that are happening. And, again, having those conversations openly with our kids can be very beautiful and very encouraging to them to know that I'm not the only one, I'm not the only 11 year old going through this and feeling uncomfortable in my body and even sharing stories like when I was your age or when I was 11, I remember that there were some days that it was really hard to feel like my body was changing and not knowing how it was going to end up or what was going on. And I learned that I could trust my body, even through some of these really painful changes. Little snippets like that can be really helpful to just relate to our kids, especially when they're might be feeling so alone in what they're going through. So once we've done those two things we've acknowledged they're telling us how they're feeling, we've empathized with them and taken proactive steps to actually connect with them in their distress and in their pain, then that's when I think we can just offer that reassuring presence that is supportive of what they might need to help them move through their pain or distress or what's coming up for them.

Speaker 1: 18:13

And this is where I think we can just ask the question what do you need from me? What can I do for you? What would be helpful to support you through this? And sometimes our kids may not know what that is. They may not know what they need to help them move through it, and that's okay. We're showing them that we're reaching out and helping them and we're there for them. And this is where, if your child may not know what would be helpful for them, this is where offering suggestions like can I give you a hug right now? Would that be okay? Or can I tell you all the things that I love about you? Would that be okay?

Speaker 1: 18:50

And I think just being able to offer those suggestions to help our kids feel the reassurance of us being with them in their distress or in their pain or in their struggle can be so powerful again to prevent those shame cycles from happening. And I have found from just my experience that sometimes my kids don't want my presence. They don't want me to hug them, they may not want me to really talk much to them, and that's okay, and I will acknowledge that and I will say, okay, no problem, I don't have to do those things, but I just want you to know I'm here for you and I'm here and I'm sitting with you and I am with you in your pain, again, like it's modeling that presence in their life and helping them understand that they're not alone in their struggle, no matter how uncomfortable or how big it might feel. They don't have to walk through it by themselves, and so that is where this can be really tailored to your individual child and what you think they may need. I do like asking our kids can I tell you the things that I love about you? And that can be a really amazing opportunity to just shed light on aspects about themselves that they may not even consider, that may not have anything to do with their body, so you can highlight characteristics, qualities, attributes. This is a great place to infuse those things, if your child is up for it, and you can say I love this about you, I love how you're kind, you're compassionate, you're adventurous, you're creative, and this is a great way to just shower them with the things that you genuinely see about them. But again, we don't want it to just be appearance related compliments, because that will reinforce this idea that how they look is the most important thing about them, which is a tricky place to be, because if they're unhappy with how they look on any given day, that can really destroy their self-esteem. So, again acknowledging like yeah, it can be hard to live in our body sometimes and there's so many amazing things and attributes about you that have nothing to do with your body and that make you so incredibly wonderful and unique as you are, and just reinforcing that their special, that their worth is unchanged by how they feel about their body and that can go so far as a protective factor in supporting them from some of these messages that can sneak in when they're feeling vulnerable about their bodies. So these are just some things to think about as you are potentially navigating some of these situations with your own child.

Speaker 1: 21:17

I do also just want to address one final point here, and that is to just be aware of what may be coming up for you in these situations. Do you find yourself triggered or what are you feeling in your body and why are you triggered Sometimes? The difficult emotions or feelings that arise in our bodies as we engage with our children in these different ways can make it hard for us to be present with our own children or to be able to extend to them what they're needing, because there's a part of our body that is reacting to what is coming up for them, and often that stems back to our own trauma or own grief or pain that we're still holding in our bodies. And so I just want to encourage you to be aware of what's coming up for you and to remind yourself that, no matter what you're feeling, you can still show up and be present and engaged for your child and to just be curious about any thoughts or feelings that are surfacing for you. That can be a really helpful place for you to come back to and revisit later in your own healing work and in your own journey, and just remembering that we don't have to have it all figured out to show up for our kids, to be present for them.

Speaker 1: 22:30

However, just understanding that sometimes our own stuff that can be triggered or come to the surface in these parallel situations can make it hard for us sometimes to be present for our kids, and this is what I call parallel processing, where there are things happening for our children that may have happened for us, and so these situations can be painful and, just as an example, if you as a child struggled with body shame or distress in your own body and were never met with a safe caregiver who could provide presence and connection for you or co-regulation in those painful moments, that likely created shame and feelings of helplessness that can still sit there and still live in your body. And so, of course, it's going to feel triggering when you're in a similar situation with your own child where, if your child is expressing discomfort in their bodies, it can be a painful reminder of the experiences that you had as a child and the resulting helplessness or shame that came from that. And so I just wanted to share that because it's a common situation and it can be very challenging to navigate that and you might find distress or discomfort coming up for you as you're trying to hold space for your body, and I just wanna encourage you to be aware of what's coming up, just get curious about it and understand that you can still be able to hold space for your own child as they're navigating some of those issues, and one of the most incredible things about this is that you're learning to give to your child what you may have needed as a child. Any child who's going through distress and how their body feels or how their body looks, or feeling shame about their bodies, deserves a safe person to be able to empathize and connect with them so you don't feel overwhelmed or engulfed by the feelings that are coming up for you. And when we don't have that, we easily internalize this message that it's me that's a problem. My body, my body is wrong.

Speaker 1: 24:31

All of this is too much, and that narrative can carry with us for years, and so I want you to think about how amazing it is that you are helping your child rewrite the narrative or learn something different. By holding space for them, by being a safe and loving presence for them in their distress, in their discomfort, even when you didn't have those things for you, and, by extension, in learning how to give these things to your children, you're also giving them to your younger self, who needed those things to you and who is as equally deserving of having had those things growing up as well. So I hope this is helpful. I know there's a lot more that we could probably talk about here, but again, thank you, mama, for this amazing question and for sharing this. I know that this situation can be really tough and challenging to navigate and I hope this gives you some tools to work with, some things to think about.

Speaker 1: 25:25

And if you are listening to this and have any follow-up questions, or if there's anything else that I can do to help support you around this topic, I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to reach out and connect, and we will be resuming next week with another episode and different topics, so I hope you will join us then. In the meantime, thank you so much for being here. I will include a link in the show notes to our free virtual support group, lift the Shame. If you are a mama or mama to be needing more support around food or body image, we'd love to have you. So thank you so much again for joining and thank you for the great question. I can't wait to catch up with you next week. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Lift the Shame podcast. For more tips and guidance on your motherhood journey, come connect with me on Instagram at Crystal Cargis. Until next week, mama, I'll be cheering you on. Bye for now.