Latest / Unlearning Beautiful / Ep. 34 Your Child's Body Image: The Most Important Thing You Can Do

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Ep. 34 Your Child's Body Image: The Most Important Thing You Can Do · Unlearning Beautiful

• Kristina Bruce: If you've ever Googled, what do I say if my child says they're fat? Or how do I help my child love their body? You're probably hoping for the right words to say. But after years of doing this work, I've come to believe that the most powerful thing you can give your child isn't the perfect response. It's a parent who isn't at war with their own body. So today we're going to talk about why helping your child begins with healing your relationship with yourself. And why that might actually take a whole lot of pressure off of feeling like you need to get it right in order to help your child feel better in their body. Welcome to Unlearning Beautiful, a podcast for women tired of trying to look good enough and ready to feel good from within. I'm your host, Christina Bruce, here to help you let go of the pressure to look right or do it all right, and reconnect with your inner guidance, your natural worth, and what truly makes you feel fulfilled. Because the freedom you're craving was never in how you look. I'll often hear questions come up from concerned parents wanting their children to have a positive relationship with their body. Questions like, What do I say or do if my child comes to me and says, I'm fat or I'm ugly? Or how do I stop them hating their body? Those are totally understandable questions. Sometimes words help, but I think we also know that. We can sense when someone's just saying words to us versus when there's a real energy or groundedness to what they're saying. So I really don't think finding the right words or saying the right thing or quote unquote wrong thing is where we need to look. What I think we need to do instead is turn it around back onto ourselves. Often the thing that sometimes can feel a little bit harder and look at Our own relationship with our body first, particularly our own reactions, if our children come and say those things to us. And surprisingly, I think this can take some pressure off of us of having to do it right or find the right words to say. When we turn it around and deal with our own internal state, the thoughts that are coming up within us, the emotional reactions that we're having, what's going to happen is. How we interact with our children and what we say is gonna change. It's gonna come from a much more healed place. Because many of us have had the experience of growing up in households where our parents were really concerned with their bodies and did not like their bodies and were on diets, or people who were important to us in our life. So when we can do this work ourselves, we automatically are breaking that generational chain. So we're not passing it on or as intensely as we received it when we were children. If you're listening to this episode, already I want you to give yourself some credit and take a breath because it means that you're paying attention. It means that you care, that you want to do things differently. And already that is making a difference in what you're relaying to your child in terms of how they are relating to their body. If you weren't aware, then you wouldn't really be able to make a difference. And you are. Awareness is where the change begins and where the healing begins. You might have heard me say this before in other episodes. Children are not born ashamed of their bodies. If you can go back to remembering your children when they were two, three, four years old, you can see that. These beliefs and insecurities that we end up having about our bodies are learned. They come from the greater culture around us. We know we can't completely control the messages that they're receiving. But what we can do is control what we are saying to them. We are the ones who have the most impact and influence. That matters and makes a difference. But what we can also do is help them to learn to question what they're hearing. And that starts with questioning and Becoming aware of our own beliefs first. This can easily turn into this feeling of, I need them to never have a negative belief. I've got to protect them from ever making these negative assumptions about themselves. I mean, I've certainly fallen into that. I don't think that that's possible to do. We can help mitigate it, but their minds are going to pick up what they pick up and make the meaning out of it because. They have their own minds. But what we can do is help them navigate this. We can help them identify and see these meanings that they are starting to make about their bodies and themselves to help them become alert to it and question it instead of just letting it go or, you know, reinforcing it, which is what most of us had grown up with. We didn't have caregivers who were questioning for the most part these beliefs. They were often unintentionally reinforcing them because they didn't question them either. I also personally find solace in knowing that I don't believe we're supposed to remove every negative experience from our child. Our children need challenges. They are going to experience negativity as part of their growth. It's a hard thing about being a human on this earth, is that we experience negative and positive. It's just the way that it goes. So our role is to become a safe place that they can bring it to. Cause when we can help them navigate it, we are helping them cultivate the ability to overcome these hardships and challenges later on in life. But of course, we have to notice what are we struggling to deal with in our life? Because as adults, we are still working on cultivating the ability to be able to navigate the challenges of life. So if a child was to come to you with something like, I'm fat, then before immediately responding and feeling like you need to do something about that comment, pause and notice within yourself what is happening inside of me right now. Because there is likely an emotional reaction that is coming up. Do you notice a contraction like a punch in your gut or a sinking in your heart? Do you panic or freeze or feel heartbroken? Or you feel this urge to want to fix it? None of those reactions are wrong, but each of them are invitations because they're showing you your own relationship with your body. They're showing and bringing up perhaps your own childhood wounds. Around statements just like that that might still be needing some understanding and compassion and healing. So it's hard for us to respond from presence when something is being activated within us. That's why I am always pushing meditation because the point of that is to be able to notice when the reactions are happening in the moment. Because then that's when we can pause. And it's hard to do if we haven't developed that capacity to when we have that pause, that moment, we can start to respond with curiosity. First, with the child. Just a simple tell me more. You know, what makes you say that? What does it mean to be fat to you? ⁓ where did you hear that? Why does this feel like a big deal? Or why does this feel important? What it's also gonna bring up are beliefs. So it could mean, well, that means that I'm ugly. That means I'm not gonna have friends, that means I'm not good enough. This is where we can take this information and then afterwards start to turn it around and get curious within ourselves. If we had a reaction to them bringing that question to us, then they are as likely A belief in there, an old wound from our childhood that's getting activated. We can look and ask ourselves, why does this feel urgent that I need to fix it? Or what is it bringing up in me? What am I afraid it's going to mean for my child? So if we had a negative experience with our bodies, we're obviously trying to protect them from it as well. We need to question, does being fat really mean I'm not good enough? Is fat really ugly or whatever else it might be? If your children are older having acne on their face, we need to start investigating that and then looking at where am I still holding those beliefs about my body? Maybe it's about aging now, or it shows up in different ways. And curiosity with our children is gonna create connection. Where if we're trying to correct it or try to make them feel better, it often ends the conversation. We want to open up that doorway, not to try to fix, even though we may feel that urge to do that, but instead to open up that conversation to explore it more deeply. When we're getting curious and exploring, we will find out that the deeper issue is often wanting to belong, wanting to fit in, or it's the mind just doing comparison or a fear of rejection. I mean, these are things as adults we often still struggle with. Hence why when we heal that within ourselves, we're going to naturally be able to be present with our children and respond from a much different place rather than fear or ⁓ no, I need them to not feel this. When we do the work within ourselves and we take that time to explore it, to question it, then it doesn't become so scary. ⁓ yes, I know what this is about. Let me sit here and explore it with you. And we know that children are also picking up from how we're being and who we are, how we speak to ourselves, how we are around food, whether we criticize our bodies or not, whether we're getting in the photos or staying out of the pool or the beach because we're too afraid of how we look. They can pick up on those subtle cues and Anytime we're talking about this, this is never to feel shame or guilt. And I'm sure that those emotions are going to arise, but we don't need to be shaming or feeling guilty about this. We're human. We're doing the best that we can. They learn more from the relationship that we have with ourselves and how we're being, far more than the words that we're sharing or advice that we give them. Children are really such good mirrors for us. So what does Healing that relationship with your body actually look like. It can come in many different ways, but it starts, I believe, by noticing your thinking about it. I talk about beliefs and it's so important because our entire internal experience is based on beliefs. It's not just, ⁓ let me question my beliefs and that's one thing I can do. We can't have a feeling unless we have a belief. So if you think about it, everything is neutral. Until there's a belief layered on top of it. And when that belief is present, it carries an energy or vibration of either being negative or positive. So you're gonna feel negative when you have a negative thought or belief about yourself, and you'll feel positive if you have a positive one. So working with your beliefs is a huge piece of feeling okay because our mind is thinking. Oftentimes we're not even aware of them, we'll just feel bad first. Feeling is the indicator that says, I am viewing my body in a certain way that is making me feel bad. So I have a negative thought or belief about my body right now. And following that trail is how we can come to identify it. We can also look like practicing self-compassion and learning to trust yourself again, compassion to realize what Culture or environment did you grow up in to absorb all of these beliefs? I can see why I'm having these thoughts about myself. Of course. Choosing that curiosity over self-judgment is another way. Finding support. You're essentially going against what the entire culture has been conditioning us to believe and do with our bodies. You may be the only person you know doing this. There has to be often a deeper soul calling, I say, to do this work because it takes some courage. I get why it can be hard to do it and you may not feel ready, or you just want to go baby step by baby step. And that's totally fine. Taking that step to seek support is a huge piece of it. And another really big piece is realizing that. This is not about perfection. So many of us who have spent years dieting, we're perfectionists. I mean, that's why it got so bad. You know, because it was all about feeling like you needed to be perfect in order to be okay. There's also a people-pleasing element in there too, afraid of being judged. It's a very tender place. Even just listening to this podcast or starting to expose yourself to a different way of being with your body. Acknowledge yourself for that doesn't mean that you have to dive into the deep end right away. Taking those steps is what's going to help you shift that relationship with your body. If you are wanting to do that deeper work, that is what my one-in-one coaching is for. I'll have the link below in the description. You can check that out. Whether you see this psychologically or spiritually, children are really sensitive. They're attuned and they Pick up on us as we shift the focus to becoming calmer, more accepting with ourselves, less fearful, more trusting, more at peace, they experience us differently. And the words to be there for them start to come out more naturally. Because we're also learning to expand our vocabulary and our understanding ourselves. When we realize we don't need to fix, we don't need to try to stop them from feeling what they're feeling, but rather open up a pathway to be present as we change our own state. That's gonna energetically change for them too. And we may start to see them changing because we changed. I want to wrap up by saying we could be planting these seeds now with our children and they may not bloom until later. I'm sure you might have that example of things your parents had said or did and you sloughed it off or you didn't understand it and then all of a sudden lands for you later. So it may not be that they need to feel super confident in their bodies now. Maybe they need to go through that experience. We can use it as contrast and realize that we are all designed for it. And when we're able to meet it in a different way, then we can help our children do that too. So we can take some pressure off of ourselves of feeling like we need to protect them from everything and be the perfect parent or have the perfect script. We don't need to have all the answers. We just need to work on being that safe place that they can come and bring us their questions and share how they're feeling. If all we did was work on being able to sit with the discomfort and let it move through us rather than rushing to fix it, that is such a crucial piece in even healing our own relationships with our bodies. Because how often does it happen that you see a photo of yourself and you feel that panic and you want to start the next diet? Or you can't look at the photo or you run off and go do something else because that feeling that's coming up feels so uncomfortable. That's the what we want to start to work on being able to meet. Can I sit with this discomfort a little bit more and start to explore what's actually in it? Because it's coming up to the surface to be seen. But if we don't want to look at it or we can't be with it, we're missing that information and those gifts that it has for us. Every step that you take towards feeling more peaceful in your body opens the door that they can start to find peace with their bodies too. I hope this episode helped you today. I look forward to being with you in the next one. Thanks for listening to Unlearning Beautiful. If this episode resonated with you, follow the show and share it with another woman who's ready to see beauty and herself in a new way. And if you feel moved, leave a rating and review. It will help this show reach more women who need to hear it. Remember, you're already everything you've been trying to become. Enough, worthy, and free. I'm Christina Bruce. Until next time.