Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / Moving Beyond Beautiful & Helping Kids See Themselves Differently [Parental Guidance Ep. 3]

Transcript

Moving Beyond Beautiful & Helping Kids See Themselves Differently [Parental Guidance Ep. 3] · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: A big focus this week on the podcast on the
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  Speaker 1: topic body image. How do you feel about your body,
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  Speaker 1: how do your children feel about their body? And what
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  Speaker 1: are the messages that we're giving them when we talk
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  Speaker 1: about bodies generally. Goday, Welcome to the Happy Families podcast,
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  Speaker 1: Real Parenting Solutions every Day. This is Australia's most downloaded
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  Speaker 1: parenting podcast. We are Justin and Kylie Colson. I'm the
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  Speaker 1: host or the co host and parenting expert on Channel
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  Speaker 1: lines hit TV show Parental Guidance Season three. It's streaming
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  Speaker 1: now on the nine Now app or you can watch
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  Speaker 1: on Channel nine when it's live on Monday nights. We've
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  Speaker 1: just had episode three go to air on Monday. Today.
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  Speaker 1: We're reflecting on the things that happened yesterday. We talked
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  Speaker 1: a lot about this challenge of standing in front of
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  Speaker 1: the mirror with your children and asking them what they see.
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  Speaker 2: I like my hair and my teeth.
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  Speaker 1: I have bunions because I do ballet. I have acne,
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  Speaker 1: which is kind of sad Ian color. It was a
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  Speaker 1: really interesting discussion yesterday. I think we covered some great stuff. Kylie.
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  Speaker 1: We were introduced to four new focus families, Elv and Sean.
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  Speaker 3: We are authoritative parents.
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  Speaker 4: We have high expectations on our children. In the meantime,
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  Speaker 4: we set strict rules and boundaries.
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  Speaker 3: Nick and Sophia we're the positivity parents where confidence is key.
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  Speaker 3: Josh and Cassie we are the life school parents, and
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  Speaker 3: we use real life experiences to educate our kids.
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  Speaker 5: And Amandarin has Son.
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  Speaker 1: We choose to parent the hard way. We don't take shortcuts.
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  Speaker 1: It's hard on us.
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  Speaker 4: We're easing the fund for the kids.
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  Speaker 5: Today.
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  Speaker 1: I want to reflect on something that came up, some
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  Speaker 1: really painful memories for some of our parents, particularly Sophia,
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  Speaker 1: our positivity.
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  Speaker 2: Momth When I was younger, I didn't like my legs.
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  Speaker 2: I used to get teased at school and they used
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  Speaker 2: to be actually riding on the walls about Mummy's legs.
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  Speaker 5: I didn't like.
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  Speaker 3: My body at all. It's very important, especially being a girl, Okay,
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  Speaker 3: that you don't let other people tell you what beautiful is.
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  Speaker 3: You know how mummy always says that to you. Okay,
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  Speaker 3: because we're all different, Okay, I love you. I would
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  Speaker 3: binge and then I'd be like, oh no, no, no,
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  Speaker 3: I'm getting too big. Now, let's scale that back to
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  Speaker 3: like not eating, like that's just not healthy, you know.
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  Speaker 3: And then all my friends were doing it. And I
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  Speaker 3: think when you're young, you're very impressionable, okay, and if
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  Speaker 3: you don't have a lot of support around you don't
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  Speaker 3: have you know, parents that are guiding you, you know,
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  Speaker 3: through that.
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  Speaker 4: Type of stuff. I can definitely relate with that. I
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  Speaker 4: was one of four girls. Two of my old sisters
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  Speaker 4: suffered quite bad eating disorders growing up, and it did
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  Speaker 4: stem from my dad was obsessed with the way he looked.
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  Speaker 4: I remember I lost a lot of weight once when
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  Speaker 4: I was younger. I was severely underweight and someone said,
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  Speaker 4: I'm really worried about you. And I went to my
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  Speaker 4: dad and he said, I don't know what they're talking about.
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  Speaker 4: You look fabulous. And so it does come from the parents.
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  Speaker 4: And you know, you're lucky if you can get out
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  Speaker 4: of that without any repercussions.
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  Speaker 1: Kylie, so many things that come out of that audio.
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  Speaker 1: What are your reactions?
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  Speaker 5: It didn't surprise me at all. But every woman in
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  Speaker 5: that room had a story.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, and there were serious, heavy stories. It was it
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  Speaker 1: wasn't like, oh you when I was young, I didn't
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  Speaker 1: like how I looked either. These were heavy eating disorder
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  Speaker 1: challenging mental health kind of stories. Yeah, why did it
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  Speaker 1: not surprise you?
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  Speaker 5: Because as women, there has just always been so much
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  Speaker 5: emphasis on the way we look and very little emphasis
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  Speaker 5: on what we can do. And you think about that
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  Speaker 5: from a generational kind of thing, girls weren't even encouraged
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  Speaker 5: to be educated because it was actually just all about
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  Speaker 5: how we looked and what we could do in the home,
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  Speaker 5: without ever acknowledging what we were actually capable of doing
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  Speaker 5: in any sphere.
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  Speaker 1: You know what line really stood out to.
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  Speaker 3: Me, You don't let other people tell you what beautiful is.
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  Speaker 1: I just love that. For whatever reason, it resonated and
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  Speaker 1: I thought, yeah, absolutely, Like society gives such a narrow
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  Speaker 1: and unhealthy vision of what beautiful is. It focuses only
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  Speaker 1: in one dimension, and I think that it causes so
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  Speaker 1: much harm to so many young people. There was one
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  Speaker 1: other standout point that came from the episode, and that
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  Speaker 1: was when Courtney, the pro tech parent said, my dad
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  Speaker 1: was obsessed by the way he looked. And I just
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  Speaker 1: wanted to emphasize how much of the body image stuff
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  Speaker 1: we carry comes from what our parents are saying about bodies. Kylie,
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  Speaker 1: do you have any memories of being a teenager and
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  Speaker 1: feeling awkward about your appearance or things that your parents said.
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  Speaker 5: Typical teenager loved my sugar, really enjoyed you know, junk
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  Speaker 5: food in general, and often I would find myself, you know,
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  Speaker 5: eating I don't know, a donut or whatever else, and
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  Speaker 5: my mum would watch me enjoy it and acknowledged that
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  Speaker 5: I would regret that in the years to come because
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  Speaker 5: I was going to end up with a bum like curz.
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  Speaker 1: What sort of an impact does hearing that have on you?
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  Speaker 5: So I was five foot ten and fifty four kilos.
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  Speaker 5: To put that into context, I had a doctor recently
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  Speaker 5: tell me that the easiest way to work out is
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  Speaker 5: a healthy weight range for yourself is to take the
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  Speaker 5: one off your height.
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  Speaker 1: So five foot ten in meters is.
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  Speaker 5: One hundred and seventy eight centimeters.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, So taking the one meter off means that somewhere
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  Speaker 1: around that seventy five to eighty kilo range would be
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  Speaker 1: about right. Yeah, Yeah, And you were fifty four kilos.
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  Speaker 5: I was fifty four kilos and it wasn't until I.
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  Speaker 1: Was so you MU should have been saying, eat more donuts?
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  Speaker 1: Is how are you getting at?
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  Speaker 5: I was in a relationship and my boyfriend had taken
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  Speaker 5: a handful of photos of me, and he shared some
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  Speaker 5: of them with me, And in that moment, it was
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  Speaker 5: like I was looking at somebody else. And what blows
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  Speaker 5: my mind is how distorted our vision is. Yes, so distorted.
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  Speaker 5: I would look in the mirror and I would see
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  Speaker 5: someone who needed to lose weight, and I would pull
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  Speaker 5: my body to pieces. And yet when I saw this photo,
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  Speaker 5: all I could see was my clabacles just like popping out,
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  Speaker 5: like I was skin and a bone, right. And I
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  Speaker 5: remember at that period of time, my mum actually used
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  Speaker 5: to follow me to the bathroom because she thought that
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  Speaker 5: I must be vomiting.
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  Speaker 1: And yet she's still giving you this message that donat
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  Speaker 1: the doughnut.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, and I wasn't. I wasn't, but I wasn't eating.
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  Speaker 5: So yeah, it took that photo to actually kind of
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  Speaker 5: shake me up and make me realize that what I
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  Speaker 5: was seeing in the mirror was a distortion of reality.
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  Speaker 1: One of my favorite stories as well is when we
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  Speaker 1: went on our first date, so you would have been
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  Speaker 1: eighteen when we started dating. Yeah, and we went on
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  Speaker 1: our first date and walked into the chuck Oal Chicken
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  Speaker 1: shop down at Terego Beach, where I ordered a chicken
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  Speaker 1: and some chips and then looked at you and said,
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  Speaker 1: what would you like to eat? And you said, well,
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  Speaker 1: I'll just have some of what you've ordered, and I said, no,
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  Speaker 1: that's actually mine. What would you like to eat? And
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  Speaker 1: I remember you saying to me a short while after
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  Speaker 1: that that that was the day that you knew that
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  Speaker 1: you could eat whatever you wanted around me and there'd
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  Speaker 1: be no judgment. You were safe. That's obviously a bit
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  Speaker 1: of levity in what's an otherwise really important, really hard conversation.
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  Speaker 1: The impact of the words that we say are great.
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  Speaker 1: I quote in Misconnection, my book about raising teenage girls,
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  Speaker 1: research that shows that when parents, particularly fathers, say things
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  Speaker 1: about their daughter's weight, if those children are under about
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  Speaker 1: the age of I think it was eleven, twelve, thirteen,
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  Speaker 1: something like that, by the time they're in their mid
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  Speaker 1: to late teens, the likelihood of them having some eating
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  Speaker 1: challenges goes up just so much. Again, I can't remember
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  Speaker 1: the exact percentages now, but goes up enormously. The conversations
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  Speaker 1: that we have really really carry weight. If you'll pardon
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  Speaker 1: the quite unfortunate pun or turn of phrase, there up next,
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  Speaker 1: we need to talk about how we can move into
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  Speaker 1: healthier conversations around beauty and what is beautiful. That's in
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  Speaker 1: just a sec on the Happy Families podcasts.
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  Speaker 5: I want to play some audio of you saying something
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  Speaker 5: pretty awesome.
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  Speaker 1: When discussing body image, we need to move away from
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  Speaker 1: beauty instead, emphasize functionality, emphasize fighting joy, focus on what
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  Speaker 1: you can do, not what you look like. More than anything,
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  Speaker 1: remember that beauty is best defined by who you are
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  Speaker 1: and not how you look. Okay, so what do you
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  Speaker 1: like about that?
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  Speaker 5: For centuries we're focused on girl's looks. I said that
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  Speaker 5: earlier in our discussion, and one of the things that
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  Speaker 5: we have been really intentional with our girls is acknowledging
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  Speaker 5: what their bodies allow them to do. But not only that.
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  Speaker 5: When we focus on beauty, we talk about the qualities,
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  Speaker 5: the attributes that make them a beautiful person.
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  Speaker 1: You know, though it's not a physical appearance thing, it's
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  Speaker 1: these are the attributes, the beautiful attributes of character that
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  Speaker 1: make you.
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  Speaker 5: You because those characteristics of good ness shine forth and
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  Speaker 5: they actually make you a more beautiful person, like in general.
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  Speaker 1: So can I jump in and read something from misconnection
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  Speaker 1: because Misconnection is the book about raising teenage girls, and
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  Speaker 1: it's probably the book that I'm most proud of. I've
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  Speaker 1: written a few books that I really really like, but
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  Speaker 1: this one, I just it's made such a difference to
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  Speaker 1: so many families. I actually wrote this in chapter four,
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  Speaker 1: pixel Perfect. I wrote the subheading is tell your daughter
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  Speaker 1: she's beautiful. So a lot of people really don't like this.
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  Speaker 1: They think that we should move away from telling kids
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  Speaker 1: that they're beautiful because it's going to create some sort
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  Speaker 1: of a complex in them. But this is what I
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  Speaker 1: want to read to you, I said, I recognize that
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  Speaker 1: this is a controversial thing to say, particularly because I've
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  Speaker 1: been arguing in this chapter that identity is negatively impacted
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  Speaker 1: by peers or parents' emphasizing appearance. But hear me out
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  Speaker 1: on this. At a conference a number of years ago,
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  Speaker 1: a man spoke to me after my presentation. I've been
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  Speaker 1: discussing how our girls need to know we're proud of them.
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  Speaker 1: He shared with me that he would see his little
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  Speaker 1: girl all dressed up in her Sunday best before church
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  Speaker 1: each week and tell her joyously how beautiful she was.
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  Speaker 1: When she was about nine or ten. She said, Dad, Am,
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  Speaker 1: I only beautiful when I wear a dress. It occurred
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  Speaker 1: to him that he only ever complimented her appearance on
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  Speaker 1: those Sunday mornings when she donned her dress. She thought
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  Speaker 1: she wasn't beautiful at any other time. Karen Young, the
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  Speaker 1: mastermind behind Hey Sigmund, says that girls should know their
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  Speaker 1: beautiful regardless of their appearance. Beauty is defined by who
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  Speaker 1: you are, not how you look. Her message study hard,
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  Speaker 1: play hard, achieve failed, commit to excellence. We want our
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  Speaker 1: girls to feel competent and capable and to know that
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  Speaker 1: we believe in their beauty. My advice. Most girls want
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  Speaker 1: to feel beautiful, let them know that they are always
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  Speaker 1: your reactions.
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  Speaker 5: I'm crying. Every girl wants to feel beautiful. But I
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  Speaker 5: love that dad's recognition after his daughter asked him the question,
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  Speaker 5: Am I only beautiful on Sundays because of what I'm wearing?
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  Speaker 5: And I think it's just a really beautiful reminder to
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  Speaker 5: us that we have such an important role to play
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  Speaker 5: in helping our girls specifically recognize their beauty. And it's
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  Speaker 5: not about what they put on. It's not about the makeup,
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  Speaker 5: it's not about the dress. It's actually about who they are.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's not the dress. It's the girl in
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  Speaker 1: the dress. Yeah. Yeah, I don't want to sound cheesy,
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  Speaker 1: but you're beautiful when you get weepy, stop it, all right,
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  Speaker 1: very serious conversation. Tomorrow's episode, we're going to be talking
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  Speaker 1: about what can happen when negative body image thoughts can
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  Speaker 1: develop into serious, life threatening health issues. One of the
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: toughest conversations that we'll ever have on this podcast on
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  Speaker 1: the disease that is anorexia.
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  Speaker 4: Force yourself to eat it, Ashley, Yes, you can.
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  Speaker 1: You can.
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  Speaker 5: What is your voice saying right now?
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  Speaker 4: Okay, so you need to do the opposite.
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  Speaker 5: Look.
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  Speaker 1: That's tomorrow on the Happy Families podcast, which is produced
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: by Justin Roland from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce is our
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: executive producer. Mim Hammond's provides research and additional support. If
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: you think that your family will be happier because we've
• 13:22
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• 13:25
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• 13:28
  Speaker 1: takes I don't know, twenty or thirty seconds, and it
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: can make such an impact in the lives of so
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: many other families. We want to get the word out
• 13:33
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• 13:35
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• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Those kinds of things make all the difference for us.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: More information and more resources to make your family happier
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: available at happy families dot com. Do a