Perfect skin, bikini bodies and sculpted six-packs. Young people today have a very different life to that of their parents. It’s never been easy to be a teenager but right now children and young people are exposed to a constant stream of messages and images relating to how they should look or how they should act. These messages reach them through a barrage of constructed reality TV shows, social media images and celebrity culture. Is it any wonder that many struggle with their self-esteem and mental health difficulties? Negative body image has been a growing issue for teenage girls and last year The Good Childhood Report found that boys were also experiencing a decline in happiness with how they look. In the midst of these worrying trends, I reflected on some tips on how parents might support their young person to take care of their mental health amongst the pressures of modern day life.
Help your child to learn the art of self-love and appreciation. This is about helping your child or young person to love themselves just the way they are, and becoming comfortable and confident in their own skin. You might help them work on this by seeing if they can write a list of things they like about themselves. Try and focus this on features that are not related to how much they weigh or what they look like, but about who they are as a person, and what they bring to the world. Equally if they want to celebrate their appearance, this is also an important feature of self-appreciation. Encourage them to read their list often. They may prefer to write these things on post it notes and stick them on their mirror or around their room so that they can be reminded of them regularly. To support your young person in achieving self-love, be mindful to avoid the use of any negative or critical comments in regards to their appearance or shape/size. Provide praise and encouragement to your young person which focuses on your love for them just as they are.
Encourage them to start a gratitude journal. In a world where we can sometimes find ourselves focusing on the negatives, a gratitude journal is a way to keep a regular memo of the things that we are appreciative of on a daily basis. Encourage your young person to allocate a time each day to journal about a few things that they are grateful for. These may not be hugely significant things, but is more a way to acknowledge those things that we sometimes take for granted. Examples might be “I’m grateful that it wasn’t raining when I walked to school”, “I’m grateful of the nice dinner I had this-evening” or “I’m grateful for the laughs I had with my friends today”. Allocating a regular time to journal about a few things every day that we are grateful for, can help us remain focused on the positive things around us. You may want to treat your young person to a new notebook to get them started!
Remind your child not to forget the reality behind the images they see - Young people are bombarded by images on a daily basis and it’s important that they remember when they view images on social media, adverts or the television, that they might not always be seeing real images. The power of technologies such as Photoshop mean that an image can be transformed to change the way that someone looks in pretty much every possible way. This can create a false perception of how the human body really looks and is leading to a generation of young people aspiring towards an unrealistic and unhealthy body image. Some celebrities have been hitting back at this trend, including Stacey Solomon who spoke out on the reality of Photoshop and posed in a bikini to show what her body really looks like in the fight against airbrushed photos.
In order to help your young person understand the reality of the human body opposed to what they see online or on their screens, introduce conversations in the home about the human body and the reality of how it looks and what it does. Informal education in the home is so important, and often parents and carers play a vital role in creating a safe space for young people to understand and learn about the real world, away from the classroom setting and away from what they read online.
4. Encourage them to wear clothes that they feel comfortable wearing. We all have clothes that make us feel more comfortable, and clothes that make us feel much less so. Young people can explore what style, shape and sized clothes make them feel good about themselves, and fill their wardrobe with more of these! To bring this to life for your young person, maybe talk to them about the clothes that you like wearing and the things that you have to avoid – this might help them understand that everyone has different shapes and sizes and will feel comfortable wearing different things. 5. Help them to manage their newsfeed. In order to work towards better mental health in relation to self-esteem and body image, it can be really helpful to take control of our social media usage and content. If you are a social media user yourself, perhaps this will resonate with you too! In our newsfeeds there are often certain people whose posts and images have a negative impact on our wellbeing and perception of self. It might worth encouraging your young person to unfollow some of these people and sites so as to remove the negative influences and energies these can bring. At the same time, are there certain people or celebrities who promote positive self-esteem and body confidence, and are these people they could select to see more content from? If you are a social media user too, this could be an activity that you do together, to promote a shared approach to controlling what you see on social media. A good place to start is by taking a look at the YoungMinds website, where they have partnered with O2 to develop a campaign to help young people own their news feeds. Check it out for more information: https://youngminds.org.uk/ownyourfeed/
6. Demonstrate a healthy attitude towards body image and self-esteem. As a parent it is important to be aware of how easily children and young people can learn attitudes, language and behaviours from their parents. In light of this, it is worth considering how we can promote a movement away from the focus on body image and demonstrate the change we wish to see. Sometimes without realising we might be contributing and feeding into conversations about diet, weight loss and body image, sometimes in the presence of our young person. Perhaps moving into the New Year, we could consider how we could move away from this and how we promote healthy conversations that encourage self-love and healthy relationships with ourselves. This might mean diverting conversations away from the topic of weight loss, perhaps being more conscious of the language and conversations that we have about our own appearance in front of a young person, and encouraging a general attitude of positive body confidence. Please remember though that parents are allowed to ask for help too, so if you need support with how you are feeling, consider seeking support from your networks or from a GP.
7. Remind your child that EVERYONE is different. Throughout the world we will struggle to ever find two people who are truly identical in every sense of the word. It is so important that we learn to celebrate difference and embrace who we are, instead of aspiring to be like somebody else. Remind your young person that the human body comes in all different shapes and sizes, and so do our features, personalities, lifestyles and general existence! Through praise, love, and encouragement, help your young person celebrate their existence as a uniquely wonderful person, and remind them often that you love them just the way they are.
8. Ask for support. If your child comes to you with continuous difficulties or worries in relation to self-esteem, body image or mental health and you aren’t able to help them, it is okay to see if they would be happy to seek other support. That could be through a trusted friend, family member or professional such as a GP who will be able to tell you and your young person about the support that is available in your area.
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