Our daughters are watching our body image...

cat3nv

I have spent my whole adult life trying to not become my biological mother. She is 5'4" and weighs 350lbs. I have seen pics of my half sister on facebook and she has to be tipping the scale at 450+. I have always had a negative body image, I do not have a relationship with my biological family and I have always been scared I will look like them.

My oldest daughter is 11. She is a long legged (but short), blonde haired, green eyed gorgeous child. She has always been skinny. We have always had to buy her slim size jeans with an adjustable waist. Her long legs would fit, but her skinny little booty never did.There was my 1st mistake. I told her many times she was skinny. I never thought of it as a bad thing, it was just a fact.

We recently found out she needed to be gluten free. It was not an overnight change, but since Christmas time she has gained about 15 lbs. Her eczema has cleared up, and she is not pale as a ghost anymore. Going gluten free has been the best thing to happen to her. She was never unhealthy, but now she is healthy.....hopefully that makes sense.

At the Dr today her weight was 82 pounds. Mistake #2: I made a big deal out of it. I was happy she was healthy. She has always been underweight. You could see her ribs in the past and now she is a healthy weight. She, however, was very upset about her weight. She told the nurse she was fat and needed to lose weight. *** This was the 1st real parenting failure I have experienced*** Sure I have made mistakes, but this is a fail!

I should have seen this coming. I have seen her count the calories in the food she eats, but so do I. I told her she is too young to worry about counting calories. When I have a melt down about non of my clothes fitting, she is the first one to tell me I am not fat, that I am beautiful. I tell her thank you through tears and then say, "you're sweet, but I am fat."

I spoke about this earlier to my MFP friends and I was given this advice:
**** "Raising girls has got to be tough...they have so many potential issues and pressures regarding their bodies. But since you caught it early, I bet you can shift her focus somewhat away from the scale and towards being fit and healthy. The good thing about being young and impressionable is that it works both ways. ****
Hopefully she is right and I can shift my kiddos focus. I wanted to share my day with those of you raising girls. They are watching even when we think they are not.

qtiekiki

Thank you for sharing the story and the reminder.

rissaface

Ugh, you are absolutely correct! I'm raising 3 girls! :noway: and I've been fearing this because I've done the same thing and they've caught onto the "well, how many calories is in that?" They haven't taken it to the point of concern yet, but I always fear I've done the damage with my own body image rubbing off on them. I've gotten online to show them pictures of heavy women that are beautiful so they can understand that you don't have to be "skinny" to be beautiful. We've also changed out verbage around the house to be "heathly" instead of "skinny" and "unhealthy" instead of "fat". I think it helped. Good luck and my thoughts are with you.

megsmom2

This isn't your "parenting failure". Look at the society we all live in. Look at how young women are shown what is beautiful in magazines or on Tv. We are all given an impossible to try to live up to..especially young women just learning their place in the world. What you have to do is keep stressing healthy, not her size or appearance....and do NOT FEEL GUILTY. You didn't fail her.

chelsey202

Your friend gave you wonderful advice. As a teen I counted my calories closely, and used this as my main focus for losing weight/ staying thin. I can tell you right now that if my mother had tried to convince me to not watch the scale or count calories, I would have come off with the "you don't understand" attitude. However, strongly shifting her focus to exercise and eating healthy shows that you support her, while guiding her down the healthy route.

love4fitnesslove4food_wechange

oh man..she's 11. ((hugs)) so sorry you're going through this. i honestly fear for you because eating disorders are so rampant. I suggest making sure you eat together as a family and just keep an eye on her. try to censor your negative "Self talk" if you have any and if you have a scale available for her use then I suggest putting it away--say it's broken if she asks and try to move the "weight" discussion as far from the house as possible.

k8blujay2

First just want to say, Love ya momma!

Second, this is something I so desprately fear. Especially, after reading a blog article that said that (albeit a few so far) there are girls as young as 3 worrying about being fat. That scares me. I got the "I'm fat" idea when I was in early elementary school... It didn't help, when my mom would call me "thunder thighs"... even though I was a skinny child myself.

Thank you for being so honest about it, too. It helps to remember we are in this not only for our weight (which will eventually come off) but for our health too... and it's the second half that we need to emphasize.