Body Confidence Isn’t About Appearance

You're listening to good inside with Dr. Becky. I have so many ideas, strategies, and scripts to share with you right after a word from our sponsor. Hi, I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. I'm a clinical psychologist and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children. I love translating deep thoughts about parenting into practical, actionable strategies that you can use in your home right away. One of my core beliefs is that we are all doing the best we can with the resources we have available to us in that moment. So even as we struggle and even as we are having a hard time on the outside, we remain Good inside. Today we'll be talking about body confidence. I'm so excited to dive into this topic. It's such an important one. Every parent I know wants their kids to feel good about their bodies. And what we're going to do together today is rethink what body confidence is. Because if we want to build it, we have to know where it comes from. I wanna reframe how we think about body confidence, and then I wanna walk through a couple situations where our kids might come to us saying that they don't feel great about themselves, they don't feel good about their appearance, or they're complaining about parts of their bodies. With this in mind, let's jump in. Our first caller is Rachel.

Hi, Dr. Becky. My name's Rachel and I live in D.C. i have two kids, so I grew up in a house where my body and weight were constantly critiqued. And now that I'm a mom, I want my kids to feel good about themselves and their appearance. And, you know, seeing as I didn't grow up with a good example on how to do that, I'm just wondering, you know, how I. How I can do that. How do I instill confidence in my kids about their bodies? How do I help them feel good about themselves? I'm always telling them that they're beautiful and strong and healthy, but I would love more insight on this tricky and sensitive topic for me. Anyway, thank you so much for everything. Bye.

Hi, Rachel. Thank you so much for raising this really important question and for sharing things that happened to you in your childhood. I'm really sorry you had to go through that. It sounds really painful. And the fact that you're where you are now, really aware of how that influenced you and really knowing that you want to do things differently in your family, I'm just really inspired by what I consider true bravery. So, again, thank you for being here and raising this so There's a big irony, I think for me when I think about body confidence and positive body image. I actually don't think kids build body confidence by feeling good about their appearance. I think we know, yes, if I tell my child she's not pretty, if I tell my son he doesn't look good, if I'm negative, negative, critical, critical about their appearances all the time, I think we know, yeah, that's not gonna feel good. But it's not that it doesn't feel good related to their appearance. It just feels awful to be constantly receiving your not good enough messages in your home. Kids on the opposite end of the spectrum feel really good in their bodies because they feel good in their bodies from inside out. They feel more valued for what's inside them than what is outside of them, which is their appearance. Kids with true body confidence get that because they feel valued, they feel seen, they feel connected to they, they feel like their range of feelings they had were acknowledged, that they were able to be honest with their parents, that they felt they were kind of unique in their family. They were able to share with their parents, they were able to talk through tricky situations with their parents. When they got upset, those feelings were validated. In these moments, what we're really saying to our kids is your body, meaning the information in your body, your feelings, your thoughts, those are good. Your home, which is your body, is a good, valuable home. This is what turns into what we say is body confidence, even though it has nothing to do with the size of my child's body or the color of her eyes or, or my child's weight. In fact, I think the more a family focuses on appearance, even if it's loads of good comments about appearance, the lower a child's overall confidence will be, including their body confidence. Because it feels so ephemeral, it feels so pressured. It feels like, oh, I have to keep up this certain routine to stay in line and be the version of myself that was praised and that was seen as worthy and valuable. So one of the things I guess I would encourage you to think about is just making fewer appearance related comments across the board. Seeing a child for, ooh, what a cool outfit you put together. Tell me more how you put those things together. Even that is a comment about an outfit that speaks more to your interest about the child under the outfit rather than you. You look so beautiful in that skirt and shirt. Which is more about something outward facing, which is more about what you show others than what you actually have inside yourself. Body confidence doesn't come from our Appearance, body confidence comes from feeling valuable and worthy inside. One more thing, Rachel, to add on. Our kids are really absorbing the things we say to ourselves, to other adults and where we put our attention and focus. So I think we can have a huge impact on our kids body confidence by watching what we say about ourselves. Right? By coming down when you're dressed up and maybe even saying, oh, don't I look fancy today? Instead, instead of only saving the word pretty for a time, you're kind of made up and have a kind of fancy dress on. Right? Even that is a small change that can really impact a child. This means minimizing the way we overvalue our own appearance relative to the things that actually make us up. So instead of talking about the size waist you are or dress or how you've changed clothing sizes, make sure your kids hear you talking about the latest work project that you're proud of working on because you've been working so hard, or an interesting conversation you had at lunch with a friend and how much you learned from that friend and how enjoyable that was. Our kids learn to value what's inside them, not only by what we say to them, but what they witness us saying about ourselves. The next caller is Alyssa.

Hi, Dr. Becky. This is Alyssa. I have a seven and a nine year old. We live outside Philadelphia. I'm calling today about trying to deal with body image with my kids. You know, we grew up in the generation of diet culture and I know that myself and my good friends are really trying to raise our kids differently. But it seems really tricky because no matter what we do, they're going to hear the words that we don't want them to hear, the negative words about dieting and body image. And inevitably my son, who's 9, started bringing this up and talking about looking in the mirror and seeing his legs a certain way. And it just, it hurts me inside because I've tried to raise him the best I could, not how I grew up with such self esteem issues. And so no matter what I read and I'm trying to do my best and show them books where all bodies are represented. It still seems tricky that inevitably these questions come up and I just don't know the right way to approach it. So if you have any thoughts, it would be super helpful on how to talk to our kids about body image and self esteem. Thank you so much.

Hi, Alyssa. First of all, it sounds like you're doing so much. I hear your thoughtfulness, I hear the effort you're putting forward. And I think that's the most important place to start. It's important for us all to realize that our child's comments, they're not a barometer of the intergenerational impact we're having. Alyssa, it sounds like you know that you're doing something differently. You're being mindful of the way you talk about bodies, show bodies. The fact that your nine year old son made a comment about his legs. It's not something that's insignificant, it's something we're going to talk more about. Also note that comment's potential to feel like it shatters all of the work you've been doing. And I guess I just want to remind you no shattering has been done. Your son made a comment. That's true. And you're really changing things. That's also true. Next point. We're not able to have complete control over what our children see and hear. What we can do is prepare our kids to be active consumers of of information rather than mindless absorbers of information. This, to me, is one of the most critical skills we can build when our kids are young to protect their mental health when they're older. What does this really mean? Well, to me, the word that comes to mind is dissonance. Dissonance is hugely protective. I don't know the kind of dictionary definition of dissonance, but in the simplest way for me, it's our ability to say huh when we hear something that huh, acts as a filter. If right now you picture a piece of information outside of you, it's something someone says, or it's something you read, or it's an image you consume on social media, picture that outside of you. Then there's all the stuff inside of you. Your thoughts, your self beliefs, your feelings. When we say hang, it's kind of as if we pause and we don't allow that piece of information to just pass into us through osmosis. When we pause in that way and wonder about the piece of information, ask questions about it, we change the way our body processes it. This is creating dissonance. So let me model how you can work on creating dissonance for your son. Let's say your son comes to you as he said he did, saying something about his legs. I'm not sure what it was, but let's say a child says, oh, my legs are so big, I don't like my legs this way. Or I wish my legs were bigger and more muscular. I hate my skinny legs. Right. We know it could be in either direction. Here's how we would respond to build that skill, that muscle of dissonance. Huh? Tell me more about that or. I'm really glad you're talking to me about this. Let me see if I got this right. You looked in the mirror, you saw your legs. Something about it didn't sit right. Keep going. This is so important for us to be talking about now. Let's say your child ends up saying they need to be bigger and they're not big enough and they're not muscular enough. I don't look good. Here's how we continue to. To raise dissonance. Huh? It seems like at some point you learned that bigger legs were better than smaller legs. Is that right? Is that true? Is that true for everyone? Is that true at your age? Is that true for everybody? You know, is there anyone that's not true for. I'm not looking to disprove anything. The only thing I'm actually hoping to do is model how to actively engage with thoughts, actively engage with kind of societal beliefs around attractiveness. And the way that we do that is by being a little bit naive and asking questions and being willing to pause instead of jumping right into, what are you talking about? You look great. Which actually doesn't build that key skill of dissonance. That is what is going to be really protective for our kids as they continue to get older. Alyssa, I don't know if this is happening for you, but I know for even me, sometimes I wonder, okay, but how does that help my child later on? Or what really is the point of raising dissonance? So let me walk through that a little more clearly. I think we have been fed an idea that positive body image is loving our body. Right? And I don't know if that's exactly the way I would define it. To me, body positivity or body confidence is feeling kind of good about our body as a home of who we are. That doesn't mean we like every single part of our own body. That doesn't mean we feel happy with our appearance every single day. What really matters for our confidence and for our overall mental health is that we're able to notice the thoughts that bring on distressing feelings about our body. We're able to notice the times when we essentially feel like, ugh, I don't feel great about myself today, or, I don't feel great about this part of my body today. As soon as we're able to notice those feelings, those feelings or those thoughts become a part of our experience when we don't notice them, which is what happens when we don't build that dissonance. Those feelings, a feeling like I don't like my legs can consume us. And all of a sudden it's as if we are our legs that we don't like, and therefore we are a person that we don't like. And this is what kind of can send any of us spiraling into what feels like an abyss. So when you're pausing with your son, when you're asking questions, when you're sitting with him and asking him to tell you more about how he got these ideas, you're actually building the general skill of mindfulness. And as we build our kids mindfulness, they become more of an expert in essentially the inner workings of their mind and body. And you're helping your child then in the future be able to recognize feelings instead of having those feelings take over. Let's hear from our last caller, Melissa.

Hi, Dr. Becky. My name is Melissa and I live in New York. I have three daughters who are 5, 9, and 11, and I've been struggling with how to approach topics around body image with them. So I try to be really mindful about comments I make about my own body. I try not to comment on other people's bodies, but I still hear my daughters make negative comments about their own bodies. They might say things like, my hair is so frizzy or my ears stick out so much my stomach is squishy. So I'm just struggling with how can I validate these feelings that they're having about their bodies without giving too much importance to external traits. I'm wondering if I can problem solve with them for things that, that maybe they can control, like a different hair product, but then does that reinforce a message that they have to look a certain way? I'm just really finding this a tricky balance and I'd love to know your thoughts and any suggestions you have for how I can promote a more positive body image for them at all ages. Thank you so much.

Hi, Melissa, thank you for calling in and for raising a really, really thoughtful question. When our kids come to us and they're complaining about something, in this case it's a situation about their hair, about how they look. Is it okay to offer them what seems to be a solution for this problem, or should I have a different approach? What is really the thing my kid needs to build body confidence? What is my child, deep down kind of looking for from me? So here's a couple ideas around that. First, start with curiosity, not solutions. The idea of a solution is that we're fixing something and if we're fixing something, There's a problem. So when we come at our children's struggles with solutions, we actually are saying to them, we too think this is a problem. I don't know any parent who actually says that. But our children are always kind of consuming what we say from a deeper attachment message. And they're always asking us, am I good enough? Am I lovable? And so when we say to them quickly, oh, let's just get you a hair product, we'll get the frizz out right away. We're. We're also kind of saying, yeah, I don't think your hair looks so great either. I don't know if you're so great. We don't want to unwittingly diminish our kids confidence. We really want to build it. So how do we build confidence? Body confidence. Again, it's not really about our appearance. It's about the feelings we have inside our body. We, which really means it's about our feelings, about our feelings. It's about our ability to sit with ourselves. It's our ability to say, right now, no matter what is going on for me, I'm still a good person. I'm still of value. I'm still worthy. So how do we help our kids build that type of confidence while also being practical and responding to the specific things they bring to us, which in this case might be frizzy hair. So when I said to start with curiosity, that's similar to what I said to Alyssa early on, which was building dissonance. Dissonance, curiosity. I think they're kind of close cousins of each other. So what I would do here is shore up attachment and connection with your child and start asking questions. I'd start like this. I. I'm so glad you're talking to me about this, or I'm so glad you came to me about this. I'm actually moving the focus away from appearance and I'm moving it to the significance of our attachment relationship. Then I'd go further. Everyone in the world has so many feelings about themselves. Do you know that everyone has feelings about their bodies and about their hair and about different things about how they look. I'm so glad you knew these feelings are important enough to talk about. You're actually building your child's confidence here when you're not even talking about her hair because you're talking about her ability to recognize things inside her and bring them out and connect to you about them. Now let's build on that curiosity. Frizzy hair. Hmm. Okay. This might seem like a ridiculous thing to say, but what does that really mean? Like frizzy? Okay, I'm going to go through a list of questions. Do not do this rapidly with your child. I'm just doing this to model. I would pause, see what your child says and kind of go with what feels right next. So frizzy, what does that mean? Is that, oh, it's a bad thing? Huh? How did you learn frizzy hair was a bad thing? I'm just curious. How did you learn that? Or where did you learn that? Did somebody say that? Did you read that? Did you see pictures of people with frizzy hair? Oh, have you only seen pictures of people you find attractive and they don't have frizzy hair and you're kind of like being a detective and then putting it all together that way? That's so interesting. I have another question. What's the opposite of frizzy? Maybe your child says straight. Oh, straight. Okay, so I'm just trying to put this together. So if frizzy is bad, straight is good. Is that always true? Is frizzy hair ever good on Sunday? Some people and not others. Okay, like if I have straight hair and you think, wow, you're a beautiful, amazing person with straight hair, and then one day I go out and my hair's frizzy, like, am I, am I not pretty anymore? If I put something in my hair to get straight in my pretty again, did I lose the pretty because my frizzy hair came and then pretty is forever gone? Do I get back the pretty? If I have like seven days in a row of straight hair, am I definitely pretty forever? Okay, I'm going to step out of the role play to talk about what I'm doing here. I am really raising a lot of questions. Right? And we want your daughter to be asking herself these questions. It's probably not really possible for a young child to be fully doing this. This is why we're modeling it. We're not modeling these questions to get answers. We're modeling these questions so when our kids get older, they, they ask themselves the same questions. Asking yourself questions is building your own dissonance. This is hugely self protective. You're also showing your child in a really experiential way that you don't buy into this beauty ideal. You're kind of naive around it. You're asking all these questions, trying to figure it out. You're raising a child who also is going to ask questions. Instead of accepting, accept beauty ideals that are placed in the media around her. Now I'm going to get one more level of practical, because I know if this is my daughter, she might still say, okay, well, can I go get that product my friend got? She said it makes my hair straight. And I'm thinking, oh, I did the questions, I did the dissonance. What do I do now? What do I do? If your child is really pushing for this, there's no reason you have to say no. You've done a lot of work by shoring up that connection. Definitely a lot of work by raising these questions. And I would make sure this product or this supposed solution, even though we know it's not really a solution because there's no problem in the first place, really, I would make sure it comes from her and not from you. Then let's say I take my child to a drugstore. I'd probably say something like this, okay, I mean, look, I'll get you this because you seem to really want it. Please know, sweetie, you're a beautiful, important, valuable person because of who you are. And then I'd probably lightly tap my child, say in there, no matter what your hair looks like, you're the same kid to me. I love you. Let's tie this all together with three takeaways. 1. Body confidence is really about how we feel on the inside. Ironically, the less we focus on appearance, the more confident our children will feel about their bodies. 2. Let's build dissonance. Dissonance is our ability to mindfully engage with information and also with our own thoughts. When our kids come to us with critical feelings about their bodies. Pause, express curiosity, ask questions. This helps our kids learn to ask their own questions, which protects them because now they can engage with their thoughts instead of those thoughts just immediately being accepted as true. 3. Often, what appears to be a solution to our kids body confidence may actually perpetuate their lack of confidence. Remember getting your child a hair product to straighten their hair or buying a child a special headband so their ears don't appear to stick out. I'm not saying these things are awful or are on some do not do list. Remember, a child might interpret a quick solution as confirmation that they really do have a big problem. And this might end up increasing a child's insecurity. If you're ending this episode wondering, huh, okay, well, what are some other things I can do to build my child's body confidence and overall confidence? I've got you covered with my Rethinking Confidence workshop. You can find that workshop and many others@learning.goodinside.com thanks for listening to Good Inside. Let's stay connected@goodinside.com, you can sign up for workshops and subscribe to Good Insider, my weekly email with scripts and strategies delivered right to your inbox. And for more ideas and tips, check out my Instagram drbeckyoodinside. Good Inside is produced by Beth Rowe and Brad Gage and executive produced by Erica Belsky and me, Dr. Becky. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review. And if you really like the episode, please share it with someone you know. Many of you tell me that sharing an episode has allowed you to start conversations about tricky topics with spouses or extended family members and to bond and connect with fellow cycle breakers. I actually do read each and every review, so please know that your feedback is meaningful to me. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves. Even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain Good Inside.