Rosalind Wiseman

Sunday will mark the beginning of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, an initiative by the National Eating Disorder Association to help educate all of us about the causes, dangers, and prevention of eating disorders. This year, Rosalind was invited to keynote the kickoff event at the Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt in Baltimore on Sunday, February 21 with a presentation on “Positive Parenting for a Healthy Self Image: Helping Children Develop Social Competence and Body Confidence in Girl World and Boy.” To get the conversation started, Rosalind answered some tough questions about what parents, teachers, and other youth professionals can do to help young people successfully manage their way through the pressures of Boy and Girl World. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 of the Q&A with Sheppard Pratt below.

Simply stated, what are some of the most effective things parents can do to help their children develop confidence and a positive self image?

From the earliest ages you have to teach your child how to navigate Girl and Boy World – a world that will try to convince your child that they are not good enough unless they conform to a rigid belief system of how you should look and how you should act.

It’s almost impossible, as much as parents want this to be the case, to completely protect your child from the influence of these Worlds.

More realistically, parents should, age-appropriately, inform their children how to withstand its insidious ability to make people feel worthless unless they buy into it.

Are you teaching them – by word and deed – that you are more than your physical presentation? For example, when you’re watching TV, listening to the music your kids like, or talking about their friends and the people they gravitate towards, use it as an opportunity to help the child think critically about what they are learning in those moments. The lessons are not only about how they define “beautiful,” but about how they can be convinced that they will never physically match up – pretty enough, masculine enough – to what they’re “supposed” to be.

Another important part of this is to allow room for having the difficult but important conversations about body image -particularly when children feel rejected -instead of ignoring it or responding with common yet often ineffective responses like, “Everyone’s beautiful in their own way,” “Those people are just insecure,” or “People should see you for what you are on the inside, and if they don’t they’re not worth it.”

Instead, while of course you can tell your child that he or she is beautiful, allow the child to talk about how and why they are feeling like they’re not good enough. Sit with these uncomfortable feelings so you can get to a place where the child feels that it’s not weak to talk about it, and that everyone has to deal with these feelings of insecurity. The very process of talking with your child goes a long way toward being able to withstand the pressures of Girl World and Boy World, and toward developing healthy body image.

In Queen Bees & Wannabes, you refer to the management of weight as “The Competition No One Wins” – can you elaborate on this?

For the vast majority of kids, you feel like you never measure up, and it’s so easy to get to a place of “I’m worthless unless I fit this impossible ideal in my head.” As soon as that happens you’re on a path to low self-esteem. But the reason I say that there really are no winners in this “competition” is that everybody looks at certain people and thinks that because he/she is so beautiful they must never struggle with these issues or they must not be insecure. The reality is, in my experience, even those girls and boys feel like they’re never good enough, or they feel like they would be nothing if that façade were taken away.

Here are some recent blogs from my Website that help to illustrate this point: The Price of Success: Girls, Stress and Being Your Own Worst Enemy and Why We’ve Turned on Heidi Montag.

At what age should parents start actively addressing body image concerns with their children? Is there anything we can do when our kids are infants and toddlers to build a good foundation?

By the time kids are four and five years old, it’s not unusual for them to start making comments about their own or others’ bodies. They may say things like, “I have a big belly” or “That person is so fat.”

Now, there’s a tendency among parents to ignore this, hush it, or say it’s not true. The problem with that strategy is that children are still going to believe what they see but they just won’t have the opportunity to talk about it. So then, it’s left up to the kids on the playground to talk about it and define how to treat people based on how they look. And that’s even more harmful because it will probably be in the context of teasing, shame, or embarrassment.

As soon as your child starts making comments or asking questions about how people look, you have to take that as an opportunity to talk about people’s differences.

You can explain that just like people can have different skin colors, people also come in different sizes and that’s just the way they are.

If you’re child is making negative comments about his or her self at this age, you can respond by telling them, “You have a beautiful body. It’s healthy for kids to have a tummy and what’s more important than what you weigh or look like, is how you eat, eating nutritious food, and being physically active.” My colleague, Julia V. Taylor has written a wonderful children’s book about body image called Perfectly You, which I encourage you to check out.

In your book, Queen Bees & Wannabes you write, “Adolescence is a beauty pageant. Even if your daughter doesn’t want to be a contestant, others will look at her as if she is.” How can we teach our girls to socialize effectively without engaging in that competition?

All of us, but particularly adolescents, tend to focus on what other people think about them, and pleasing and conforming to what other people want. So there are three things I think are key to helping your child successfully disengage from the competition. The first is having an adult in addition to your parent whom you feel comfortable going to with problems. Second is having one friend who really has your back and whose loyalty means they will confront you respectfully when they’re worried about you or see you behaving in destructive ways. And third is having one competency (a sport, a skill, etc.) that allows you to feel good about yourself apart from how you look – it’s a reminder that you are more than your appearance.

How can a parent help their child develop social competence and body confidence if they are still struggling with their own body image and self-esteem issues?

When your child is faced with a problem in any capacity having to do with body image, you’re on a road together to support the child.

A parent’s sacred responsibility is to ask themselves difficult questions about themselves and their own behavior. That means examining your beliefs about how your self worth is determined by your body image, and the messages that you’ve imparted about that to your child.

This is important not only for a parent who has eating issues or is struggling with their weight, but also the parents who in the things they say, even if they mean well, may come across as really degrading. So, saying things like, “Do you really want to eat that?” or, “If you lose 10 pounds, I’ll give you X reward.”

And if you as a parent have or are struggling with these issues, one of the most important, profound things you can do is to admit the challenges you’ve had and how that impacts the way that you speak to them. You need to ask your child, “Do I say things that annoy you about the way you eat or how you look? How do you feel when I say those things? What’s a better way for me to talk to you about this?”

And if your child sees you doing anything – small concrete things – that reflect your thoughtfulness about this and your commitment to helping them and helping yourself, that is profoundly meaningful to them. You’re taking the risk to change, and that is one of the most important things for your child to be able to see because it’s going to be so much easier for them to take that leap themselves.

What role do teachers, school staff and other professionals play in “girl world & boy world”? As non-family members, can they make a difference (for better or worse) in a child’s long-term self-esteem or body image?

Of course teachers and other adults in kids’ lives can, for better or worse, have an effect on a child’s self-esteem. A helpful adult can pierce the notion that it’s normal to feel self-loathing and that you’re nothing unless you look a certain way. It may be common, but it doesn’t mean it’s right. Secondly, the same as with parents, you allow students to have conversations that make you uncomfortable, and don’t answer them with cliché statements like “everyone’s beautiful in their own way.”

Educators must not allow children to ever tease others about their looks or make comments themselves about a student’s appearance. Even if the teacher or professional doesn’t have the expertise to help a child who’s suffering from a problem with body image or eating disorders, the relationship they have with the child serves as a bridge to encourage them to take the enormous risk of asking for help.

Event Information:

•  Positive Parenting for A Healthy Self Image: Helping Children Develop Social Competence and Body Confidence in Girl World and Boy World
• Sunday, February 21, 2010

• 1:00 – 1:45 pm – Keynote
• 1:45 – 2:00 pm – Q & A
• 2:00 – 3:00 pm – Reception, Book Sales and Signing

• The Conference Center at Sheppard Pratt

• 6501 North Charles Street
• Towson, MD

• This is an open event and all community members are encouraged to attend. Rosalind’s message will be of particular importance to parents, educators and all professionals who interact with youth including doctors, counselors, social workers and school personnel. She will share great information for new and seasoned parents alike!
• Download the EVENT BROCHURE for details and description. Attendance at this event is FREE but Pre-Registration is required. Please call (410) 938-3157 or email rsvp@sheppardpratt.org to reserve your seat today.
• For more information visit http://www.eatingdisorder.org/events.php

This post originally appeared on eatingdisorder.org/blog.