What Are We Doing To Our Daughters?

In a culture of stick-thin models, our young adolescents are embarking on a dangerous path of dieting, bingeing, and purging.

The Statistics:

80-90% of adult women dislike their bodies. 15% of women say they would sacrifice more than five years of their lives to be thinner. 81% of 10-year-olds are afraid of being fat, and the number one wish of girls 11-17 years old is to lose weight. 51% of 9 and 10 year-old girls feel better about themselves when dieting, and 9% of 9-year-olds have vomited to lose weight.

More than half of teenage girls are, or think they should be, on a diet. 35% of “normal dieters” progress to pathological dieting. Of these, 20-25% progress to partial of full-syndrome eating disorders.

The chances are good that your daughter is struggling with her body image. Here are some things to watch for:

• Going on a diet

• Obsessing about food choices

• Restricting her food intake and then eating compulsively

• Exercising excessively

• Reducing or limiting her social time in favor of exercise

• Avoiding social interaction that involves food or meal times

• Obsessing about a particular body part

• Comparing herself to her peers and feeling deficient

The fact is that if you are not proactive in affirming your daughter’s natural beauty and self-worth, chances are she will be seduced by the cultural lies that tell her she is not quite good enough.

What you can do to help her develop a positive body-image and healthy self-esteem:

• Become an example: Improve your own body image and self-talk!

• Teach your child to recognize beauty in people of all different shapes, sizes, ages, and ethnicities

• Encourage healthy lifestyle choices, but avoid suggesting that your child should look a specific way or be a certain weight or size

• Let you child know that images in the media aren’t real; they have been touched-up and air-brushed.

• Let your child know that you love her exactly how she is, no matter what

• Teach your child to be grateful for exactly who she is. If you are religious, you can teach her the following prayer: “Thank you God for making me just the way I am.” If you are not religious, you can simply teach her to repeat this phrase to herself, acknowledging all the great characteristics she has, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

• Teach her to be conscious about her thoughts: negative thoughts and feelings can have a negative effect on her well-being, whereas positive thoughts and emotions have the power to transform for the better.

Body-image struggles and disordered eating are often a cry for help. Teaching your kids important skills for stress management and emotional intelligence can also help them develop healthy self-esteem and body-image:

• Be there for your child! Take the time to learn about her friendships, struggles, and triumphs. This will allow you to provide guidance as appropriate, as well as catch behavior changes when they occur.

• Encourage conscious communication

• Encourage mind-body centering activities such as yoga and meditation.

For more information on body image, eating disorders, and personal empowerment please visit Sarah Maria Dreisbach’s web site at www.breakfreebeauty.com.