Kiddipedia
One of the best gifts you can give to your kid is the gift of a healthy body image!
Here’s why.
The image kids hold of themselves has so much to do with their overall mental and physical health and this largely determines success in their life. Body image contributes a big chunk of a kid’s, and this includes teens’ self-image because body is the physical instrument of the mind. How they feel about their body contributes to them feeling confident and assured and enhances their self-esteem.
Here’s how parents and educators can help young people develop a healthy body image.
- Talk about how magnificent the body is. Depending on the age, talk about the bodily functions that the body is able to perform – the heart beating 50-80 times a minute without conscious assistance. The amount of blood the body processes – 14,000 litres every day. The body’s ability to heal itself at every minute. The magnificence of the digestive system. How the body is able to perform actions that still boggle us scientists. The skin and its protective functions.
- Talk about the diversity of nature. Different people have different skin colours and yet under all these skins, are blood group A, B, AB, O. Talk about the uniqueness of the fingerprints that everyone has their own unique makeupand that means each person was born to shine in their own magnificence. Like everything else in nature no one should ever compare a rose and lily -and that both are flowers but they are different and each of them is beautiful.
- Don’t limit these subjects to science lessons for kids to pass exams. But use them as part of social, emotional, mental, and physical lessons to reinstate to kids how magnificent they are.
- Parents and teachers can verbally appreciate kids’ magnificence in different ways all through the day using words or actions of praise.
- Encourage positive progress that enhances values such as kindness to self with the understanding of how magnificent you are and then kindness to others.
- Be models of healthy body image by embracing ourselves and absolutely loving ourselves just as we are. Modelling is the strongest learning method because kids see us before they hear what we have to say. What choices do we make and what do we say about ourselves and others? Encourage healthier choices, never lending ourselves as slaves to food.
- Impress upon kids’ that no matter what the magazines and media portray, there’s no ideal body shape and look. Attractive people are those who are authentic and embrace themselves just as they are. Discuss human qualities of people of all shapes and sizes and colours.
- Discourage negative comments about self and others including so called slight and mild teasing and body shaming based on appearance, ethnicity, size and or shape.
- Support and cheer them as their body changes especially in teenage years where identity crises begin to arise.
My name is Angela Karanja Parenting Teenagers’ Expert & Adolescent Psychologist and founder Raising Remarkable Teenagers.
Here are my credentials @RaisingTeenagers | Linktree https://linktr.ee/RaisingTeenagers
Plus other places I have been featured Angela Karanja In The Media| Raising Remarkable Teenagers https://www.raisingremarkableteenagers.com/media
