Teach Your Kids About Having a Positive Body Image

When you embark on raising healthy kids, this can sometimes be confusing to them. 
You might instill the importance of eating healthy and exercising in a way to battle 
childhood obesity, but at the same time, make your children feel like their weight is a 
problem, which can be bad for their body image. Here are some ways to teach them to 
have a positive body image while being healthy at the same time.

Be a Good Example

As a parent or guardian, you should always be leading by example. Kids and teens pay 
a lot more attention to what you do, wear, and what you say than you might think they 
do. If your kids see that you are always starting new fad diets or you complain about 
being ‘fat’, they will start thinking these things are important. Suddenly you have a pre-
teen who is on a crash diet, which she learned from you was important. Also make sure 
even when you want to lose weight, you be careful how you word it. Saying you are 
trying to eat healthy is one thing, but never complain about being fat or talk about diets. 
This has a negative connotation that doesn’t help to promote a positive body image with 
your kids.

Promote Health, Not Weight Loss

This can be a little difficult because you want to avoid childhood obesity, and therefore 
want your kids to eat healthy and exercise. But that doesn’t mean you have to talk about 
weight loss. Just encourage healthy habits and focus on nutrition. This is enough to 
keep your kids healthy as long as you stick with it. Don’t stress about their weight and 
size, and never mention it to them. Instead, just start cooking more meals at home and 
let everyone in the family know you want to start weekly workouts or you want to reduce 
how often you eat out. Always focus more on the health of your kids.

Compliment Things Other Than Their Appearance

This is a technique that is used for positive body image. If all you do is compliment how 
your kids look, they will view their appearance as the most important thing. Instead of 
doing that, compliment their grades, creative activities they are interested in, their 
intelligence, humor, and anything else you find interesting or fascinating about them. 
This shows them that they are worthwhile regardless of how they look.
