Your Teen’s Sharper Image

Teens struggle with enough, with peer pressure, and growing up, and changing bodies, but the fact is one of their big struggles is often that of maintaining a healthy body image. The following is a look at how to encourage a healthy body image for your teens.

Have a healthy body image yourself: Your teen is never going to be satisfied or happy with their body if they are constantly hearing you complain about yours. When a mom is always focused on dieting and her body, her teenage daughter is bound to do the same. So, start by working on yourself, and once you have accomplished the ability to have a healthy body image, you can be a more effective role model for encouraging your teen to have a better body image.

Appearance and acceptance: If your teen has an unhealthy body image it is almost always because of a problem with acceptance. When people are teens, a lot of acceptance is based on appearance. If you are fat, pimply, or wear the wrong clothes, it is hard to be part of the popular clique or group. So, encourage your teen to have a healthy body image by helping them find a niche or group that they are accepted in. When your teen finds acceptance, then they will begin to feel more comfortable in their own skin. Help your teen like their body better by helping their appearance fit in better. You can help them find a style that they like, and that helps them fit in.

Compliment the inside: If you want your child to have a great body image it is critical that you compliment them and help them feel good about themselves. Part of feeling good about themselves is not just liking their outside, their body, but also liking their insides. Compliment their soul. Talk to them about how kind they are, about how thoughtful they are, about how sweet they are, or how good they are with kids, or whatever it is that they are good with. You want to make sure that their self-confidence is as high as possible, and to do this it can not just be based on the outside, but on the inside as well. This means do what you can to help them feel good about themselves.

Never let their body image get so out of skew that it is problematic: If you want your child to have a healthy body image you have to monitor what they watch and think. If they follow the trends of celebrities, etc. they may never feel good about their body no matter how good it is. You have to teach them that celebrities, people on shows, and those they see in magazines are made up by professional make-up artists and hair stylists. If your child had a professional dressing them, doing their hair, make-up, etc. they would look just as good as those celebs. So, help them understand that they are judging themselves based off of their roll out of bed look, compared to others at their best.