Moving from Body Shaming to Body Love and Building a Positive Self-Concept in Children and Families
Updated: Feb 18
Terri-Lynn Langdon is a well-known therapist in the areas of mental health, youth issues, violence against women, maternal health, disability, and social justice. Her trauma-informed skills, mindful ways of working, and empowering others to create the best health possible while living in authenticity are strengths in her practice.
Body positivity is a struggle for many adults and children too. My young daughter, who is seven, is starting to worry about fitting in, her appearance, and her clothing, and it is all hitting her in formative ways.
The good news (I think!) is that she does “fit in.” Everyone at school, daycare, and dance seems to know her name, she has lots of friends at school, and she is developing skills like a beautiful growing flame in a celebratory fire. These are all good things, but I am getting the sense that she is having to really do some emotional and social labour to “fit in,” and whatever way you slice it, that feels really, really hard for her, especially for me as well.
I have a really social, bubbly, extroverted little girl. She likes to say- and I agree- that her friendliness is her superpower. I saw this superpower emerge in her right into the beginnings of toddlerhood. She said hello with a big smile, almost without discernment. She was an early talker and had so much to say. Then, when COVID hit, it was way too much for her sense of connection to the community we had been building, and because of her age at 17 months old, she burst into tears in the lobby, saying, “Why doesn’t anyone talk to us anymore? It did not occur to her that everyone’s social distancing had nothing to do with her. She was missing the high-fives, the fist bumps, and the exchange of stickers and sweets that our neighbours would often exchange while waiting for our ride to daycare. And then, without warning, daycare ended abruptly and for a very long time.
What has not ended, though, is that when someone does not meet my daughter with a similar bubbly, engaging energy, the doubt creeps in for her. We have talked about it quite a bit. She can think, “Did I do something wrong”? What does it mean if she gets a confusing response from a classmate? These interactions are peppered with seven-year-old life experiences, expectations, and social circles, but it still results in social and emotional labour that can be draining.
In my childhood, too many things were hard to fit into. My family circumstances were a hot mess and came with a lot of instability. The school environment was never accessible, very few recreational programs even considered my applications since they were also not accessible, and the systems that didn’t fit at all never seemed to want to hear from me about real change or inclusion. It is also true that I always felt protected by a solid and committed group of friends. I was always convinced that I could learn a new skill, and I learned many, and I frequently put good things into the world. If I were using crutches, I would do it one step and one crutch at a time, and if I were using my wheelchair, I would keep my hands on the wheels. My ability to access connections to the community, to growth, and possibility is actually quite rare. But as rare as it is, it all adds extra layers of how to work through shame and love a body, and that it often took extra work to fit in and make a place.
As a mom, I think my children look beautiful, everything they wear looks great to me. Many of the things that my children say are “cute.” And yet, this feeling of scrutinizing one’s own appearance is distantly familiar. As a child, I didn’t always like the way I looked. I didn’t like the way my neck looked or how big my legs were, and sometimes I thought I looked amazing! It is an all-too-common experience for children and adults.
How do we think our way out of body shame and into body pride and the love of a body? Yes, we can attempt to talk back to body shame, and we should! Additionally, wouldn’t it be fascinating if we focused on strengths, skills, and talents that had nothing at all to do with appearance?
The focus on strengths, skills, and talents, and nothing to do with appearance, is a shift from two things: 1) The focus on appearance shifts entirely, and 2) the focus on the things that the body can do, per se, has shifted as well, because thinking of the body as a doer can be ableist. The risk here is that evaluating the body for what it can and cannot do can be its own struggle, especially within the disability community, and it is just a faulty thought process. When we think through body positivity for what a body can “do”, we can run the risk of teaching children that their value is related only to productivity and productivity alone.
However, what about the essence of a child and a parent? A person’s essence describes their energetic presence and authentic consciousness that is free from judgement. In other words, what would a human be, and be free to express, if they could just open themselves up? I feel like I am still trying to figure that out for myself, and it is essential that I model that for my kids as those glimmers arise. The how-to of teaching this to children is going to be different for everyone. How we choose to do that together as a family is mostly through dancing in our living room and playing games in the pool. That is when we all feel the most relaxed.
What could this look like for your family, and how can this be related to the love of a body and a healthy body image?
When children focus on their strengths, talents, and skills and how they themselves bring their own flair and style to life experiences, it helps to build a positive self-concept. There is also a body scan where you can thank the body for its gifts, like how hands can help, and lips can speak kind words, or how hands can communicate kind words! (for example, in the DEAF community). All bodies are different and function differently. As such, in my experience, living in a disabled body brings a keen ability to solve problems, have unique experiences, and the desire to bring forth new ideas to the troubling commonality of body image distress and discomfort.
To meditate on the backdrop of love and to bring that to this page and this particular set of problems is a very worthwhile project. And so it is that, at least for today, what I could do was write about it!
Terri-Lynn Langdon, Social Worker & Health Equity Researcher
Terri-Lynn Langdon is a feminist, disability studies, and health equity scholar in Social Justice Education at The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She is a candidate in the Collaborative Specialization in Women's Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and a research fellow with the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. She has over 14 years of experience in the social work field. Terri-Lynn is passionate about helping people to achieve the best possible health and a meaning-making life. She is the mother of 2 young children.
