Raising a tween or teen grandchild (nephew, niece, cousin, or sibling) today is challenging. You are already helping them navigate typical milestones like developing identity, learning healthy independence, and building adult life skills, and big emotions and hormones of adolescence. But you are also trying to walk with them through the challenges of living separately from their parents and how to heal from previous difficult experiences.
The increasing influences of social media, beauty culture, and youth culture are also crowding in on your young person, and you must pay attention to how they form a sense of body image.
You Can Be a Positive Influence on Your Tween or Teen’s Developing Body Image
As they enter adolescence, tweens and teens seek information and peer validation. They are less likely to ask you (or their parents) what you think about issues like body shape or size, weight, or relationships with food. However, you can still be a positive, significant influence on their development.
It’s common for tweens and teens to prefer not to hear from the grown-ups raising them, and that’s okay. It’s developmentally appropriate. You can get around that by modeling health messages about body image and related issues with your example!
1. Be self-reflective about your relationship with issues related to body image.
Start by asking yourself some challenging questions like:
- What is my relationship with food?
- How do I feel about my own body image, shape, or size?
- How do I speak about myself?
- Do I have a positive image of myself?
- Do I focus (too much, too little) on my body shape or size?
- How do I discuss beauty, fitness, health, and physical bodies (mine or others)?
Be intentional about sitting with your answers a bit and thinking about the healing you’d like to experience for these points of pain or discomfort.
2. Consider where to find tools to help you improve your relationship with these issues.
It may feel intimidating, but consider counseling to help you navigate or rebuild a healthy view of yourself. If you don’t pursue counseling, look for other ways to learn healthier views for your whole person. Specifically target resources that would help you positively address your weight, body image, and self-esteem issues. For example, guided journaling lets you track your progress and express yourself.
3. Model healthy behaviors.
Be gracious with yourself, and don’t attempt to revamp your whole life all in one fell swoop. Instead, choose to adjust one or two behaviors at a time. When you feel you’ve developed those new healthy habits, feel free to add another one or two to your life.
Carefully choose activities that will feed and nourish your whole self by caring well for your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health. Find new ways to care for yourself that you enjoy doing – engaging in a new habit if you hate the activity is counterproductive.
4. Model a healthy relationship with food.
Food is a significant part of our larger culture. Your tribal community and immediate family likely have your own subculture around food, including traditions and family favorites. That’s fantastic, and it’s essential that you keep honoring and respecting that culture.
However, also try to observe how you all interact with and around food. Think about how you can become a thoughtful eater. You deserve to enjoy the experience of preparing food and eating with your family. Consider what small improvements you can make to increase your family’s range of preferred foods. How do you introduce or experience new foods? How do you relate and connect with each other when preparing food for the daily and significant occasions of your family’s culture?
These four small actions can help you rewire your mind and body to think differently about body image, food, culture, and the roles they play in your family. Your grandkids (or nephews, nieces, or cousins) will notice and be positively influenced by your example.