049: How to raise a girl with a healthy body image

Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive - A podcast by Jen Lumanlan - Mondays

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Folks, this one is personal for me. As someone with an ~ahem~ family history of disordered thinking about body image, it is very, very high on my priority list to get this right with my daughter. Dr. Renee Engeln, author of the book Beauty Sick, helps us sort through issues like: Should I tell my daughter she's pretty? What should I say when she asks me if she's pretty? Is teaching our daughters about media literacy - the ability to critique images they see in the media - enough to protect them, or not? ...and so much more! I know there's a lot more to raising a girl than just this issue, and in time I hope to find another expert to discuss how we can raise daughters who aren't limited by broader societal expectations, but there's enough on this topic to make it an episode by itself. In the show, we discuss a prompt you can use to write a self-compassionate letter to yourself as a way of recognizing all the amazing things your body can do; Professor Engeln actually sent me two of them. If you're reading this from an email you received about the show or from iTunes, click through to the episode's page (www.yourparentingmojo.com/beauty) to see those.