Children's body image: What parents can do to send a positive message
Filed under: Advice and health
Corbis
As well as being qualified teachers, Hutchinson and Calland are educational consultants. Since 1997, they have worked for the Behaviour Improvement Team in Bristol, specialising in children's social, emotional and behavioural development.
The pair became concerned after a 2008 Ofsted survey of 150,000 children found that, by the age of 10, a third of girls and 22 per cent of boys cited their bodies as their main source of worry. And a 2010 survey of over 1,000 girls by Girlguiding UK found that nearly three quarters of 7-11-year-olds wanted to change something about their appearance.
Too much too young
According to Chris Calland, the media is at least partly to blame. 'We are now bombarded with the message that the way you look is the most important thing,' she says. 'We see more images of perfect-looking people on a daily basis than our grandparents did in a lifetime, so young children are exposed to that too.'
While celebrity bodies are obsessed over on TV, in gossip magazines and newspapers, research also shows that children watch up to 40,000 adverts a year. And the bodies they are presented with are mostly ultra-slim and perfectly proportioned.
'With airbrushing and photo manipulation, the bodies children see often bear no relation to real ones,' comments Calland. 'Kids get a skewed view of reality and many of them want to copy that.'
Eating disorders
Although for most young children, wanting to look good is fairly harmless, for some it leads to an unhealthy relationship with food. 'The eating disorders charity Beat has produced figures showing that kids as young as eight now have issues with anorexia and bulimia,' says Calland. 'It's really frightening and something has to be done.'
She and her co-author decided to write the book after speaking to a girls' school where parents were worried about their children's behaviour. Girls as young as six were spending hours worrying about what to wear on a non-uniform day and feeling anxious about their bodies.
'We realised that although there was a lot of information and advice for adolescents, there was nothing for younger children. It seemed clear that the roots of these problems were starting in much younger kids, so if we only tackled them at the secondary-school stage it was already too late,' says Calland.
What can parents do?
Although we can keep a watchful eye on the things our kids read, watch on TV or absorb from the internet, we can't entirely shield them from reality. Modern culture is obsessed with celebrities, with looking young and being skinny, so children will absorb that message. But one of the best ways we can help them feel good about their bodies, according to Calland, is to model that behaviour ourselves.
'Parents and carers have to be very careful about the messages they are communicating,' she says. 'We're very good at telling our kids how beautiful they are and that it's what's inside that counts, but not so good at doing that for ourselves. So what they see us doing – and I'm afraid women are the worst for this – is fixating on bits of our bodies we don't like, always being on a diet or even cooking ourselves separate, low-calorie meals.'
Small children rely on their parents for guidance and advice – unlike older teens, who look to friends and peers – so we can really influence them at this age. And, as ever with kids, what we do is far more powerful than what we say. If we tell them it's fine not to be skinny, then obsess about every pound we put on, we are giving them very mixed messages.
Healthy eating, not skinny eating
Ironically, Calland also argues that Government campaigns to tackle obesity might have gone a little too far. 'The obesity message is now out there loud and clear,' she says. 'We have healthy eating programmes in schools to address that. But this message needs to be targeted at parents, not kids. And when you talk to kids about exercise and diet that shouldn't be about being thin or losing weight, but about being healthy and active as a family.'
Ultimately, much of her advice comes down to common sense. If we teach our kids that they don't need to be skinny to be happy, beautiful or successful – and apply the same message to ourselves – we can help them develop a positive, healthy attitude to their bodies that will stick for life.
Body Image in the Primary School, by Nicky Hutchinson and Chris Calland, is on sale now priced at £18.99
Beat is the UK's leading eating disorders charity. Call 0845 634 1414 or visit www.b-eat.co.uk