How mums can support their daughters' healthy body image

Negative body image is a lifelong issue for many women which social media only serves to fuel. Yet the habits and self-talk of mothers can also have a profound effect on young girls becoming overly critical of their bodies. Psychologists Janet Boseovski and Ashleigh Gallagher offer advice on what to do and what not to do in their new book Beyond Body Positive: A Mother's Evidence-Based Guide for Helping Girls Build a Healthy Body Image.Negative body image is a lifelong issue for many women which social media only serves to fuel.Yet the habits and self-talk of mothers can also have a profound effect on young girls becoming overly critical of their bodies.Psychologists Janet Boseovski and Ashleigh Gallagher offer advice on what to do and what not to do in their new book Beyond Body Positive: A Mother's Evidence-Based Guide for Helping Girls Build a Healthy Body Image. Listen to Janet Boseovski and Ashleigh Gallagher on Nine to Noon.Not everything on social media is harmful, Boseovski says, but much is ;"very appearance-focused", including trends such as legging legs - the idea that to wear a pair of leggings you have to have a certain pair of legs - and girl dinner - " this concept of putting together a bunch of snacks and that's your dinner".Parents need to be aware of what their daughters are looking at online, she says, to help them understand that "doctored images" don't reflect real life."You're not really understanding what it is that you're seeing yet, you're not cognitively mature enough to get that . You don't fully grasp that. So parents do need to be attentive but not over-monitor and not forbid either because that tends to not go well, as we probably all know, and social media isn't going away."Rather than this being a "tween problem", the seeds of negative body image can be planted very early, Boseovski says.We might think as mums that this is something we're saying about ourselves, but actually that's having an impact on our daughtersFrom infancy, daughters receive indirect messages from their mothers about the right way to eat and to look."They're seeing what Mum is doing and Mum has been under her own pressures to diet. They might see that Mum is not eating what everybody else is eating at the table. They might see that Mum is not wanting to be in photographs and ... not participating. They might see or hear that she's making negative comments about her own body…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details