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How to teach kids to love and respect their bodies, in 8 steps.

How you love and respect your body is how your children will learn to love and respect their bodies.

“Mommy,” my 6-year-old daughter said, “you look beautiful!”

We were in Kauai, Hawaii, and I was in a store trying on a beautiful, sensual bikini with my 42-year-old post-baby body.

I never had worn or owned a bikini — not even when I played soccer and my body was strong and lean. And my body has changed a lot since then. These breasts have offered my children milk for a total of four years. My hips have balanced children on them while cooking dinner, coaching soccer, and helping another child down off the monkey bars at the playground.

Photo via iStock.

I think there comes a time in many women’s lives when we decide we will embrace and embody the sensual, beautiful women we are instead of trying to change ourselves. There I was in the changing room, standing before my children and husband in a Hawaiian bikini. I felt beautiful. A bit self-conscious at first, but beautiful. My family saw my beauty too.

For two weeks on the beaches of Kauai, I wore that bikini. Rubbing my round and flabby stomach now exposed in a bikini, my children told me how they loved my belly. “Yes,” I would say, “I love my belly too.” And I meant it.

And, no, you don’t have to wear a bikini to feel beautiful.

This is about our bodies as moms changing with childbirth and aging with every passing year and about growing in our love and respect for our bodies. This is about how we can model to our children love and respect for their bodies through our deepening regard for our own bodies.

Over the years of being a mom and somatic (body-centered) psychotherapist, I have heard a lot of advice on how to teach our children to respect their bodies. Clients who are parents ask me how to teach their children how to love and respect their bodies so their children don’t have the same hateful relationships they have with their own bodies.

They want to know how to raise children who are confident, love their bodies, and respect other people’s bodies. They want to prevent their children from experiencing trauma and feeling ashamed of their bodies.

If we truly want to support our children in loving and respecting their bodies, I know this:

How you love and respect your body is how your children will learn to love and respect their bodies.

And this:

How you love and respect their bodies is how they will learn to love and respect their bodies.

Photo via iStock.

How do we get there?

Here are eight mindful and compassionate ways to be a parent who models to your children how to regard and love their bodies:

1. Treat yourself with compassion.

One of the surest ways to instill in our children a healthy relationship with their whole self is to start showing ourselves compassion. When someone, including ourselves, is suffering, we are naturally prompted to respond to extend compassion. But often, through experiences of trauma and shame, we have learned to override this innate sense of responding with compassion. Thankfully, we can learn to cultivate compassion again.

When I am having a hard time, my children often will see me doing this: I pause. I put my hand on my heart. And I say to myself (and often so they can hear, too, and learn to do the same), “Wow, I’m having a hard time right now. It’s OK, Sweet Love.” (Yes, I call myself “Sweet Love,” the same words I use with my children). Having compassion for ourselves in everyday life and modeling compassion to our children can be as simple as that.

2. Heal the harshness by “practicing gentleness.”

In a harsh world, gentleness is the antidote. Like compassion, gentleness has transformative power. Gentleness is both soft and strong. By bringing gentleness into situations where we are often prompted to become harsh and controlling, we support connection.

How? Trying asking yourself: “What would ‘practicing gentleness’ with my body look like in my life? What would it look like in my children’s lives?” Is it to go at a slower pace in the day? Is it to use a softer, more accepting tone of voice? Is it a gentle hand on your child’s shoulders when he or she is feeling anxious?

3. Bring “soften” into your everyday vocabulary.

A few years ago, I made “soften” my word for the year because I knew I was being hard on myself. When I looked at my post-baby body — even several years after having children — I would often get dressed, look in the mirror, and say something harsh under my breath. But as I brought the word “soften” into my everyday life, I began to embody this word a little bit more every day. Now, it is commonplace in my own head and in our family.

4. Heal the hurry.

I get it. We have a million things on our plate. We live in a culture that’s addicted to hurry.

Photo via iStock.

But we show this to our kids early, and hurry shows itself in our bodies. So if you can, try to notice your own addiction to hurry. Notice how your body may be addicted to the adrenaline rush of “running late” and hurrying throughout the day. Start to treat your body with respect by saying to yourself (and your children), “It’s OK to slow down.”

5. Show your children how to rest.

Related to our addiction to hurry, we often don’t pause to rest in our day, but our bodies and brains need pauses. Teaching our children to treat their bodies with love and regard involves learning how to rest.

Build rest into your and your child’s day. Look up at the sky as you and your children stand at the bus stop. Lie down for a moment after getting home from school and work. Say to your children, “Let’s rest for a bit.”

6. Do nothing else while you eat.

Mindless eating and busy schedules can create unhealthy habits around food. Because we eat several times a day, building in mindful rituals of pausing while eating supports healthy digestion, regulates nervous systems, and develops a healthy relationship to food and a deep regard for our bodies.

When you eat, do nothing else. Model to your children how to pause and “just eat” when it's time for a meal or snack. Put down the devices and try just eating your food and enjoying each other’s company. Even if it’s for a few moments, such mindful eating supports a healthy regard and love for one’s body.

7. Touch your children kindly.

Walking into my children’s school each morning, I see the tenderness between parents and their children. I see these mindful parents pausing in the hustle and bustle of their morning for a moment of tender connection with their children.

Photo via iStock.

When we are frustrated or angry, it gets harder to touch our children kindly. Yet these moments matter in sending the message to our children that their bodies are to be regarded. When we are frustrated, the greatest practice is to pause and get grounded. We are more likely to respond with kindness instead of react with harshness. When our children’s bodies are treated with kindness, they learn they are worthy of being regarded.

8. Look at your children with regard.

I get it. Many families are just trying to get to the bus stop on time. And after school, we are hustling home to get dinner made before evening activities.

But a few years ago, I decided that no matter how rushed we felt in the morning and in the afternoon returning from school, I would pause and really look at my children. The expression on my face would say, “I am so happy to see you! I love you!” I try to do this every day, even for just a few moments in the morning and afternoon. And it changes things.

These mindful and compassionate practices can be woven into our everyday lives.

When our children see us loving and regarding our bodies, they will begin to treat their bodies the same way. When we treat our children’s bodies with respect, our children will begin to see themselves — and their bodies — as worthy of deep regard and respect. And when our children love and respect their bodies, they are more likely to love and respect the bodies of others.

It'll go a long way in creating a more compassionate world.

Pets

Man jumps out of his car with a puppy in the most adorable red-light moment ever recorded

"I JUST WITNESSED THE PUREST THING EVER."

via Celina Romera / Flickr

When you see someone jump out of their car at a red light to talk with another motorist, usually it's bad news. Most of the time, it's the moment when road rage gets personal.

But 26-year-old Celina Romera caught video of probably one of the most adorable red-light interactions between motorists on December 15 in Tampa, Florida.

In the video, an unidentified man pops out of his car at a stoplight with a darling puppy in his hand. In the other car, a big German Shepherd pops his head out and the two dogs exchange kisses.

"I JUST WITNESSED THE PUREST THING EVER," Romera wrote on Facebook.

After the light changes, the man with the puppy gently walks back to the car. In the video Romera can be heard saying, "It's okay, man. Take your time."

One could imagine that the dogs were barking at each other before the video began.Then, the owner of the puppy thought it was okay for the two dogs to meet. The American Kennel Club says that barking between dogs is a pretty crude way to communicate.

However, it is part of a host of messages that dogs send to one another.

The job of a dog's owner is to determine if the dogs are ready to share a sniff or of one is fearful.

"The combination of barking, body language, and approach-avoidance behavior gives away the fearful dog's motivation, even to us relatively uneducated body-language readers," the Club says on its blog.

The original video Romera posted has been shared over 120,000 times.

The heartwarming video is a reminder that nothing can bring two strangers and millions of Facebook viewers together quite like dogs.


This article originally appeared on 12.16.19


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Wellness

Mom lives the dream: quietly quitting household chores to see if her family notices

"This is a lesson in wanting to be heard and respected and not having to repeat yourself when things slip."

Miss Potkin/Twitter

Practically every mom I know occasionally daydreams about quitting-doing-all-the-things. Sometimes the impulse is born of exhaustion. Sometimes it's the relentless daily tedium of cleaning, cooking, reminding, over and over and over without end. And sometimes it's the desire for someone else to notice that these things actually need to be done and someone has to actually do it.

Even moms who share chores with spouses and kids often find themselves carrying the mental load of figuring out what needs to be done, monitoring whether it's getting done, and organizing who's doing what, and reminding/nagging/harassing her family members until it gets done. Sometimes moms just want to let all of that go and see what happens.

That's what a mom who goes by Miss Potkin on Twitter did this week. Channeling the fed-upness of mothers everywhere, she just up and stopped doing household chores to see what would happen. Two days later, she began sharing the saga in a Twitter thread that's as entertaining as it is satsifying.

Letting go and letting your family sit in their own filth until they can't take it anymore takes patience and discipline. There's a reason moms generally do-all-the-things regardless of how cooperative the family is. We don't want to live in a mess. But she stuck to her guns.

For a minute, things were looking promising with the garbage being taken out.

However, the dishes still remained mysteriously undone. As did the laundry.

"There is a pan on the cooker with a single sausage in it," she wrote. "It's been there for two days. I can't look at it because it's turned the colour of the man that washes up in Cast Away."

Oh, and the downstairs bathroom is out of toilet paper.

Those who might feel judgy at this point likely live with people who are naturally neat, or just can't fathom themselves how someone could let a sausage sit for two days. But take it from a mom who let go of policing her kids' bedrooms to see how long it would take them to decide to clean on their own—some human beings are willing to overlook all manner of mess and filth before it becomes too much.

And sometimes they have to learn firsthand the amount of extra work such obliviousness leads to.

Hilariously, even though the dishwasher finally did get loaded, that's basically all that happened. Miss Potkin shared a video tour of the kitchen with the extraneous things that didn't get done or got half-done.

Of course, the negative Nancies showed up to voice their judgmental opinions about her experiment, her home, her family, her choice of husband, and everything else because moms literally can't catch a break. It's a silly, fun exercise to make a point that millions of moms can relate to. If it doesn't apply to you, move along, Nance.

"We do not 'live like this,'" she wrote. "This is a lesson in wanting to be heard and respected and not having to repeat yourself when things slip. We're navigating the day-to-day in extraordinary times and for me, the past two days have been funnier than anything else. I think we're all entitled to run our own experiments, be amused, push a situation to its limit if we so choose. No one needs to be lectured by those that have failed to see the silly joy in what's happening here."

And the experiment slowly started paying off as someone replaced the toilet paper.

But the dishwasher...

"We keep our homes tidy because love," Miss Potkin wrote. "We cook food and set tables and fill the air with scents of roses and fresh laundry because love. Love is patient but love is also fucking tired because she works 14 hour days."

"I know we are ALL tired," she added, "but I am most tired. Me. I AM ALL THE TIRED."

All the moms are all the tired.

Miraculously, it only took three days of being completely hands-off for her family to take note and clean the house.

Lesson learned. Mission accomplished. Let's hope it sticks.

Moms are not always the ones who pick up most of the slack in a household, but they usually are. And when that work is taken for granted, it sucks. When everyone in the house pays more attention and takes the initiative to tidy, neaten, clean, replace, launder, put away, etc., moms are less stressed and tired and everyone benefits. If it take up and quitting for a while to help the family see it, so be it.


This article originally appeared on 3.19.21

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Parenting

Man asks how to help his wife who works full-time with a baby at home and keeps getting the same answer

More and more families are trying to scrape by — by trying to do it all

Photo by Katie Emslie on Unsplash

There are times in parenting where you just feel kind of useless.

You can't carry the baby, take a late-night breastfeeding shift, or absorb any of the pain and discomfort of childbirth.

Sometimes the best you can do is to try to take care of your partner.

That's what brought user u/DietyBeta to the AskParents subreddit with a well-meaning question.

"My wife watches our 1yo, works, and is 12 week pregnant. How can I make her daily life easier while I'm away at work?"

He says that when he gets home from work, he takes over all parenting and homemaking duties.

But yeesh! That's still... a lot to handle. No wonder his wife is stressed out.

A few folks chimed in to pat the OP on the back. After all, it's great to see a dad who realizes how much is falling on mom's shoulders and actively looking for ways to lighten the load!

Some helpful suggestions rolled in, like taking over meal prep and making her easy lunches to heat up, hiring cleaners, or paying someone to walk the dogs.

woman in black shirt lying on couch Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash


But then even more people came in to the comments asking the same question over and over: If mom is working, why isn't the 1-year-old in daycare?

u/young-mommy wrote: "Is the one year old in daycare? If not, I would start there. Working from home with a child gets harder and harder as they enter toddlerhood"

u/min2themax said: "It’s nice of you to be asking how to help her but she really is getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop here. It sounds like she is literally always working or parenting. Sometimes both at the same time. Walking the dogs and making her lunches and prepping meals and doing laundry is all well and good but this is not at all sustainable."

u/alternative-box3260 said: "Have the one year old in daycare. I was in a similar situation and it’s impossible. I was able to breath after that, not before."

And u/sillychihuahua26 wrote: "She’s caring for your 1.year old while working? That’s a horrible plan. You guys need childcare like yesterday."

We have a legitimate childcare crisis in our country, and stories like this one really bring it to life.

Childcare in the United States isn't nearly accessible or affordable enough for most families. Period.

ChildCare Aware found that that average cost of childcare in 2022 was $10,853 per year, or roughly 10% of a median family income (in 2024, it's likely even more than that — yet the actual workers at childcare centers are somehow severely underpaid).

But even that eye-popping number is conservative. Anyone who lives anywhere close to a city (or in California or New York) knows the number will be way higher. It's just not feasible for most families to put their child, let alone multiple children, in full-time care while they're young.

And yet! The percentage of households with two parents working full-time has been rising for decades. Life is more expensive than ever, and the extra income from two working parents really helps, even if it's offset by those child care costs.

More and more families are trying to scrape by — by trying to do it all

woman in white shirt sitting on brown wooden armchair Photo by Keren Fedida on Unsplash

Now we don't know whether the OP's family can afford childcare for their 1-year-old or not, although in a later update to the post he wrote:

"As far as daycare, she doesn't want to because she feels like she would be missing out on the time"

So even if you can afford childcare, there's the still the crushing guilt of shipping your child off to be raised by strangers to deal with! Classic.

(Take one guess who shoulders most of the daycare guilt — dads or moms?)

The work-from-home revolution has been a Godsend for parents in certain ways — flexibility, balance, less commuting time — but its also saddled many of them with double duty.

'Hey how about you work full-time because we need the money AND keep an eye on the kids, since you're home anyway!'

But it doesn't work like that, and trying to do both is crushing modern parents.

In fact, the Surgeon General of the United States just put out an official advisory based on the plummeting mental state of today's parents.

We know parents are having a hard time and that it's getting picked up in the national conversation. But hearing about a mom working full-time with a 1-year-old on her hip while pregnant, and a dad stuck working out of the house who's at a total loss for how to make things better really paints a pretty bleak picture.

No one should have to work full-time and parent full-time, at the same time.

A fridge full of microwavable lunches and a fleet of dog walkers isn't going to make it any better until things start changing from the very top.

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Wil Wheaton gave a perfect explanation of how to separate problematic artists from their art

A truly thoughtful response.

Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

Wil Wheaton speaking to an audience at 2019 Wondercon.


When you find out an actor whose work you enjoy is blatantly racist and anti-semitic in real life, does that realization ruin every movie they've been a part of?


What about an author who has expressed harmful opinions about a marginalized group? What about a smart, witty comedian who turns out to be a serial sexual assaulter? Where do you draw the line between a creator and their creation?

As someone with his feet in both worlds, actor Wil Wheaton weighed in on that question and offered a refreshingly reasonable perspective.

"Question: I have more of an opinion question for you. When fans of things hear about misconduct happening on sets/behind-the-scenes are they allowed to still enjoy the thing? Or should it be boycotted completely? Example: I've been a major fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer since I was a teenager and it was currently airing. I really nerded out on it and when I lost my Dad at age 16 'The Body' episode had me in such cathartic tears. Now we know about Joss Whedon. I haven't rewatched a single episode since his behavior came to light. As a fan, do I respectfully have to just box that away? Is it disrespectful of the actors that went through it to knowingly keep watching?"

And Wheaton offered this response, which he shared :

" Answer: I have been precisely where you are, right now. In fact, we were just talking about this a few days ago, as it relates to a guy who wrote a ton of music that was PROFOUND to me when I was a teenager. He wrote about being lonely and feeling unloved, and all the things I was feeling as a teenager.

He grew up to be a reprehensible bigot, and for years I couldn't listen to one of the most important bands in my life anymore.

But this week, someone pointed out that he was one member of a group that all worked together to make that thing that was so important to me. And the person he was when he wrote those lyrics is not the person he is today. And the person I was when I heard those lyrics doesn't deserve to be shoved into a box and put away, because that guy is a shit.

This is a long way of saying that Joss sure turned out to be garbage. Because of who my friends are, I know stuff that isn't in the public, and it's pretty horrible. He's just not a good person, and apparently never was a good person.

BUT! Buffy is more than him. It's all the actors and crew who made it. It's all the writers who aren't Joss. Joss is part of it, sure, and some of the episodes he wrote are terrific.

At least one of the episodes he wrote was deeply meaningful to you at a moment in your life when you'd experienced a loss I can only imagine. The person you are now, and the 16 year-old you were who just lost their dad, are more important than the piece of shit Joss Whedon revealed himself to be.

His bad behavior is on him. He has to live with it, and the consequences of it.


Wil Wheaton | Wil Wheaton speaking at the 2012 Phoenix Comic… | Flickrwww.flickr.com

16-year-old you, who just lost their dad, shouldn't have to think about what a shit Joss Whedon is for even a second. That kid, and you, deserve to have that place to revisit when you need to go there.

I can't speak for the other actors, even the ones I know. But I will tell you, as an abuse survivor myself who never wanted to be in front of the camera when he was a kid: it's really okay for you to enjoy the work. The work is good and meaningful, and if nobody is going to watch it because of what one piece of shit did two decades ago, what was it all for?

I'm not the pope of chilitown, so take this for what it's worth: I believe that when some piece of art is deeply meaningful to a person, for whatever reason, that art doesn't belong to the person who created it, if it ever did. It belongs to the person who found something meaningful in the art.

If it feels right to you to put it away and never look at it again, that's totally valid. But if it brings you comfort, or joy, or healing, or just warm familiarity to bring it out and spend some time with it, that's totally valid, too.

I've written a lot of words. I hope some of them make sense and are helpful to you."

upload.wikimedia.org



As with practically everything in this world, the question of whether art can or should be separated from the artist is complex. It involves philosophical questions about the nature of art—where it comes from and who it belongs to—as well as questions about how imperfect a person has to be for us to reject everything they create. Wheaton's response feels right, especially when we're regarding art that is collaboratively created.


This article originally appeared on 10.16.21

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Mom who saved pet goose from eagle while breastfeeding is a mascot for moms everywhere

"Just a day in the life."

TikTok

Hold on, Frankie! Mama's coming!

How do you explain motherhood in a nutshell? Thanks to Cait Oakley, who stopped a preying bald eagle from capturing her pet goose as she breastfed her daughter, we have it summed up in one gloriously hilarious TikTok.

The now viral video shows the family’s pet goose, Frankie, frantically squawking as it gets dragged off the porch by a bald eagle—likely another mom taking care of her own kiddos.

Wearing nothing but her husband’s boxers while holding on to her newborn, Willow, Oakley dashes out of the house and successfully comes to Frankie's rescue while yelling “hey, hey hey!”

The video’s caption revealed that the Oakleys had already lost three chickens due to hungry birds of prey, so nothing was going to stop “Mama bear” from protecting “sweet Frankie.” Not even a breastfeeding session.

Oakley told TODAY Parents, “It was just a split second reaction ...There was nowhere to put Willow down at that point.” Sometimes being a mom means feeding your child and saving your pet all at the same time.

As for how she feels about running around topless in her underwear on camera, Oakley declared, “I could have been naked and I’m like, ‘whatever, I’m feeding my baby.’”

Needless to say, people were impressed with Oakley’s fierce multitasking abilities.

“Tell me you're a super mom without telling me you're a super mom,” wrote one person.

Another added, “this was 100% the most badass, amazing, award deserving feat I have ever seen.”

To no one’s surprise, moms were finding the situation ultra relatable.

“I wish I could say I hadn’t run out mid breastfeed to save a chicken lol but that would be a lie,” one mom commented.

“My husband sent [this] to me and said hey look it’s you,” wrote another.

And perhaps the best comment of all:

“Girl I thought that was a water gun. Read the caption and realized it was a baby.”

Though she clearly wowed the internet, Oakley sees the entire fiasco as a mundane reality.

"It feels like an accomplishment, I suppose,'' she told TODAY, “but for me this was a day in the life."

breastfeeding mom saves goose

And the winner for "Most Tasks Done In A Single Minute" goes to...

Giphy

Not every mom has to save a pet goose from an eagle attack and breastfeed at the same time, but most mothers can relate to the almost comical, certainly never-ending juggling act that is parenting.


This article originally appeared on 6.27.22

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