It’s taken me about thirty years, but at last I think I’ve made peace with my body image. It’s been through diets, exercise regimes taken up and abandoned, my weight fluctuating between 100 and 160lbs, boyfriends, marriage, separation, a new relationship, and the most important factor: my son.

Gaining pregnancy weight – a lot of pregnancy weight – taking abuse from my ex-husband for being fat, and loosing a lot of breast volume from breastfeeding damaged my self-esteem.

Now I have more positive people in my life, most of all my son, who gives me an indescribable amount of joy every day. My body cradled him safely for 9 months, and fed him, and held him and nurtured him. The lines above my belly button that will never go away are a reminder of that, and instead of being revolted by them, as I once was, today I’m proud of them.

Today, I’ve made a commitment to eat right (or at least, not too badly) and I’m also trying to set an active example. I’m riding my bike, I’m doing yoga, and we are walking to the store. I want to set a good example to my son, so that I’ll be his mom in good health, and be there for him as long as possible.

Also, throwing him up in the air has given me great shoulders!

My weight has stabilized, I feel good that I’ve managed to incorporate healthy eating and exercise into our routine (as opposed to exercise being a chore to fit into the day somehow) I have more energy, and I’m even confident enough to go out wearing shorts.

Looking back, I didn’t appreciate that I probably looked great when I was 17, even though I felt awful about myself. But now, at last, I’m at peace with my body image, I have more self-esteem, and it’s due to respect for my body and what it can do, rather than trying to conform to an unrealistic image of society’s “ideal” woman.

How has having children affected your body image and self-esteem?

At long last, as summer drags itself into the upper Midwest with the enthusiasm of my toddler towards green vegetables, I’ve been getting my summer clothes out of their boxes.

This is my first summer where I’ve been able to get proper summer clothes out, and most of my summer gear is from pre-baby days. I’m looking at some of it wondering, what I was thinking wearing that? (Teeny tops.) Or is this appropriate for a mommy? (Short skirts.) Or how different my life is between having a baby (age 28) and having a toddler (age 30) and how much of my pre-baby wardrobe seems totally impractical. (Dry clean only, things with sparkles, anything that needs ironing)

When babies are tiny, moms have to deal with spit-up, poop, breast milk stains, and their bodies changing shape, and days of sheer exhaustion when getting dressed is just too much work. And as they grow, poop continues, and then babies start eating (and throwing) food, and painting, and searching for the messiest things they can find. Then of course when they are moving, mom needs to move too, so no high heels or short skirts or anything that will curtail crawling under a bush to retrieve a toddler.

Moms have to be the most fashion challenged people in the world! I totally understand why some moms revert to mom jeans and sweatshirts, and hair in a springie, and yep, I do on some days…. well, a lot of days. I knew I was on a slippery slope when I brought myself a pair of “nice” sweatpants for going out in, instead of a pair of proper pants last month.

I’ve resolved to try just a little bit harder this summer, if only because getting dressed in proper clothes boosts my self-esteem and makes me feel a little more like a woman, as well as a mom.

The challenge is to find something that’s durable enough to be a toddler’s mom in, and also looks attractive too. I’ve started with a couple of new pairs of jeans that have a nice, flattering fit. They go with everything, and stand up to both the playground, and projectile spaghetti sauce.

I’m stuck on shirts though. And summer clothes, in general. What’s comfortable, cool, washes well, is appropriate for a mom to wear, and looks good too?

Help!

All a parent wants is for their child to be happy. When you see your child struggling with making friends in school, being bullied, a parent no doubt hurts for their child. Study after study shows that a child with a healthy self-esteem gets along better with their peers, is less likely to be bullied, and recovers from disappointments faster. As a parent, it is our duty to foster our child’s intellectual, physical, and emotional growth. Instilling in them self-confidence and raising them with self-esteem is an important aspect of their growth.

What if you are a parent who believes that you have been a loving, nurturing parent, yet you see your child continue to struggle? You want real, solid steps to help your child build their confidence and esteem. What should you do? Here are some tried and tested ideas that have worked for me, personally, and with children of my mommy friends.

1. Enroll them in martial arts. Take your pick. Tae-kwon-do, karate. If your child is not particularly athletic, this is a great alternative for them. It will not only instill a sense of discipline, physical endurance, it will also teach them self-defense. An added bonus is the new set of potential friends they can meet in this brand-new environment.
2. Build a great support system for your child. If you think your child is missing good role-models, of the opposite sex for example, seek out the help of their grandparents, aunts or uncles, cousins, friends of yours to spend one on one time with your child. This will help your child feel well-supported, and well-loved, which can be a buffer for times where they feel lonely, or isolated. If you are lacking good role models in your family or circle of friends, you can contact Big Brothers Big Sisters which matches a child with a safe role-model.
3. Help your child make friends by being a good role-model. It helps if you start while they are young. Children learn how to socialize by watching how adults do it. Invite friends over, or bring your child along if you meet them out. Let her watch you interact with them; converse, laugh, be at ease.
4. Do not reward shyness. It’s strange, but let me repeat it, don’t reward shyness. If your child refuses to say hi to guests, don’t coddle him and explain his behavior away by saying “oh he’s just shy”. Instead, experts suggest requiring your child to practice good habits of interacting with guests, adults and other children alike by prompting him to be polite. “In our house we say hello to guests.” Or, “it’s not polite to ignore our guests.” A shy child especially needs to practice these social graces which may come so easy to other children.
5. Teach your child how to join a new group of children. The best way to do this is to teach them how to single out the friendliest face in a group, approach that child particularly and ask if they can join. The friendly child will most likely be well-liked and will say yes, and now your child can join the game, or activity. Expose them to a variety of environments where they can practice this skill. At summer camp, at their martial arts class, at gymnastics, playdates, etc.

Hopefully, these tips will get your child on the way to social and emotional success.

Build self-esteem and self-confidence. Strengthen rapport with peers. Increase empathy, sensitivity, the whole package of emotional connectedness. All these you can do by simply exposing your child to other children. Expose them early and they will be less jumpy, frightened, or angry when strangers are near. Train them well enough to recognise whom to trust and whom to be careful around and you help establish a child’s stable sense of self in relation to others. Lock the child away, limit his playtime with other children or interactions with people, and you just might be planting the seeds of paranoid behaviour and insecurity in him.

When it comes to teaching your child to relate with others, they are no different from any other warm-blooded mammal that roams the earth. They need to interact, to mingle, to develop their relational skills in order to lead healthy and emotionally satisfying lives. It is a world where one is constantly in contact with another, where one needs to be relating to others, transacting business with others, merely co-existing with other people. The sooner you start your children on the journey of discovering not only their inner traits but their abilities to reach out and communicate with others, the better you equip them to deal with what we would like to call the “real” world, aka life-on-your-own.

So savour those invites from pre-school or kindergarten, as well as those from the local government, as when our local city hall sent letters to all 5-year olds (children born in 2002) to join in the annual tree-planting on the outskirts of the city. It was an excellent opportunity to not only have our son mingle with children his age (he did run into some of his classmates from school while lugging around his shovel), but to also support the natural instinct of the child to want to nurture a life into fruition. Play time was not as fun as this when I was 5; I was busy shimmying up the neighbors’ trees instead and getting chased out of backyards.