Your children and your self image....

[Jr8Fan]

Did anyone else see Dr. Phil this week talking about how your self image affects your children? It was Wednesday's show and it really hit me hard. A mom constantly criticized herself by saying things like, "I hate the way I look in these pants." and "I don't like my body." She has an 8-year old daughter who is now suffering from very low self-esteem. She says the same things to herself. She even said in her video diary for the show, that she would rather be dead than be her!

What a great show it was! I never thought about what I might be teaching my child. I have a son, but I still want him to grow liking himself. Mom and Dad in my house are going to have to start accepting themselves and projecting a better role model. I do not want my son to have a poor body image of himself.

[vampere]

Oh wow! I missed that one but I'm going to definitely keep it in mind. I'm wondering if I got my low self-esteem from my mother because she has lots of it and I definitely don't want to teach this to my daughter.

[Jr8Fan]

I know I got mine from my mother. Another thing he talked about this week was that we live what we believe we deserve. I always thought I had a pretty good self-esteem and at first I thought he was wrong, but the more I think about it, I have a really screwed up body image and get depressed about my weight sometimes. Most of the time, I am a very spontaneous and outgoing person and it hit me that I have been fooling myself into believing that I had a high self-esteem, but I don't.

That was a breakthrough moment for me this week. I don't like my body like this but somewhere inside, something is going on with my internal dialogue and I am somehow believing this is all I am entitled to. Wow! That would explain me sabatoging myself when I go off plan for no apparant reason. I am definitely going to go back over his book and work on this.

For me, the diet part is easy, the head part of weight loss is hard!

[vampere]

I'm going to keep all that in mind the next time I decide to go off my diet. I'm always sabatoging myself. The minute I'm doing good I eat something forbidden and then I end up stuffing myself full of the wrong things. I'm definitely going to start thinking about the reasons I would have for sabatoging myself.

[Jr8Fan]

I'm going to keep all that in mind the next time I decide to go off my diet. I'm always sabatoging myself. The minute I'm doing good I eat something forbidden and then I end up stuffing myself full of the wrong things. I'm definitely going to start thinking about the reasons I would have for sabatoging myself.

We are our own worst enemies sometimes, aren't we? :agree:

[cs_carver]

I never thought about what I might be teaching my child.

I'm still feeling guilty because I didn't speak up one time in a ladies' room when I heard a mother tell her daughter, "Jesus won't love you if you're bad."* I wonder if she ever thought about what she was teaching that child?

I watch my nieces "read"--even when the magazine is upside down--because they see their parents doing that. I wonder what happens in the houses where parents are demonstrating other forms of recreation. One girlfriend says she knows a four-yo who cleans all the time. Guess where she gets that from?

Can't blame it all on the media.

*And you know, I'm not even sure if I believe the whole Christian story--but I know enough to know that by his own rules, Jesus loves you no matter what! And certainly whether or not you are "good" in a ladies room in a department store when you're six!

[vampere]

I never thought about it that way. My daughter is only 2 and she helps me clean up the house. She freaks if she sees something on the floor and will point at it and say, "eww." As for the woman scolding her daughter and telling her that; that's just horrible. I'm not sure if I believe the whole Christian story too but I know one thing, whatever is out there isn't going to hold being bad against a 6 year old. As for being our own worst enemies, that is a definite. We will always be harder on ourselves for a failures and be one of the last to recognize our successes.

[Hybrid]

Odd. I don't think my parents' self images influenced me very much. My mother says I'm very much like her in terms of intellect, but she also says I'm "too intellectual." Then again, I may lack the necessary empathy to actually deduce my parents' self image beyond the most basic beliefs. This is something I strongly suspect, because my father annoys me most when he behaves in a way similar to myself.