Victoria Yates is back on the podcast today to talk with me about teaching kids to love their bodies and have a great relationship with food and their bodies. We’re addressing some of the challenges and fears that we face as parents, how society has told us to view our bodies, and then she’ll share some strategies to help you support your kid’s health in a positive way.

Victoria is an intuitive eating and body image coach for women. She is also a former labor & delivery and pediatric nurse.

The last time she was here, we talked about how we, as women, can heal our relationships with our bodies and move toward body acceptance and self love at a deeper level. Today, we’re taking it a step further to develop a body positive dynamic for the whole family.

If you’ve been here for a while, you know that my mission as a parenting coach is to heal the next generation in advance. To help our kids get to adulthood without a bunch of trauma and insecurity that they need to heal from.

One of the things that women (myself included) are healing from is our relationship with our bodies and with food. What would it be like if our kids didn’t need to heal these wounds?

What is Body Positivity?

Recent culture tells us that a small body = health. And there’s pushback against body positivity by people thinking this means that accepting our bodies means that health isn’t important anymore.

Victoria explains that her idea of body positivity is not that there are good or bad bodies. Everyone has a different body. It’s a part of human diversity. Body positivity is really about saying, “This is the body that I was given,” and being a little more neutral and accepting of it.

We aren’t all made to be one specific size, and there are a lot of factors that go into our size and weight. Some are things we can control, like our eating habits, movement, sleep and stress. But a large component also comes from our genetics.

And our bodies are always changing. You can think of your relationship with your body like a relationship with another person (e.g. your kid or your spouse/partner). You’re always learning new things about them. You might be frustrated with them at times, but the acceptance and love is still there.

What Our Culture Says About Bodies

There is an anti-fat bias in our society. On the flip side of that, there is privilege that comes with being thin.

Society uses our bodies to decide what is beautiful, healthy and even moral. And this translates into seeing a fat body and labeling it as not beautiful or healthy, like they’ve done something wrong.

Living in a body that isn’t accepted by society comes with the risk of being made fun of or passed up for opportunities. As parents, this can feel scary. We want to keep our kids safe, and they are more likely to be valued in society if they are in a thin body.

You might jump to thinking, “I’ve gotta put my kid on a diet,” or “I’ve gotta make sure they move.”

I see these concerns about weight and body shape come in often around age 9 or 10, as kids are entering puberty. Their bodies are changing in a lot of ways, and kids seem to put on weight before they have growth spurts (not a doctor here, just an observation).

It can be scary for parents to see those changes, and I sometimes see diet culture start to creep in. Victoria shares that most of her adult clients first started dieting in their teenage years. This can be generational, starting with a girl going to a Weight Watchers meeting or doing a diet plan with her mom.

The truth is, people might judge your kid by the way they look. We can’t control that. They might even judge your parenting based on how your kid looks. It can be...