It's not only what we say.
There used to be a sign that hung in my old workplace that said: People may not believe what you say, but they always believe what you do.
As a woman who has battled weight and body image all my life, I made a promise to myself that I would be a better steward of my children's self image as much as I knew how. The excerpt below is from guest blog post on you'd be so pretty if... It articulates the power of not just our words, but we act out what we believe about ousrelves..
I have three boys, two in grade school and one in pre-school, and Tee has a teenage daughter with special needs, and an adult son starting a family of his own. We both know that our kids watch everything we do and hear everything we say about ourselves. We’ve always made sure we never made negative comments about our bodies in front of our kids, and both of us have steered clear of unhealthy behaviors like yo-yo dieting, pills and other weird fads.
We thought this was good. That this was enough: The lack of negative references to ourselves would convey a confident, body-positive attitude.
Not quite.
Non-verbal communication is powerful; the things we hesitated to do, avoided and made excuses for said as much about how we felt about ourselves as disparaging comments about our thighs in passing would. In contrast, the things we take on, participate in, try our best at and embrace say as much about who we are and what we’re capable of as the words we use.
