Main things I do with my very conscious 10 and 14 year old girls:
Reinforce body positivity. I won’t get drawn into conversations about how fat they are or how ugly, I gloss over it and change the subject, unless it is a deep and meaningful conversation obviously.
Similarly I don’t say anything negative about my own appearance, if one of them comments on me
being chunkier, short, no make up, a big spot etc. again I always reply with a breezy oh yes, I see that spot or oh well, it’s doing the job I need it to!
I make sure they know that social media posts are often fake, I show a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ videos I found, googling “Instagram vs reality” “celebrities before and after photoshop” and a fun daily mail piece from a couple of years ago showing what beauty looks like across different counties and how the ‘ideal body’ is so different.
If they do feel particularly down or if a friend has been mean I focus on the qualities they want to look for in themselves, and how a person must feel to make fun of somebody else.
We also (mostly with my eldest) look at health from a different perspective, looking at the balance of food, how macros are important rather than ‘calories’ in something and that nourishing your body is so much more important than what it looks like. That being said we look at how clothes can make us feel and look more confident, about how sometimes as women we ARE more bloated, so how can we manage these expectations, maybe not the time to dress in our most restrictive clothes and look at what our body is telling us.
I grew up in a strange dynamic of my mum being obsessed with diets and cutting calories and ended up anorexic-subtype bulimia. It took me a long time to get to this point of body happiness and I really am conscious of the girls being happy with themselves, I’m eager to read other responses to see if I can improve this!!