Teen up and down with self-esteem & wellbeing

[MermaidCrab]

It can be tough navigating the teenage years! My teen, 15 (and I'm sure some of yours too!) is up and down with things like wellbeing, mental health, body image, self-doubt, and self-acceptance.

I feel like I'm constantly searching for ways to help but sometimes it feels overwhelming.

Do you face similar challenges with your teens? How do you cope? How do you support them / are there any solutions that work or would work?

I think that to some extent every teen suffers with this - social media being a big driver of it

My DD (14) was being bullied about her body at school. She's honestly the most beautiful little woman but as @MaloneMeadow says social media and the likes has been setting such unrealistic expectations. I tried talking to her about how the body changes during teen years etc but she doesn't really like to talk about it/got frustrated when I tried to help her. I was so distraught as I was a chubby teen and never wore what other girls wore or loved myself much and I just saw that in her and it broke my heart.

Recently she's been a lot better, she found this app called luna through tiktok (she's obsessed with it) which talks a lot about body positivity and affirmations amongst other teen girl things like periods - I think more than anything she can see that other teen girls are experiencing the same feelings and stuff as you can read other teen's anonymous questions which get answered by medical experts ONLY, no other random teens or fake info etc. She still doesn't like to talk to me about it much, but I've seen positive benefits from her using it in the way she talks about herself.

Hoping some day soon she'll be open to talking with me more about it, I don't want to force her. You could try introducing her to luna (think it might be called we are luna after googling it) to see if it helps?