Tips For Talking About Fitness With Your Tween

by Catherine Anaya

The body is an amazing thing. I discovered that fact both times I gave birth. I was reminded of it last month when I ran my first full marathon. 26.2 miles of endurance I trained 16 weeks to build. It was an exhilarating feeling running down the streets lined with cheering people, which included my 9-year-old daughter.

I gave her a high-five at the 20-mile mark as she stuck out her hand, accompanied by a smile the size of the football stadium where I would complete the run. I could see the excitement in her eyes and it was just the burst of energy I needed. I could feel the pride as we hugged on the other side of the finish line.

Her immense admiration at my medal and the accomplishment it represented was priceless and worth every sore muscle I nursed the next day.

As a tween, I realize she's entering a very confusing time when it comes to fitness, health and body image. The messages she sometimes sees on television or reads in magazines or hears others girls talk about at school already focus on the body and weight.

But what she hears and sees at home is the complete opposite. She has a father who cooks healthy and doesn't eat sweets. She has a mother who tries to eat 'clean' at least five times a week and exercises religiously. We stay away from the f-word (fat) and together we try to encourage healthy living and a positive body image. But I come at it from a different perspective, which I sometimes worry might end up defeating the lessons I'm trying to teach.

I've written here about my past battle with anorexia and bulimia through exercise, diuretics and laxatives. It was my mother's Polaroid picture of me sunbathing in a bikini in my early 20's that finally knocked some sense into me. The picture couldn't disguise my limited flesh and protruding bones. I resolved to get help and never look back.

That history makes me even more determined to make sure my daughter doesn't fall into that trap. I want her to feel comfortable in her skin, to love her body, to understand that feeling good and looking good isn't about being thin. It's about being healthy.

But how do you go about encouraging that without making the child feel insecure about having the conversation in the first place?

South Pasadena Clinical Psychologist Linda Bortell tells me there are two messages you can give kids.

"Lead by example. I think it's hard for kids who have parents who sit around all the time and the parents say, 'go out and exercise' when they're not participating with the kids."

She believes fitness doesn't always have to be labeled as fitness for a tween. "It can be labeled, 'lets all go ride bikes.' It can be labeled, 'every night as a family we're going to take the dog for a walk around the block.' If you're busy during the week it can be, 'we're going to go to the beach and run around on the weekend'," she says.

In the tween years, Bortell says it's better to avoid the word fitness and rephrase it as having a healthy mind and a healthy body.

"The more you can (stay away from it) the better because kids latch onto it ... and kids' bodies at that time are going to look strange and funky at different times and they're supposed to," she says.

While training for the marathon I encouraged my daughter to ride her bike alongside me a couple of times. Once she rode for 7 miles. Another time she rode for 6. Both times she complained a little about being tired, but for the most part she was thrilled to have accomplished the ride.

Bortell says if you really feel like you have a child who needs to be more active, make sure you enroll them or put them in activities they like, that are fun and have a physical component. Otherwise, if you put them in something they don't like, you'll end up turning them off to exercise even more. "They really need to like it and have fun at it so it's not like a competition about seeing how much weight (they) lose." As for my own past experiences with eating disorders, Bortell says to hold off sharing that with my daughter until she reaches her teen years when she can understand how I worked through it and how I was mindful of it in a way that maintains the positive side of how I got through it.

"If as a parent you have had significant issues with food and you're worried about the way that you talk to your kids, you should either talk to their pediatrician on your own or perhaps talk to a nutritionist ... about what kind of things your kid should be eating, what's appropriate... how you can make sure you're conveying healthy messages... and not necessarily always fitness, because fitness can so easily lead into competition with kids," she says.

A few hours after finishing the marathon, my daughter told me she wanted to run the kid's marathon next year - not for fitness but for pleasure - the same pleasure she saw on the faces of the thousands of people of all shapes and sizes she witnessed accomplish their goal.

For more information go to www.lindabortell.com

WA: ;