Should I Delete That? - It’s Almond Dads too… with Molly Forbes

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

This week on Should I Delete That, we’re investigating the ‘Almond Mom’ phenomenon. This is our conversation with the brilliant Molly Forbes - she is an author, campaigner, and the founder of The Body Happy Organisation. Our chat with Molly is full of incredible practical advice and insight into how we can build positive body image for both ourselves and our children. We also spoke to Molly about how it’s not just mums who play a role in building up our body image - and why perhaps we shouldn’t be placing all the pressure on mothers… You can find The Body Happy Organisation’s free resources here: https://www.bodyhappyorg.com/start-here Molly’s books Every Body and Body Happy Kids are available now - get your copies here!Follow @mollyjforbes on InstagramFollow @bodyhappyorg on InstagramIf you would like to get in touch - you can email us on [e-mail] us on Instagram:@shouldideletethat@em_clarkson@alexlight_ldnShould I Delete That is produced by Faye LawrenceMusic: Dex RoyStudio Manager: Dex RoyTrailers: Sophie RichardsonVideo Editor: Celia GomezSocial Media Manager: Emma-Kirsty Fraser Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to Should I Delete That? This week we've been investigating almond mums and as part of Monday's episode, you heard some of our chat with Molly Forbes. She's an author, campaigner and the founder of the body happy organisation. In today's episode, you will hear our chat with Molly in its entirety. She gave us so much amazing practical advice on raising body happy children, on breaking the generational dieting cycle and also made us really, think about the pressure that as a society we put on mothers specifically when it comes to children's body image. Whether you have kids or not, this is a really uplifting, informative chat with advice and guidance that everyone can benefit from. We really hope you enjoy this episode. Here's Molly. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you for having me. Really excited to speak to you. I interviewed you for my podcast. Remember? years ago. Yes. Oh my gosh. That was like COVID. It was. Because it was on Zoom. Yeah. Oh my God. It's such long time ago. I'd forgotten about that. That whole period just goes into a blur.

Doesn't it? Doesn't it? We're really excited to talk to you today. We've got loads to dig into. Firstly, I want to start off by shouting out your organization that you founded, which is called the body happy organization. And it focuses on creating a positive body image in environment for children. Can you tell us how this came to be? Why did you, why did you go about finding this? So we're a social enterprise and founded at the end of 2020. So really great time to start something new, not. But basically came off the back of my campaigning work. So I was campaigning for tighter regulations around the way that diet products could be marketed around children. And my biggest beef, really, was the way that it's really common to see posters

for companies like Slimming World Weight Watchers, etc., these kind of diet clubs on school railings. And I kind of had a real issue with that, just the way it was like normalising diet chat and normalising these kind of conversations around children and young people, particularly when the restrictions around those kind of adverts on children's media like TV and radio are actually quite strict. I was like how come they're allowed to just hang up advertising like advertisements and banners on primary school railings and you know where kids are going to school they're just being exposed to it and it's because often these clubs are happening in like the school halls right they hire the clubs out and so I was campaigning on that and as part of that

we held a round table and we had some young people came to that sit formers and also some teachers and they were like well actually this is like the tip of the iceberg there's loads of stuff going on in schools and it's just because teachers are a product often of generational cycles around this stuff we're all a product of the culture that we that you know we've bought we've been brought up in and these girls were telling me kind of horror stories about things that had happened recently in their lessons, you know, some of these activities that they'd had to do that were just really, really bad. And I realized then, oh, actually, it's not just about the diet ads on the school railings. It's also about there's a massive gap in provision there for

schools. It's a massive gap in teacher training. There's a massive gap in the kind of resources and workshops and there's an issue here that we need to address. And also, there's also a gap with parents so like a lot of um parents are starting to particularly mums i think are starting to kind of unpick their own stuff around bodies and health and body image and how they think and feel about their own bodies and they start to become aware of it when they don't want to start to pass those kind of cycles down they want to like break the cycle but i think that there was also kind of a bit of a gap there for children so while the parents are going through this kind of unlearning there was like a gap there for how they can like support their children at the same time and just like

not introduce some of these messages in the first place. And the idea around the body happy organisation was that the approach would really be preventative. So it would be very much kind of stopping some of these messages from reaching kids in the first place rather than trying to unpick some of the harm or kind of trying to reverse some of the harm. And it was it wouldn't just be about like building resilience it would be um also about just kind of like to do something to actually tackle some of these messages reaching children in the first place um and that's yeah that's what we're doing so it's a big uh big project though yeah ongoing forever probably thank you what was your own experience of body image like when you were growing up and how much

of it not to put her on blast but how much of it do you think was informed by your own mum. Do you know what, my, my mum, I think I was quite unusual in that my mum was actually pretty aware of this stuff. So she was a secondary school teacher and she was like a feminist in the 80s and I wasn't allowed Barbies. Like my mum thought Barbies would like gave me an unrealistic kind of body standards. So she was quite, you know, she was quite kind of woke I guess in a time when actually it was quite unusual to be that way. Um, But I still grew up in the culture that I grew up in. So I didn't necessarily get those messages from my own parents.

But they definitely filtered through from like other family members and family friends and overhearing other adult conversations. And then just like being a kid in the 90s, you know, magazines. Yeah, Kate Moss. It was all about like, you know. And I think that I probably, I probably had. quite a peaceful, like, relationship with my body as a kid. It wasn't until I went to secondary school. The issues for me started to, started to arise. And I think that while my parents were

really good at kind of being aware of stuff, but I think that there was still a lack of conversation around these subjects and particularly, like, even though my parents were like aware of like the impact of beauty standards and, you know, I wasn't allowed to barbie. there's definitely there's still some kind of weight bias there and like ideas of like what health is and so you know it wasn't like going on a diet it was like you know healthy eating which is essentially like often going on a diet you know so I think it was more it was probably a bit more subtle not necessarily from my own parents but definitely from like other people around me Armour Mums.

So obviously this is something, you know, it was that famous scene between Yolanda Hadid and her daughter Gigi Hadid that really served to coin the term almond mum. What do you think of the concept initially? What are your thoughts about it? I've got like, I've got many thoughts and feelings.

I think it's unfair often to, there's a huge amount of pressure on mums particularly to be the role models of positive body image particularly when it comes to having daughters and I think that's a little bit unfair because often the mums are victims of diet culture themselves and so on the one hand we are putting this huge amount of pressure on women to look a certain way and then we're also putting a lot of pressure on them to feel a certain way and then we're also putting a lot of pressure on them to kind of roll model reversing this stuff. And when we talk about breaking generational cycles, often the focus is on mums. And I think that it just lets dads off the hook often. I think that dads and grandparents

and artis and uncles and teachers and all adults need to be part of this conversation. It's not fair just to put it on mums. However, there's no denying that and the research backs all of this up right that actually mums do have a really powerful um can either be a really powerful force for good or negative on their children's body image um and not just actually on the way that their own children think and feel about their own bodies but also on the way that the judgments that they have about the other people around them who don't look like them like diet culture is often disguised as health right you know it's it's being healthy it's this idea that kind of we have total control over our health and that if we just eat the right thing and do the right thing, then we will

be healthy. But I feel like, I feel like our obsession with health is actually making kids unhealthy. And I think that a lot of these habits and behaviors are coming from a place of well-meaning, you know, parents want their kids to be healthy. They want to help their kids have like healthy, fulfilled, happy lives, but they don't understand. They don't realize the harm that they're doing with the way that, particularly the way that we're talking about food and bodies and health like a movement. And it's making, it's making children unhealthy, you know. I have the privilege of working with quite a lot of teachers and I go into lots of schools and I do teacher training. And one thing that keeps coming up,

is the children that the teachers are worried about are younger and younger. So I was in a school recently and they had year threes who were like seven years old who were being diagnosed with anorexia. And these are like little kids, you know, and that is kind of quite shocking for me. And I think eating disorder is obviously incredibly complicated, but we know that there's a huge component around the way that we talk about food and, you know, body image plays a role there. And children are picking up ideas at a younger and younger age around what is good food and bad food and what is what is a good and bad body. And they're not

just picking this up from TikTok. You know, we know kids as young as three can suffer with feeling bad about their bodies. Kids as young as three can display anti-fat buyers and those children probably aren't on TikTok. So I think that I think that we're in a bit of a mess. But I think it's unfair to just blame the mums because we're all the culture. I've been that mum before. You know, I've been that person as well. So such a good point. And actually something that I haven't really considered before,

but we are like absolving the dads and like the other guardians or like, you know, people who are responsible for kids, absolving them of any kind of responsibility. Yeah. When it comes to that, you know, the children's body image. Some of these dads are like not okay, you know. they are really we know that these body pressures can come up for men and men are increasingly

being exposed to like harsher kind of appearance ideals and there if you think of all the beauty brands when always growing up it was generally marketed at women like these brands and now most of these brands have a line for for men as well so these kind of appearance pressures are showing up more and more for men but I think that um with dads and this is like a common thing that I hear as well with parents where the mums have kind of woken up and become awake to a lot of the issues and they don't want to pass on some of their own stuff around food but they can't agree with the partners on how to approach it and the partners are actually it is bad to be fat and actually you know it's not health it this is about their health and actually shame is a

useful motivator and they're kind of you know in that gym bro kind of culture and I think that's really difficult, particularly if you're in a couple and you're, or it will just co-parenting and the person that you're parenting, raising children with is like totally not on board and is very much steeped in that thing. And I think that it really annoys me actually when we put all the focus on mums because we make it, like we've got enough mental load. We're doing enough emotional labour in raising kids with this stuff. We need to bring dads. They should be 50-50. They should be just as much part of this conversation. No offense, I know you just sort of do like a whole thing on almond mums, but it's, you know.

It's such a good point. I mean, my dad, and he won't remind me saying this because he has openly admitted it, but he used to call me pretty but plump. Like that was his, you'd be like, oh, you're pretty but plump. Like, it was just, you know, and I don't know the, I think, yeah, I place a lot of the blame on my mom. And I don't seem to really consider him. Yeah.

Also, I guess there's another thing as well. that I hadn't really thought of. It's not just about the dads passing this stuff onto the daughters, but it's also about like what are the standards that the women is feeling in the relationship. Like why is the woman feeling that they need to look a certain way and that they need to like keep their figure or get their figure back after having children or whatever it is,

is their pressure there that's coming from their partner to look that way? And if they're also then passing down some of that pressure to their kids. And by the way, like this is just as damaging. if they've got boys, you know, it's not just girls who are absorbing some of these messages. Particularly online, a lot of the pushback that I get from the stuff that I talk about online and like the trolling probably comes from teenage boys actually. So they're picking up these ideas as well and then it impacts how they relate and talk to their peers and their schoolmates and the girls in their school. Just the kind of general ideas of like what is and isn't okay

to say to someone. Yeah, whenever any of my reels about body, which goes viral, it's always teenage boys in there. That's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. They're the loudest. And actually that is very interesting because I think a lot of this and the questions maybe were skewed towards having girls and how to bring up your girls with a good body image.

But it's just, you're right, it's equally as important to teach your boys. Yeah. To, you know, to have a neutral body image for them and for everyone else that they interact with. Yeah, because that suggests to me that. that these kids are not okay, that they're obviously projecting some of their own stuff. And also that like it might even if they feel totally happy in themselves, they're obviously making judgments about other people.

So at the body happy organization, like the stuff that when we're talking to teachers, for example, we're saying to them it's not just about how your students and the children in your class and young people in your class feel about their own bodies. It's also about creating a culture and environment of body respect. where people respect other people's bodies and they kind of know like what is and isn't okay to say to someone

or just like maybe just don't make comments at all. It's that bias thing. They kind of actually don't inadvertently perpetuate some of these ideas that literally give the green light to bullying in school. It's a very easy blow for a young boy particularly. But it's a, yes, for a young, boy to take. It's a very easy insult because that we are growing up in a very fatphobic society. They are probably growing up seeing their mum's struggle in some capacity with their body image.

So even without fully understanding the complexity, because I actually think young boys are growing up to be young men who turn into old men who never understand the complexity of the issue of body image for women, all they can see at a very simplistic level is that fatness is something that their mothers are scared of or their fathers, but overwhelming their mothers. And they therefore know that that's an easy blow for, in terms of insult, you know, whether they're insulting their friends. I, you know, I know that, you know, I know that fat is used as an insult among children so often. And I think that's the, the anti, the sort of fat phobia that we have within our family dynamics, we probably don't even really, you know, like, just as a

as a mother dieting, that's, I suppose, what you're teaching your child is that you're scared of being fat and they run with that to mean fat is bad and then they take that to do either turn it on themselves or turn it on other people. Yeah. So obviously it's bad across the board. With that in mind, what do you think with through the work that you've done, the research that you've done, how do you think we can go about changing this and raising happier children? The first thing from like a parent point of view, I would say is to not immediately kind of think, oh, I need to like fix the whole system because you're one person and you've probably a product of the culture just as much so. We've all, we've all been there where we've all thought, you know, it's unusual.

I have yet to meet anyone who has ever like for the whole of their lives felt really good in their body and has never had a wobble at any point. And so I would say that like that's normal and there are a lot of children, over half of children and young people struggle with their body image. I think the figure from the Women in Equality's Committee in 2021 was 66%. So it's a really, really common thing. So if your child is struggling, it is common. But with that being said, just because something is common, it doesn't mean we have to accept it as normal. So there are things that we can do. So like the most obvious kind of thing now is like just neutralizing the word fat, like just making it really clear that actually it's just a way for a body to be.

All bodies, though the affirmation that I like with young children, and adults, it's all bodies are good bodies and all bodies are worthy bodies. And I think that when we can kind of just reaffirm that as much as possible and actually also call out and challenge when messages give the opposite idea. And so that might be, you know, my girls are, and 14 now, but when they were little, Pepper Pig was all the rage. So like the most common joke in Pepper Pig is Daddy Pig's tummy. His tummy's always the punchline of the joke. So just kind of when these little moments that are so normalized pop up in children's media or in conversations, kind of point it out and say, well, actually that's not okay. How do you think Daddy Pig feels

every time Pepper Pig makes fun of his tummy? Like probably not very good. And then really kind of trying to keep the focus on how our bodies feel and appreciating our bodies for what they can do for us. And that doesn't have to necessarily mean like running marathons. It could be, you know, hugging your friend if they're sad or, you know, playing at the park or, you know, you'd just be able to sit and have a conversation. Like if I didn't have a body, I wouldn't be able to sit here right now and have a conversation with you both. So I think just kind of bringing it back to what our bodies can do and trying to role model that as much as possible. And if you're not in that place, then just being aware when those negative comments about your own body or other people's

body might come up, trying to filter them before they come out of your mouth, which can also be really hard if you're just, you know, if this is the way that you've always been. But I think once you start to notice it, just trying to just like there is actually a huge power in just not voicing those comments, not voicing those opinions, not voicing those ideas. If you're not yet ready to the point where you feel you can be super positive, just don't say anything at all. A lot of this advice is stuff, I guess, that is done within the confines of your own home, you know, where you kind of, you are, you are in control of your children's environment and what they can consume. And when they are consuming stuff like pepper pig, you can, you can help

mitigate any harm but obviously they go outside of the house and then we still live in a world very steeped in diet culture and fat phobia. How do parents kind of armour up their children and prevent them from from absorbing all of that? Yeah. I think that yeah, that's really true. You can create this lovely cocoon, this lovely safe cocoon in your home where, you know, all bodies are good bodies and you celebrate body diversity and use neutral words around food and bodies and health and movement. But the reality is that as your children go out into the world, they are going to hear these messages at some point, whether it's someone in the playground calling them fat or using the word fat as an insult or whether it's healthy eating lessons in

school that aren't taught through a lens of positive body image or whether it's like that auntie at, you know, the Christmas dinner table, whatever, they're going to come up at some point. And I think that it's really useful to make children aware that these ideas exist, but also kind of explaining that actually is not what we think in this house, not what our family values are. And I think that sometimes what I can see

is that children who've been brought up in like a really like body positive household really like feeling really good and really like lovely kind of body affirming ideas in their house, it can be like a real shock when they go out into the wider world and they do come across like fat phobia or, you know, appearance based teasing or discrimination in some form. And I think that actually talking to children about this, it can be useful and also, and it comes back to that thing of like pointing stuff out. So it's about developing those critical thinking skills. So like with Pepper Pig, that is a moment of like, that's kind of like a really normalized example of anti-fat bias in kids cartoons. And when it's on its own, it might,

it might not feel like, you know, any big deal. But when you put all of the pieces together of the puzzle together, they build up like a culture that actually makes it quite hard for kids to like their bodies. So I think that pointing those out and then just kind of having a conversation with children, like actually, why do you think Pepper Pig said that? How do you think Daddy Pig would feel about that? That can then translate to situations outside of the home. the child hears that conversation happening in the playground, then they might be more, you know, able to kind of exercise those empathy muscles and think about how someone else might feel. And I think that it's also, this is why I was saying before, it's not just on

mum's, right? Because actually we need to have everyone involved in this. It's also on teachers. It's on school leaders to be aware of this stuff. It's on grandparents. You know, it shouldn't, it shouldn't just be about filtering out all of this negative stuff in the home and like creating a buffer zone, actually we should be filtering it out in the wider society and creating a buffer zone so none of it's coming through at all, which is easier said than done. I totally, I realize that, but I think that I feel really strongly that yes, resilience is a really useful thing, right? It's useful to be resilient and it's useful to be aware that actually the world isn't always like a lovely, happy place and actually kind of be aware that other people experience the world

differently to us. But I don't think the answer to children feeling good in their bodies is just to make it totally their responsibility to build resilience and build a wall to this stuff because it's not really fair. Actually, we should be starting to remove some of these things that are making them feel bad in the first place. And I feel that there's a lot of pressure on children and mums to look a certain way and to feel a certain way. And so if they don't look that way, they can feel bad. If they don't meet that beauty ideal, they can feel bad. But also if they don't feel that way, if they feel negative,

if they feel insecure in their body, if they're experiencing negative body image, they can also feel that they've somehow failed as well. So I think that it's important to kind of just be open. Actually, lots of people struggle with this stuff. It's common, but we don't have to accept it as normal. and actually starting to recognize when these instances of like anti-fat bias come up and getting children to actually be empowered to call it out as well.

You know, getting them to be kind of, these are like the next generation who are coming through. If we really want to break generational cycles, how are children going to be able to break these cycles if they're not even, you know, part of that conversation? So if a child comes to you, if your child comes to you and says something detrimental about their own body or about somebody else's, how as a parent should you react? I would avoid the idea that there is like a right or wrong way necessarily because I think that I don't think that I necessarily is. But I would say the first thing is to just kind of, well, if a child saying something bad about their own body is to just sit with it and, and, and, you know, and not immediately rush to try and like say, oh, you're not, you're not, whatever you are, you're beautiful.

Because what that can do is just, that's a really natural response, by the way. Like, no one wants to see their kids struggling. You want to immediately fix it and make it better. But actually what you risk doing when you do that is just invalidating their experience and making them feel, oh, I'm bad for feeling that way. When actually in the culture that we live in, it's probably quite normal to feel that way. So I think just sitting with it and just getting curious and saying, or, okay, do you want to talk about it?

What, you know, trying to find what the root of the issue is, like has something happened at school, you know, and giving them a chance to kind of talk about it. And then letting them know that, again, although it might be common, lots of people do feel this way, it doesn't mean we have to accept it as normal. And letting children and young people,

particularly like when they're in adolescence and they're going through puberty, just as our bodies are changing all the time, actually our body image can change all the time. it's not this linear thing you don't get a gold star at the end of it it can go up and down we can go through phases in our life when we feel better and phases when we feel worse and just like our bodies change you know that's really normal and it's normal for our body image to kind of go up and down and I think then talking to children and working even there's a huge power in being

honest and open like maybe you've struggled with this stuff yourself and you can say it's hard it's hard to live in the culture that we live in and feel good all the time I've struggled with this stuff too, but I've been learning some tools that have made me feel better. Maybe we could use these tools together, you know, particularly for older children and young people, that can be quite a powerful bonding experience, I think. And also, it can just create a safe space where children can be open and talk. I think that I realize that, like, it's easy to say that with hindsight, but in the real life moment, that's not necessarily easy. something that I really like that I've seen lots of people doing. I haven't done this myself,

but I'm thinking about introducing it with my own girls, particularly my youngest, is having like a journal that you share. So it could be about anything. It doesn't have to be about body image, but basically you give them a journal and they can use it to like write how they're feeling, almost like write a letter to you, put it under your pillow and then you can respond in the journal, write the letter back and give it back to them. And it can mean that you then particularly like for teenagers or you know kids going through that adolescent period feels so awkward and cringy to talk about this stuff particularly with your mum you don't necessarily want to sit there and have this big deeper meaningful and you don't want her to

give you this essay on this like lecture on self-esteem and you know that it's her job as your mum to tell you that you're great like why would you listen but actually having like a little back and forth could say look I'm always here I'm happy to talk to you about anything you want to talk about, but it doesn't have to be a verbal conversation. And with that said, car journeys are also a really good opportunity to, if you do want to have a verbal conversation to try and have that conversation or going for a walk, there's evidence to show that when you're shoulder to shoulder with someone, you can open up more than when you're sitting face to face. So interesting. Yeah. The journal, that's such a lovely idea. Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

What about when your children insult other people? people's bodies or talk about other people's bodies in a derogatory way. How then do you approach that? Yes. So I first started being interested in body image and raising girls because I didn't want my kids to ever feel in the way that I had felt previously. But as the more I did this work, it became more about I just wanted them. I wanted to raise like decent human beings who were respectful of other people and it wasn't it wasn't so much about how they felt about themselves it was equally if not more about how they treated other people and so I think it's really important to have just really clear boundaries about what isn't acceptable and then recognize that children it's

quite normal for children to often try and push these boundaries and actually but but holding firm in those boundaries just like you would with anything else actually that's not an acceptable way to talk about someone and we don't comment on other people's bodies in this house or this classroom, all bodies are good bodies. We don't comment on other people's bodies. We don't use the word fat as an insult or any other word around bodies as an insult because all bodies are good bodies. Let's celebrate what our bodies can do, not what they look like. And then recognizing that if your child is the one who's dishing out the insults, actually that might be an indicator that they're struggling themselves because it's really common for children who are

struggling to kind of, um, dish, you know, become like the bully in the situation as a way to deflect. You know, they'll be the first to dish out the insult before anyone can give it back to them. Um, it's really interesting research around weight stigma and, um, a really common. So when children are struggling with body image, it's really common for them not to raise their hand in class. And I see this a lot with the children that I'm working with. They tell me and we do like surveys with them afterwards and before we do a workshop and they literally tell us if I felt better about my body I would put my hand up more in class and this is like 10 and 11 year olds and so we know that like that's a really common thing but another really common thing

is for children to be disruptive in order to kind of gain that social acceptance from their peers and so actually if a child is calling another child names or dishing out insults that could indicate that they don't feel great in themselves. And even if they do feel great in themselves, it definitely indicates that they've got bad body boundaries. And they think it's all right to like make those comments. And I think you just have to just be consistently, take a zero tolerance approach to it, just in the way that you would with any kind of discrimination. When it comes to how we behave, we know children are watching everything that we do, not to put the pressure on mums again, but whilst we're unpicking it on our own relationship with our body image and

with diet culture and all of it, what are the things and how are the ways that we should be speaking about our own bodies and kind of behaving with them as well? Or it's like constantly trying to keep the balance between being like true to ourselves and authentic and recognising that it's hard to have a body in the culture that we live in, but also not wanting to kind of role model negative behaviours. So I think like the first thing is don't voice out loud when you're having negative feelings in front of your children if you can, you know, don't say things like, oh, I shouldn't wear that or I shouldn't eat that or, you know, using this kind of morally loaded language around food,

like, oh, that's naughty, that's a treat. Just kind of be trying to be really neutral about it. and just try and language is super important and children will pick up language but we also talk with nonverbal cues so I think that body language is also important and I have a love-hate relationship with some of the approaches particularly when again when we put pressure on mums to like wear the bikini you know I'm like oh that's really hard if you feel bad and also it's also really hard if you've been discriminated against because you've got a bigger body and you've constantly been told that your fat body is is unattractive or unworthy of wearing a bikini like

that's quite a lot of pressure to put on mums to like wear the bikini and I think that like if you're not wearing a bikini it's fine you're not going to like ruin your kid's body image like it's okay you don't have to like strut around in a bikini but I think just kind of when children can see you just enjoying your body just living your life in the body that you have you know on holiday you don't have to necessarily wear the bikini although sure if you want to wear the bikini like go for it but just enjoying the feeling of you know swimming if you like swimming or resting reading a book eating food that you like to eat and taking pleasure in that if you can and and vocalising that pleasure.

And with food also, just like talking about it, I think we need to, we spend so much time thinking about the nutritional value of food and what food, like whether it's healthy or unhealthy. Actually, children learn this from a really young age. They're picking it up from a really young age that, you know, vegetables are good for them. Actually, talking about all the other roles that food plays in our life, like food can be a huge source of comfort. It can be a great way to like celebrate our family history, our cultural heritage.

It's just a really great opportunity to get together with friends and be sociable if you, you know, if you enjoy eating in that way. Like talking about food in those positive ways can also be really great for kids. And I think that recognizing that the way that we talk about food and the way that we talk about health and the way that we talk about movement massively impacts how children think and feel about their bodies is really important. important because often people get really caught up in this idea that body image is like this separate thing that it's it kind of exists in a silo and that actually it's got nothing to do with like anything else like healthy eating whatever is like this separate thing actually all of these things can impact how children think and feel about their bodies so I want to ask you for I mean a lot of what we're talking about is how to prevent like you said it's it's preventative

how to prevent harm and to equip our children with, you know, good tools for positive body image. If there are moms listening to this who are, who have children who are a bit older and they realize, they're starting to realize, you know, they've been immersed in diet culture their whole life and they have therefore immersed their child in diet culture for their whole life and that they've caused harm in that sense. What do you think, like, what are some steps to them to go about trying to, like, reverse any damage? Is it too late?

Are there things that they can do? It's not too late. Okay. It's not too late. That's good. I think be honest and take ownership of it. And if you recognize that you have, like, made mistakes in the past, like, I know it's a really overused word.

this like accountability is like a very kind of hot word but I think take accountability for it and be honest and open and I think I've seen some really lovely conversations happen with grandparents and like some of my friends and their mums and as they've been learning about diet culture like even knowing that diet culture is a thing and trying to undo some of this kind of stuff they've then had conversations with their mums and they've brought their mums into it and the mums have been like I wish I knew better then you know I wouldn't have done that and actually I think it's okay to say that I think it's okay to say I wish I knew differently then because I wouldn't have done X, Y Z but also give yourself some grace and recognize

actually like I keep saying we're all a product of the culture that we grow up in we're all a product of the culture that we live in. This is not an individual person issue. This is a society issue. And we're all part of this society. So I think on the one hand we can say, like, it was hard growing up. It's hard growing up, whatever period you're growing up in, there's always going to be appearance pressures.

And I think be honest about that, but also say, do you know what, if I knew what I knew what I knew now, I probably wouldn't have done that then. And if you've caused harm, if you've been an almond mum and you've shamed, you've shamed your child for their body or you've publicly shamed them or you've, whatever it is, I think, apologize. Because even if you, even if it came from a well-intentioned place, the impact was that you caused harm. And I think, apologize and take accountability for that. and you know try and just try and do better um and recognize that we're all human and we all make mistakes and you're probably going to make more mistakes like i know that i'm sitting here like

giving all this advice i'm that doesn't mean like no one's infallible i've made mistakes in the past and i probably will you know at some point in the future because i'm a human being i think that but i think that admitting those mistakes is important yeah that's so lovely yeah before we let you go do you think we've missed anything from this conversation? I think maybe there's something around, particularly when children go to nursery and school, about how to bring the school into the conversation because I think that what can happen often is particularly,

like I'm assuming that anyone who listens to this podcast is already pretty aware, like they already like want to learn or they're pretty aware of some like the issues around this stuff so they're probably pretty on board. and I think that what can happen is when you're aware of this stuff and you see these real life incidents of body image harm happening in the real world. So like a really common one is children being, they're learning healthy eating at school

and they have an activity where they might put food into like good and bad categories. That's a really common one or healthy and unhealthy categories. And then they might get a follow-up activity where they have to go home and keep a food diary and they have to keep a journal of like all the unhealthy, quote unquote, unhealthy food that they've eaten at home that week. Like that's another really common one. And I think that as a parent on the receiving end, when your child gets a homework like that, or maybe your child has been weighed as part of the National Child Measurement Program in reception in year six and you didn't know and you didn't opt them out and you've had a letter home saying that they're in a quote unquote unhealthy weight category

and you then, you know, want to kind of go in like it makes you really angry. I think that often a really common way of wanting to deal with that is to go in or guns blazing into the school and kind of be right quite forthright. And I think it's really important to get the school involved. But I think it's also important to recognise that no one is, if you go in in attack mode and you're very angry and you don't, you kind of, you kind of, come at it from a place of like division and like you're really kind of argued, you're in full like mother bear mode. That's really, by the way, also a very natural response, but also you're

not necessarily going to get the best result. So I think trying to say to your school, can we have a conversation about this? You might not be aware, but, you know, sharing some of the research and statistics. We've got a whole load of template letters and information. packs that parents can literally download to send to their school where it's literally done for them kind of and bring them into the conversation because we have to recognize that everyone's at different points in understanding and everyone is at different point in their journey around this stuff and I have never met a teacher who's intentionally going into a classroom to cause harm you know all the teachers I'm I'm the only person in my family who isn't a teacher so

all the teachers that I know and all the teachers I work with all just want the best for the children that they work with. It's just that they don't know any different and that they haven't had that support, which is why we exist, you know, which why the body happy organisation exists. But I think that that's really important. And then the other thing I would say is the National Child Measurement Program. So if your child goes to a state-funded school in England, they will be weighed in reception and year six unless you opt them out. So just being aware of that. And it's your decision where obviously if you opt them out or not, that's a whole of the conversation. But if you don't opt them out, they will be weighed. How do parents, how can

parents opt them out? So what will happen is you'll get a letter before the way and happens. And it's also really important to know that it's not the school carrying out the height and weight measurements. It's done by the local authority. So like your school nursing team, you'll get a letter. Normally it's about two weeks before. And at that point, you'll be told how you can opt out. And every local authority is different. So it might be that you have to ring a number. It might be that you fill out a form. It might be that you can do it online. But you have to opt out.

If you don't give consent, that doesn't matter. They'll still be weighed. Unless you opt out, they will be weighed. Okay. Thank you so much, Molly. That was absolutely brilliant. And we're going to leave a link to the Body Happy organisation in the show notes, as well as a link to the templates as well,

which would be brilliant for parents to help relations with schools around body image. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. It's a pleasure to talk to you. Should I delete that as part of the ACAST Creator Network?