		Parent Tribe Tween Tribe

New Tribes Forming--SPREAD THE WORD

We're launching 2 Tribes this spring--one in Branford and one in Killingworth (very close to Madison). Plus, we have a free introductory Tribe meeting on April 24. SPREAD THE WORD! . Find out more at TweenTribe.com

What's Up in Our Tribes

Our March Tribes explored how we feel about ourselves.

The Tween Tribe girls heard a story called Cendrillon , a retelling of Cinderella written by Macdara MacColl.

In this version, Cinderella’s fairy godmother doesn’t create a new dress. Instead, she teaches Cinderella to “move like she means it.” “The dress doesn’t’ make the girl,” she explains. “The girl makes the dress.” Further, Cinderella isn’t going to the ball to win the prince’s love. She’s going to ask King Charlemagne to let her attend his palace school. (There is some historical accuracy here: King Charlemagne did create a legendary palace school with great teachers brought in from throughout Europe, and he did allow some females to attend his school.)

After hearing and talking about the story, we led the girls in a movement exercize. We stood like “wilted flowers,” our bodies collapsed in on ourselves. Then we stood like “flowers in full bloom,” proud, open, brave but also flexible and supple. Then, like “prickly flowers,” rigid and tight. We explored how we felt in each pose, and looked around the room to see how the different body poses made us feel about others.

Then we turned up the tunes and started our fashion show. The girls paraded down the runway using our different body types—bloom, wilted, prickly—while other girls tried to figure out which body type they had. We discovered that a girl in pajamas walking with her head held high looked far more beautiful than a girl in a gorgeous dress walking like a limp ragdoll.

The younger girls heard a story called Beatrice the Mean, written by Sarah Suatoni. In the story, Beatrice—who is renowned for her tough, bossy ways—looks in the mirror and wonders at the sweet, angelic face she sees there. “That’s not me,” she thinks. “I’m mean!” Then she’s visited by wise woman who resides in the closet named Nuit. Nuit, a symbol of hidden wisdom, explains that we all have many sides to us. Sometimes we need our strong, tough, bossy side, and sometimes we need our soft, compassionate side.

We explored these different ways of being and reacting through an improv game. We’d give the girls a scenario, like “your friend has just told you you’re not invited to her birthday party.” And then told which part of themselves to tap into to respond: whiney, strong and bossy, compassionate and understanding. Then we all voted on which response we thought was the most effective. The girls definitely got a chance to flex their social brains.

On the way out, one girl started to whine to her mother, and I reminded her to try using her “respectful, strong and compassionate” skills.

February was about how to stand up to a bossy friend. In our story The Talking Drums, written by Macdara MacColl, Wendy Whiner’s best friend, Beatrice, tells her she has to do something mean to another girl. Wendy wants nothing more than to have a best friend, so she decides to do the mean thing, even though she doesn’t want to. And then she’s magically transported to Ghana, where she learns the language of the drums and the importance of speaking her truth and standing up to her friend. She learns that standing up for herself isn’t only good for her, it’s good for her friend, too.

We used improvisational theater games to explore different challenging situations, and then “drummed our truth” in a drumming circle led by Melinda Alcosser.

-Macdara MacColl, Executive Director, The Tween Scene LLC

Tribe Stories

Want to see what our Tween Tribe stories are all about? Read a sampling at TweenTribe.com..

That Blooming Body

5 Tips to Help Your Daughter Feel Great About Her Body

By Sarah Suatoni, President, The Tween Scene LLC

The issue of body image is around the corner for many tweens. My very tall daughter told me this week that she feels weird walking down the hall next to friends who come up to her shoulder. We’ve heard normal-weight tweens express concern about being overweight. Almost every girl in our Tween Tribes shared some incident of being teased about their appearance. You could hear shame ringing in their voices. One study reports that at age thirteen, 53% of American girls are “unhappy with their bodies.” This grows to 78% by the time girls reach seventeen.

There are tweens who are blissfully unaware of their bodies, but studies show that by adolescence, girls base their self-esteem on how they look. Eating disorders are being diagnosed in younger and younger girls.

Our girls need our help. And the good news is: We can make a huge difference in how they see themselves. Here are 5 tips on how to help your daughter have a wonderful body image and avoid the body image and self-esteem struggles so common among girls today.

1. Examine the attitude your family holds towards the body.

Your daughter will take her cues directly from you. Most women are guilty of complaining about our looks right in front of our girls. The fact is, what you say about yourself is as important as what you say about her. When you put yourself down about the way you look, your daughter’s self-concept drops. Choate’s article states that say girls who grow up in families that convey negative messages about the body are more likely to suffer from poor body image, subsequent struggles with self esteem, and vulnerability toward eating disorders. So, if you feel you are overweight, have an unfortunate nose, or problem hair, don’t talk about it in front of your daughter.

The good news for us moms is that our tweens give us an opportunity to address our own body image issues. Let’s be motivated to help our daughters by learning to celebrate our strengths and our unique shape, rather than accepting the emaciated image the media offers us.

After all, don’t you love it when someone says your daughter looks like you? Celebrate that!

2. Emphasize nutrition and stay away from the idea of dieting.

Let’s talk about the idea of emphasizing nutrition over dieting. Have you noticed that Weight Watchers is doing an anti-dieting campaign? The company has announced that diets do not work. And yet in a survey of girls 9 and 10 years old, 40% have tried to lose weight, according to an ongoing study funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

If you feel your daughter is overweight, here are some tips. First, make sure that the problem is really her weight and not your own expectations.

If a weight issue exists, take a moment to acknowledge that you are up against a challenge because of our cultural obsession with being thin. Unlike high cholesterol or wheat allergies, weight problems are laden with shame, making them that much harder to face. Labeling your daughter overweight at this age could create a problem for her later in life. But, ignoring the issue does not help either. Addressing weight issues without shame involves learning about healthy eating and the benefits of exercise, instead of dieting.

We know our country is facing a national health crisis around the issues of obesity and diabetes. So learning to eat better can be seen as a national issue, just like recycling. Our children will embrace the idea if we include them in the topic. Eating better is a positive thing to do; dieting is an act of deprivation. So, go for health and wellness over thinness and remember that the body is not meant to be emaciated.

Learning about eating well can be fun, and you can do it with your daughter. Together you can make homemade ice cream out of fruit, fun salads, nut butters, and whole grain bread. There are an abundance of nutritionists, cooks books, health food stores, online sites, and markets that sell locally grown products.

Here are a couple resources to get you started:

KidsHealth: http://kidshealth.org/parent/nutrition_fit/nutrition/habits.html

Parents: Family Guide to Healthy Eating http://www.nutritionexplorations.org/parents/family-eating.asp

3. Help your daughter find ways to celebrate her body and enjoy all that her body can do.

Put the focus on the amazing wonders of the body. Expose your daughter to sports or other activates that celebrate the body without dictating shape or size. Girls who feel good about their strength, speed, agility, grace, expressive ability, and creativity have other ways of relating to their body and are less vulnerable to judging themselves based on how they look.

The body is both a source or pleasure and a way of knowing one’s self. We tend to look only to the intellect for self-understanding. But our emotional life and our intuition inform us through our bodies. Feelings don’t just happen in the brain, they happen in our bodies, and they are a source of great wisdom.

Many of us come to see our bodies as something to be wrestled with, something we have to constantly battle against. If we can relate to our bodies as a source of pleasure and wisdom, our girls will have a better chance of doing the same. Eating well and enjoying physical activity are part of honoring our wonderful physical form. The more you model healthful eating, physical enjoyment, and a happy attitude about the body at home, the easier it will be for your daughter to deal with the issue when it comes up with her peers.

And it will. Tweens become increasingly focused on their peers. Your daughter’s peers can either be a source of support or a source of embarrassment and shame. People of all ages tend to fear difference and change unless we are educated about it. Children often deal with their discomfort about the changes they are going through by taunting and teasing one and other.

4. Help your girls form a strong network of friends.

Healthy peer relationships bolster self-esteem. Now is the time to listen as your daughter plays with her friends and notice if there is any teasing about the body, a large emphasis on looks, or a good deal of comparison going on. If that is happening, it is time to talk to your daughter about the fact that she and her peers are beginning to change and that everybody will develop differently. Help your daughter and her friends to see their differences as gifts not embarrassments. At Tween Tribe, we spend a great deal of time helping the girls identify their differences and see them as strengths. Friendships based in competition and comparison will not help your daughter’s self esteem.

It’s also valuable for your daughter to have multiple social circles. If the group at school is becoming negative, then she can spend more time with friends in the neighborhood, for instance. Also, groups formed around common interests and activities can be very beneficial. A musical group or special interest club keeps the focus on activities rather than looks. And of course, a group like Tween Tribe offers a special place for your daughter to celebrate her essential self.

5. Educate your daughter about how the media misrepresents the female form.

The media is working against us here. In magazines and on TV we see lots of rail thin models, actresses with sleek blond hair and creamy white complexions, products which help shape and shift the way you look, fashion that only looks good on the bodies of 8 year olds or boys. The message is clear: however good you look, it’s not good enough. A 1996 study found that the amount of time an adolescent watches soaps, movies and music videos is associated with their degree of body dissatisfaction and desire to be thin.

We need to educate our girls about the fact that these images are air-brushed fantasies. Furthermore, the women who play by Hollywood rules pay a terrible price in terms of personal misery. To quote one actress, “I’m always hungry.”

Beauty comes from the way we act and hold ourselves, not from our shape and size. Celebrate difference, enjoy your beauty, accept and acknowledge your body and teach your girls to do the same. To quote our one famous media campaign, “You (and your daughter) are worth it.”

Resources:
The Campaign for Real Beauty http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/home.asp

This site, part of Dove’s campaign for real beauty, is fantastic. Check out the “Onslaught” film, and show your daughter “Evolution,” a film that shows you how the industry transforms a woman into an air-brushed supermodel. Watch “Amy” and your eyes with tear up. The site also offers mom activities.

About Face: http://www.about-face.org/

About-Face’s mission is to equip women and girls with tools to understand and resist harmful media messages that affect self-esteem and body image. The site is packed with facts and images about advertising, such as: Body image dissatisfaction and dieting behavior isn’t restricted to adolescents or adults. In a study of almost five hundred schoolgirls, 81% of the ten-year-olds reported that they had dieted at least once (Mellin, Scully & Irwin, 1986).

Girl Power http://www.girlpower.gov/

The national public education campaign sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to help encourage and motivate 9- to 13- year-old girls to make the most of their lives. Girls at 8 or 9 typically have very strong attitudes about their health, so Girl Power! Seeks to reinforce and sustain these positive values among girls ages 9-13 by targeting health messages to the unique needs, interests, and challenges of girls.

Body Positive http://www.bodypositive.com/

Designed to help you boost your body image at any weight. If you’re a mom who struggles with body image, check out this site.

Real Women Project http://www.realwomenproject.org/

The site’s creed: Imagine a world radiantly lit by the true beauty and wisdom of women in pursuit of health and justice for all.

SPECIAL THANKS: The information in this article came from several sources, some of which we'd like to thank here: Dr. Patricia DeBarbieri, Associate Professor in the Department of Counseling and School Psychology at Southern Connecticut State University, who is an expert in eating disorders, spoke with Macdara and I about the issue of eating disorders and body image. She shared a wonderful article by Laura Hensley Choate on “Counseling Adolescent girls for Body Image Resilience.” I have also spent my therapeutic practice working with body image issues in adults and children.

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Mission. TweenTribe.com

Tween Tribe mission: At Tween Tribe, we turn cliques into communities; celebrate the best in each girl; and create a circle of Tribe sisters who learn tools for life. Parent Tribe mission: Parent Tribe is a an e-newsletter for parents and educators. Its mission is to share our research and observations with parents and caregivers of tweens (whether in our groups or not) to increase positive interaction between adults and tween-aged children. Parent Tribe is available free to all. We hope the insights shared here will enhance communication and understanding. [archive] Subscribe