A Lesson I am learning as I teach

It's safe to say my daughter has reached "tweendom." While she will always be my little girl...she is definitely growing up and her emotional development has finally caught up with her physical development.
Jacinda is finally finding comfort in her own skin and her body. At 5-foot and some negligible fraction of inches, she still remains one of the tallest girls in her class, but the fact is she is now ONE OF. Her friends are now catching up to her and there's a camaraderie and kinship that these girls are finding in each other that as her mother has been very fun to see develop.
Little giggly phone calls frequently occur in my house, with some hushed whispering and speaking in code. Yes, there's some of the drama of "I think my friend "so and so" is mad at me," etc. But in those moments I tell her to pick up the phone and call the friend and ask them point blank if they are. I explain to her that what we imagine or perceive is often way worse than reality. (Yes, this is experience speaking...I lived in a cloud of self-produced, other-inflicted drama for most of my teens and early adulthood.)
It's been interesting to witness and harder to guide Jacinda through these changes than I imagined. Of course when I originally entered this strange, exciting and challenging world of parenthood, I thought that there would be many years before puberty and all that it entails came knocking at my door let alone residing in my home. But that wasn't the case. The two of us had just started to find our footing in our mother-daughter dance when things began changing...rapidly - with several surprises along the way. There have been countless reassurance sessions and frank discussions that would have permanently stained my cheeks in a blush years ago.
But it is vitally important to me to instill a sense of self-awareness, self-acceptance and self-love in my daughter. And without getting to sure of myself, I think it is working. I'd like to say it was some genius, parental plan, but really it was accidental.
One morning we were both standing in the bathroom in front of the mirror and I caught her looking at her self with a critical expression and something in me snapped. NO WAY THIS WAS GOING TO BECOME A PATTERN WITH MY DAUGHTER!
Standing beside her I looked at our reflection in the mirror. I started talking about things I liked about her...her beautiful smile, gorgeous hair, those eyes that I get lost in...etc. But I recognized the "Mom is talking but all I am hearing is blah-blah-blah" glaze that immediately washed over her. I knew the message I was trying to convey was too important to get lost, so I changed my tone and tune.
I realized in order for my words to have real and lasting impact...I had to set an example - I had to be an example, so while everything inside of me cringed, I turned the focus to myself and starting talking about the things I liked about MYSELF. It was uncomfortable to say the least...it felt awkward, unnatural and silly. But I did it. I talked about how much I like my nose, my hair, my lips etc. Jacinda laughed and started playing along with a list of her attributes she was happy with. We play this little game quite often and it has made a difference. She no longer hides her developing body under coats and jackets all day long at school - something I didn't even know was happening until one of her teachers mentioned it to me in a recent conference. She has stopped coveting my straight, blonde hair and will actually pick out specific ringlets in her tresses that look "so cute" that day.
While this may seem like a trivial exercise, when I recently heard the statistic that girls' self-esteem peaks when they are 9 years old, then takes a nose dive," (clinical psychologist Robin F. Goodman writes on the New York University Child Study Center Web site) I was at first shocked and then I started to think about it and it made total sense to me.
It's easy for us to blame television, Barbie dolls and the advertising industry. And while yes, I agree some of the messages our girls receive are inappropriate and unrealistic, I think the remedy is a whole lot closer home, it's us.
What messages are we sending to our daughters ? We have the opportunity to have the biggest impact on the young women we are raising and yet, too many times we passively watch our kids start to drown in a sea of self-loathing or worse yet SHOW them how to drown by the messages we are sending ourselves that they are intercepting.
We gripe about how big our thighs are, how we're too lazy to get our big butts to the gym, we covet airbrushed skin that graces the covers of magazines, we cry and/or curse the numbers on the scale and shudder in fear with the arrival of swimsuit season. We talk about how this friend has lost a ton of weight and looks amazing! Or how that friend just seems to keep packing on the pounds, with a sympathetic shake of our heads.
When we as mothers stand in front of a mirror longing for the body of our twenties, less wrinkles, less poundage, etc. whether we want to admit it or not, our daughters are watching and they are learning to follow our example.
And after about 30 years of looking in the mirror and thinking about all the things I need and want to change about the girl/teen/woman standing before me, I am learning as I teach that it's OK to appreciate my own finer points. Actually it's more than OK. If I want to break the cycle and do my part to maintain Jacinda's self-esteem and self-perception into her teen years and beyond, I need to modify my own "internal" messages which too often become external influences for my daughter.