When Your Child Says “I Hate How I Look”: How to Respond With Connection

Dr. Wendy: Hey, I'm a doctor, but I am not your doctor. And this podcast is for education, not medical advice. Take what fits, please leave what doesn't. And remember, be gentle with yourself as you lead the change that you want to see in your family. Imagine your kid says to you point blank, I hate how I look. Yeah. Your brain starts kind of doing this full cycle where you start spinning around with wanting to reassure them to fix it, to say the right thing. ⁓ dear sweet Jesus, do not say the wrong thing, but also find the different resources and who else can you tap into and you land on, well, the fact that you just keep on spinning and feel kind of stuck. What if I told you that the answer of what to do next comes from improv comedy of all places? in improv comedy, which I have been practicing for over 10 years now, ⁓ it's so delicious. ⁓ there are two really big rules. The first one is always make your partner look good. Okay. Well, who's your partner in this scene? Yeah, ⁓ your kid. ⁓ there's another rule that goes right along with it. Hey, check out this next episode where we're talking about how weight stigma is appearing in the doctor's office and what you can do to create change for your family. When your scene partner says something, you don't block it. You don't negate it. You don't say no, actually. You don't try to fix it. You say yes and. These are magical words because what you're doing is accepting whatever it is that was just put out there into the scene. Whatever your partner says or does, whatever is going on, you accept it as being real and you build upon it. And this is a thing with kids who are struggling with food, with their bodies, how they fit into the world. They don't need to be corrected. They don't need to have everything changed and fixed. They honestly just need a scene partner, someone who's there with them. And nobody dragged you here. to be a bad scene partner. Improv, it isn't just about comedy. It's actually a master class in connection, which is what we're infusing all throughout our time together here with family and focus. And connection, by the way, mitigates trauma. It mitigates the stress that each and every one of us is experiencing every day, adults and kids alike. So I want to walk you through a framework that I created for using yes and offstage. with all frameworks and especially in medicine, we love the ABCs. You think about the ABCs of CPR. We're going to talk about the ABCs of yes and. So A is acknowledge. It is. And this is harder than it sounds. Your kid says, everyone's staring at me at lunch. If you want to see change in your child's eating habits without pressure, constant mealtime battles, or the shame you grew up with, you're in the right place. Welcome to Family in Focus. I'm Dr. Wendy Schofer, the pediatrician helping parents lead meaningful change without harm. Here we focus on the connection and practical shifts that help families thrive at every size. Let's get started. Your first instinct may be to say, well, I'm sure they're not, but that's blocking. It's killing the scene and it's negating what they're saying. So yes, and starts with, that sounds really hard. Full stop right there. You're not agreeing that everyone is staring. You're agreeing that it feels that way. And there is a big difference. That difference is everything because you are right. there with your scene partner. Then you move to B. B is building on. This is where the and comes in. Okay, so you just said yes what ⁓ they are telling you exists. It is. Now gonna build on. ⁓ So you add a layer. ⁓ Not a solution not trying to give them lesson. but you add a layer of curiosity. Tell me more. ⁓ and I'm wondering, ⁓ is it like for you? ⁓ this is where I will go to the grave using the language of experimentation. ⁓ about experimenting with curiosity ⁓ of trying to correct ⁓ fix what our kids are experiencing, just leaning into more. Tell me more about it. What you're doing is you're detecting patterns. You're trying to tease out a little bit more about what your child is experiencing. And the cool thing about patterns is that they can be shifted. They don't need to be fixed. But you can't shift what you haven't acknowledged and learned more about by getting curious. And then the C. The C is, yeah, you guessed it, connection. Connection. Okay, this is where you're moving from Kind like the face-to-face energy, which often is, you know, kind of like interrogation to being shoulder-to-shoulder with your child. Let's figure this out together. Perhaps you may even want to say, can we think about this together? But just being there in the scene with them is already signaling that you're there together. You're not handing down the answer as an expert. You're working with them. You're scene partners partners. So kids are struggling with food whether it's ⁓ too much eating too little hiding it fighting about it ⁓ parental instinct is to fix ⁓ ⁓ that's actually a stress response. We're just trying to survive and we're trying to make sure that our kids survive to the next day. We to fix it ⁓ and breaks the scene. It's something where you're not fully learning what your child is experiencing and understanding and creating connection to where they are right now. Yes, Anne does not mean that you're approving of everything. It means that you're acknowledging what exists and you're staying in the room, in the relationship. And this is where the real change happens. Not in not in correcting or fixing it, but in connection and working together and building, building over time. So you don't have to be the perfect parent. You do not have to say the perfect thing. There is no perfect thing, by the way. You just have to stay in the scene. So remember, A, acknowledge what they're sharing is real. B, build on with curiosity. And C, connection. Connection is the answer. Stay shoulder to shoulder because you are allies and you are working through this together. Your relationship is what matters first. That's it. That's the whole framework. So try it this week. Nothing is too big, nothing is too small to try this at home. It's totally an experiment. And experiments do not have to be one and done. In fact, we learn so much more by repeating them. If this landed for you, I would love to keep the scene going. You see what I did there? Yeah. Come find me at wendyschofermd.com. I work with families exactly on this and we infuse improv throughout our work within Family In Focus.