10 Ways to Teach Your Child they are Beautiful.

This is inspired by a couple stories of parents with dark skinned children needing to teach their sons and daughters that they are precious just the way God made them.  However, with the rise of body image issues in young children, it certainly applies to many if not all children.

Source: forwardisapace.com via Felicia on Pinterest

1. Start a Pinterest board and include images that look like your child or a variety of children to teach about diversity.
2. Turn off the television.  Images on television only teach children to grow up too fast and to look a couple specific ways.
3. Protest or create awarenes.  You could create awareness using a site such as change.org to help give your child a sense of empowerment.
4. Create a poster.  Here is some inspiration
5. Find birthday cards, books, magazines with people who look like them.
6. If you cant find the items in number 4 use colored pencil to darken the skin color on some of the images.
7. Ask friends to do the same when giving books or cards. This is much more significant than one might first assume. I still remember getting my first card with someone who looked like me on the cover.  I kept it for years.
8. Introduce positive role models of the same race (or whatever aspect they may be struggling with). Please do not show your son any old gangster rap artist and “say you can be anything you want to be.” Athletes may be overused as well.  You may find some here.  I will try to come up with some more lists specifically for this purpose. (Don't worry they won't all be black)
9. Create a beauty blog. This example deals with recovering from eating disorders but you could create one based on any topic.
10. Talk to them.  Tell them they are beautiful and wonderful just the way they are.  Do this every day.

What are some strategies you have used to help your child gain confidence in their physical appearance, or in general?