I recently spent a long weekend with my best gal pals and one day ventured to a nearby beach, where a family was playing. One of the kids playing on a beach was a young girl of perhaps seven or eight years old, with her mother nearby. The young girl was playing in a bathing suit, but mom was completely covered up. I wondered aloud to one of my friends, “At what age do we start teaching our daughters to hate their bodies?”

The answer, it seems, is fairly young. I started working with a family this week whose mother has lived with anorexia and bulimia since she was about 15 years old and at the age of 32 continues to practice eating disorder behaviors, including compulsive exercising and calorie restriction. It is something I understand all too well. However, this particular mother has started speaking to her oldest daughter, who is seven years old, in a way that seems to be body shaming. The mother told me that she has been speaking to her daughter about the food she puts in her body, the importance of exercise and how what she looks like matters. None of these things in and of themselves is indicative of mom leading daughter down the slippery slope toward disordered eating, but altogether spell danger.

While it is important to be cognizant of what you put in your body, what mom needs to understand is that most children have not yet come to enjoy their vegetables and tend to enjoy things like chicken nuggets and hot dogs. That is not to say that mom should not encourage her daughter to eat healthy foods, but nutrition means balance and for growing children (and adults), a variety of foods is best.

While it was concerning that mom already was talking to her daughter about the foods she is eating, what was even more upsetting was that mom seemed to be teaching her daughter to hate her body. Indeed, the daughter has started describing herself as “fat,” even though she is not fat. The daughter has started exercising like mom and during our initial session was talking about how she had to get her workout in. What is mom really teaching her daughter?

Yes, exercise is important. Yes, eating healthy foods is important. But so is loving yourself not just for what you look like but for who you are. Are you kind, caring, compassionate, loving toward yourself and others? Are you a good person? Are you a loyal friend? Are you helpful? I am fearful that mom is teaching her daughter to put more emphasis on what her body looks like than what it can do and on the person her daugther is becoming.

Bodies come in all shapes and sizes, as does beauty. But beauty is not just skin deep. True beauty is reflected in who we are as people, not just the shape of our bodies. We have to stop teaching our children that what we look like matters more than who we are as human beings. We have to start teaching our children that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes and that we should appreciate our bodies for what they allow us to do, rather than simply how they look.