…is apparently beginning at an increasingly younger age. Is this a surprise? Not to the doctors at the Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt. The age of patients in need of eating disorder treatment is getting younger as well. The constant barrage of “perfect” images of ideal beauty creates a dissonance within all of us. But the new ways such insecurities are manifesting is even more worrisome.

According to a recent Newsweek Article, parents for children in the second grade are asking for retouching of their children’s school pictures. If there was some sort of bad-hair-day epidemic this might be excusable, but every photo-alteration agency contacted by Newsweek said that their clients are getting younger.

Some agencies even offer “restyled hair, blended skin, added makeup, reshaped eyebrows, enhanced eyelashes - even changed facial expressions. And then, of course, the photos are cropped and sharpened.”

“Today 42 percent of first-to-third-grade girls want to be thinner, while 81 percent of 10-year-olds are afraid of getting fat, according to a 2004 global study by the Dove “Real Beauty” campaign. Out of 3,000 women and girls surveyed by Dove in 10 countries, that study found that just 2 percent said they’d describe themselves as beautiful, while two-thirds said they avoided basic activities on days they felt unattractive, ranging from going to the beach or a party to showing up for work or school-or even voicing an opinion. ”

Here are some tips for how we can help kids understand and appreciate their own beauty:

1) Refrain from focusing on weight and shape in your comments about yourself. One way kids learn to dislike themselves is from watching us compare ourselves to others and listening to our comments about our own negative body image.

2) Educate children on the technology used to create the images they see in magazines and TV. Help them understand that the images they are viewing are constructed to sell a product, and to do that they use means to make us feel badly about ourselves that creates a need for said product.

3) Educate kids on healthy and positive ways to care for their bodies, such as using exercise as a means to feel our bodies move and grow stronger, picking a balanced variety of foods to nourish the body, limiting time spent in front of the mirror critiquing our bodies and more time spent doing things that we enjoy.

4) Focus on qualities other then how a person looks. Help kids to come up with a list of some of their positive characteristics such as understanding, humor, intelligence, and creativity, so they can be reminded of how much more there is to who they are then just the ways they look.

5) Encourage our kids to surround themselves with people and things that make them feel good about themselves and what they have to offer. Do the same with the individuals YOU surround yourself with!