Natalie Grant warns moms: 'Stop body shaming your children'
Award-winning Christian singer Natalie Grant used her platform this week to admonish mothers who body shame their children.
The “Clean” singer took her message to Instagram Wednesday where she described an encounter she had at her doctor’s office with her daughter, Sadie, who was there for her annual checkup. Grant said her 8-year-old daughter stepped onto the scale to take her weight and height and then stepped off to go into an examination room. Then another mother walked in with her daughter who stepped onto the scale to take her weight.
“This [teenage] girl gets on the scale and her mom, loudly, so that everybody could hear, goes, 'Woah, you're getting up there, oh my word,'” Grant said, describing what she witnessed.
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Grant said she was so upset she felt like “punching” the mom.
“When I looked at that beautiful teenage girl, when I looked at her face that was just covered in shame, she just wanted to disappear,” Grant said. “We were leaving and I just said [to her] I hope you know how beautiful you are, I mean you ARE so beautiful!”
The soulful singer described how shocked she was to see how a comment like that could rip someone apart. She then decided to use her post as a public service announcement for moms on how they speak to their children, especially in public.
“Moms, we have to do better than that. I am not a perfect mom, I make so many mistakes every single day. But I'm telling you, that is not going to be one of them,” Grant declared.
She added: “My three daughters will have a hard enough time with their self-image, their body image, with what the world is throwing at them. I should be the last person that would ever body shame my beautiful daughter's. Moms, don't do it. You gotta do better for your kids!”
The Dove Award-winner said even negative looks toward children are damaging because children are very perceptive.
“I promise, that kind of body shaming will never bring the result you're looking for and all it will do is destroy your child.
“Let's be better for our kids,” she concluded.
Grant captioned the video by sharing some statistics she found on FitRated.com.
The study on the site revealed that “nearly 63 percent of women said they’d been body-shamed by their mothers.” The percentage was shockingly a bit more than the criticism they felt from friends.
Grant had one final message in her caption, “MOMS — maybe it’s not as blatant as what I witnessed today, but take inventory of what you say, how you say it, and even what your body language is telling your kids about how they look. One comment can take a lifetime to untangle.”
The post received thousands of likes and comments from people such as gospel legend Sandi Patty, pop star Natasha Bedingfield, and many others. Several of Grant's followers shared that they, too, received negative comments from their mothers and it led to various eating disorders. Many others vowed that they will watch their words and only speak life over their children, like Grant.
