The shocking moment my own insecurities became my 12-year-old's hang-ups

One of the things I told myself before I became a mum was that I wouldn’t, under any circumstances, allow my own insecurities to become my daughter’s insecurities.

I recently learned that I failed spectacularly on that point.

Finding my 12-year-old twisting in front of the mirror and lamenting the size of her bum in a new school skirt reminded me just how much I failed.

I’ll be frank here, my daughter doesn’t have any curves to speak of.

Despite proudly wearing a bra every day and dramatically adjusting the straps in a pseudo-frustrated fashion so that everyone can see just how mature she is, my pre-teen is straight up and down.

The only thing that appears to differentiate the front of my beautiful daughter from the back of my beautiful daugher is her face.

It’s OK. I can say this, I’m her mum.

I couldn’t blame the media for this one, much and all as I would have liked to, because no matter where my daughter turns she’s confronted with images of curvy bums and captions celebrating their beauty, so to hear Rebecca lament her perceived ‘flaw’ proved I was the culpable party.

Not only does my daughter not have a bum, but she’s managed to find a way to consider it too large. It would almost be impressive, had it not been so tragic.

My daughter has grown up watching me shop with the silent mission of reducing my bum or hiding it completely and she’s now become fixated on this feature herself. While I don’t believe I thrust my own insecurities in her face, there’s no doubt that elements of it filtered down and now here I was, watching my little girl curse the enormity of something she didn’t possess.

Another corker for my ‘Life as the Mum of a Pre-Teen’ scrapbook.

I didn’t know how to remedy the situation.

Do I tell her that she actually has to have something first before she can be concerned about its size or is that going too far in the whole ‘cruel to be kind’ school of thought?

Do I suddenly start celebrating my own ginormous backside or would that make it all too apparent that my daughter is actually devoid of that feature, thereby creating another issue entirely?

I realised the actual physicality played little role in Rebecca's concerns as she was merely echoing what she had heard her mum mutter time and again as she stood in front of the mirror.

The only solution I could think of was to compliment myself the next time she was within earshot. So I have done. Repeatedly.

Whether she’s heard me or took any of it in, I don’t know.

But I didn’t know she was absorbing my other mumbled comments either, so here’s hoping.