The Heartbreaking Way 1 Mom Learned Her Insecurity Was Impacting Her Kid

For as long as Kristy can remember, she's struggled with her body image. Once she became a mother, she knew that she never wanted her boy to have this same insecurity, but it wasn't until she caught him staring at his reflection one day that she started to feel like "the worst mom ever."

The boy was looking in the mirror when he announced, "I'm ugly."

"I told him he wasn't and his dad said, 'You are handsome, you like me,'" Kristy shared on the Breastfeeding Mama Talk Facebook page. "My son smiles. Then I told him, 'And you look like me a little too.' He frowns, almost cries, and says, 'What?! That means I am ugly then because mommy says she's ugly. If I look like mommy that means I'm ugly too!'"

Understandably, her child's response to being told that he looked like her broke this mom's heart, but it also taught her an invaluable parenting lesson. "Living proof that the way you treat and think of yourself can have an effect on your kids," she wrote. "Those little, innocent enough comments you make in passing are being noticed and are planting seeds in their heads."

Kristy now realizes how easy it is to find things about herself to criticize and how it's even easier to say these negative comments out loud, but for the sake of her child, she also knows that she needs to do better. "How dare I be the person that instills any insecurity into my kid when I'm supposed to be the one to protect him from that! When I put myself down, I'm letting my son down in the process and that is not okay," she wrote. "I am human so it's natural to make mistakes, but I am a mom so I have no choice but to learn from them and do better."