It came out of the blue. At a family Sunday lunch in a local trattoria, my eight year old daughter made an announcement; “I want to be a thin girl”.
Her dad and I exchanged significant glances. Where was this coming from? Food, weight and dieting have never been an issue in our house. We own a set of scales but they spend most of their time covered in dust. We all love food and have been visiting restaurants regularly as a family since the children were babes in arms. They eat everything, from Chinese dim sum to big bowls of mussels on holiday in France. We encourage healthy eating but are not puritanical about treats, and have never forced them to finish everything on their plates.
Not something an eight year old should be doing
The thing is, she is a thin girl. She’s tall for her age, slim and, most important of all, healthy. The last thing I want is for her to start obsessing about food or feeling guilty about eating the things she enjoys.
Slightly floored by her declaration, I told her that she is already a perfect size. “But I want to be thinner” she replied. At this point I felt like shouting “Where are you getting these stupid notions?” My mind was racing. What is she hearing at school? Is it the American teenage comedies she watches on TV? Or is her desire to take up less space in the world the inevitable outcome of being surrounded by images of ridiculously thin models and celebrities? I bit my tongue and just told her that if she carries on dancing, cartwheeling and rollerblading she’ll be fine.
We moved on to other topics of conversation and she happily finished off her pasta and ice cream cone. No need to worry then – for the moment at least.
(Photo by puuikibeach on Flickr)
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An eight-year-old boy informed me he was on a diet last week. On asked why, he said, “To loose weight”. Told him he looked perfect to me. He also went on to eat chips & cake so not a problem now but…WHAT?
Words that would never come out of an 8 year old boy!
Talk to her about healthy eating and calories?
It was around that age when the girls in my class started making fun of the “fat girl”.
I certainly wouldn’t be talking to a healthy, slim, active 8-year-old about calories – at that age, she needs to know about some food being “good fuel” for her body, and some, not so much, but getting into calorie-counting? From the post, it sounds like she has no need to worry about her weight (or be at risk of being teased for being fat) and I think her mum handled it very well.
I think kids are getting confused by the messages they are receiving from the healthy eating policies and programmes in schools and the lose weight ads aimed at their mothers on TV. It seems you handled the situation very well, Catherine, reassuring her both that she looks perfect and if she keeps up the physical activity she’ll stay like that.
It’s an interesting issue though, on one hand we want our children to be fit and healthy but on the other we don’t want them to be too body conscious and all the time we’re fighting against powerful marketing from both junk food and diet merchants.
Holy.Flipping.Crap. You did well not to fall down on the floor. I just love those pivotal parenting moments; the times when you wish with all your heart there was a ‘delete’ button for the rubbish the world imposes on our offspring.
For once in my life I’m a bit speechless. Poor kid. Poor kids!
And yet, and yet… I recall being in primary school and sitting on a bus looking at my prepubescent thighs spreading on the seat next to the scrawny, stork thighs of one of my two best friends.
“I’m too fat,” I wailed.
“I’m too thin,” moaned Skinny.
“I’m just right,” said Friend Three, patting her own knee happily.
That was probably in 1983.
Isn’t it dreadful, but to this day I want to be a thin girl. Still. But not enough to give up food. Sometimes I think the worst invention ever was the mirror.
You did very well, Catherine.
(Damn, quite verbose for someone who was speechless!)
I have twin 8-year-old girls, one a tiny, skinny wee thing who has yet to crack 50lbs at 8. She has always been tiny with bones like a sparrow’s. Her sister is completely normal in size and weight, yet increasingly she is looking at her sister and asking whether she’s fat. It worries me a lot but I’m trying my damndest not to let that show, and trying to encouraging her not to even think about these things. At school, at the same time as all this, they’ve just doen nutrition and been told about calories and stuff. I think it has only made it worse. My heart breaks that my beautiful wee girl is comparing herself to her sister and feeling she is too big. Not sure how to proceed, whether to take steps to nip it in the bud – and if so, which steps – or whether to not say anything and hope to hell it passes.
Jesus, that is such a dilemma. You’ve got to somehow explain to two little girls that while they’re both different sizes they’re both perfectly healthy and normal.
All around us there’s an obsession with body type and the ideal shape and where you should have curves and where you should be flat and if that’s not you normally then you should enhance or take a chunk out of yourself accordingly … It’s just depressing that young kids have to grow up with that – leaning towards a homogenised ideal where absolutely every woman/man looks the same as the next.
Oh poor thing: just keep telling them both they’re brilliant, fabulous, beautiful, smart, glorious people — I think the base we’re given by our parents may go wobbly in teen years but generally we return to it as we mature, and it’s always there anyway, like an anchor in choppy waters.
I have one little niece (4) who is the same kind of shape as I was as I little girl and loves her food as much as me, one day she was in my house and I was having my dinner and she asked could she try some, I gave her some and she went off away happy.
She came back maybe 10-15 minutes later to try another little bit, and my mother, her granny, made a comment about the nieces’ weight and how she never stops eating… I spotted my niece walk out to the utility room, I followed her out and found the food I just given her in the bin. we have no idea how much children are influenced by what they hear and at what age. I was shocked when I saw this and saw how quiet she was for the rest of the afternoon but I know I went through the same thing when I was younger in my family, its not just from the media, any little comment can be taken in by a sensitive child.