The other day I heard two moms having a conversation. One was describing how an older sister was teasing her younger sister by calling her “fat”. The mom was saying how upset she was and really got on her older daughter for calling her sister “fat”. I’m all with the mom on name calling-there just is no place for it and I can’t stand the way kids taunt and tease other kids, but I’ll get into that another day. What stuck out in my mind was the reaction the word “fat” got from the mom.
As far as I’m concerned, “fat” is not good or bad. If you take “fat” to mean “overweight” then it can certainly be unhealthy, which in turn can be bad in the long run, but it seems to me as if we’ve taken the word and loaded it with emotion. What I wanted to ask the mom was, “Well, is she fat?” If so, then work to help her make healthy food choices and exercise regularly. If not, then treat it the same way you would if her sister had called her “dumb” or “lazy” or any one of the hundreds of other terms kids use to get a rise out of each other. It seems kids have figured out that they can really get a reaction if they use the word “fat” and most of the time, that’s exactly what they are looking for.
We need to work to remove emotion from the word “fat” and help kids to see that if they are indeed fat, that doesn’t make them bad. It just gives them an area to work on and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that there always seems to be some aspect of myself that I’m working to improve. What a great service we do our children when we teach them that labels don’t dictate who they are and that it is within their control to change or alter those labels.
Posted by Margaret Sarver