This morning we were eating breakfast and my 11 year old daughter asked me if the oatmeal she was eating was going to make her fat. I reacted with a laugh. She didn’t laugh back, she seemed very concerned over whether the oatmeal was a good or bad thing to eat. We got into the whole discussion on healthy vs. unhealthy foods, which my kids have all heard before. She then said, “even though my oatmeal is healthy I still think it’s gonna make me fat because it just looks fattening and I don’t want to get fat.” I reassured her that by no means is she fat nor will the oatmeal make her fat and she was ok with it.
I then asked her where all this talk was coming from. Apparently, she overheard some girls at school talking about someone being “fat” and they were being mean. It was getting late so I told her that her and I are a team and my job as a mom is to make sure that I provide her with the best possible food and for her not to worry. Her response was, “okay, good, I don’t want to worry about it, can we go now?”
Once I got back from dropping the kids off at school I read the paper and came across an article that I thought I would share since it was so applicable to my morning discussion with my daugher.
Click here to read the article “Tweens ponder body image” in the USA Today written by Sharon Jayson.
