6 Quick Tips to Raise a Sizeist Child
April 6, 2009
How many times have we heard the embarrassing story of a child in a store pointing and blurting out “Mommy, why’s that lady so fat?” Or how about the teenage girls who snicker when another heavier girl walks by in the cafeteria? Or are you one of those moms who looks in the bathroom mirror, grabs her own thighs in disgust or even in a joking manner and says to all within earshot “Look at these fat thighs!”?
Here are 6 quick tips if you want your children to get that way:
1. You act disgusted, using your physical reactions every time you finish an interaction with someone obese. No need to use words. Your kids can pick up your shudder or an eye roll. The message is clear.
“Fat people make my parents feel uncomfortable, therefore
fat people are bad.”
2. You negatively comment on the people on TV shows like The Biggest Loser or while leafing through People magazine. Or you whisper to a friend over coffee how so-and-so has let herself go and is as big as a house! No need to say it too loud. Little ears hear everything!
3. Laugh or agree when your child cracks a fat joke. Or better yet, add your own fat humor. If you laugh, it will tell your child that it’s OK to say demeaning things about obese people.
Or even if you say nothing, it can have the same effect.
4. Brew up some stereotyping as well as sizeism by discriminating. Don’t let heavier kids do things like jump on a trampoline or have second helpings when their thinner siblings can have all they want.
5. Moms, this one’s important. Show your kids that big is bad in the way that you accept yourself. Joke
with your family about needing to
lipo your huge gut. While driving the carpool look in the rearview mirror and bash
your double chin or swear loudly when your skinny jeans don’t fit. This really works. If we don’t accept what makes us who we are, then we can’t expect our kids to
accept themselves. This way, us moms can teach
children to reject features in themselves as well as
in others.
6. Surround your children with sizeist
people who make statements riddled with prejudice. No faster way to influence kids than with family and peers. Grandpas sometimes fill the bill here. Your kids have a better chance of adopting similar prejudices and if Grandpa says it then it must be okay for them too.
OR
You can start to watch your actions and your reactions and teach them tolerance rather than fostering hate and prejudice. Although this is much harder than 6 quick tips.
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One Response to “6 Quick Tips to Raise a Sizeist Child”
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This is one of the last prejudices one that not too many people even address. I guess because a lot of people think it’s something that can be controlled.
Like all prejudices.. it isn’t really about the person that they are trying to put down.
It’s people trying to cover up their own insecurities by saying “look at them and not me”
still it is something that we can teach kids to outgrow.. and “adults” too!