Baby Fat
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 - Comments 0
“I’m sorry, that’s bite-able,” said the woman as I strolled through Kohl’s last weekend with my nine-month-old daughter, Sophia. She was referring, of course, to Sophia’s pleasingly plump little body, which was barely contained by the confines of the shopping cart.
Like my two older sons, Sophia is in the 99th percentile when it comes to weight. She’s also in the same percentile for height, but the overall effect is that she’s got some, um, baby fat. In fact, there are chubby rolls everywhere on her body. And I love them. So did the lady who couldn’t help but squeeze her that day at Kohl’s.
But not everyone has such a positive response. Like my neighbor, who recently seemed to view my sweet little girl’s chunkiness with some measure of disdain. It wasn’t in what he said exactly. More in the way he looked at her, as if she was handicapped or something.
Having had two chubby babies already, I know that there’s absolutely nothing to worry about at this point. I’ve watched my uber-chubby first son, Christian, go from having man-boobs (ok, baby-boy-boobs) to being so skinny his pants won’t stay up. And my second son, Asher, has lost much of his baby fat too. So I’m not worried about Sophia yet. But I do find it interesting to see who is.
Like the three-year-old little girl at the mall who told me last week, “your baby has a lot of fat on her legs.”
“You’re right,” I said with an encouraging smile. “Do you think we should put her on a diet?”
“Probably,” she said. “Her face is pretty round too. She should probably go on a diet.”
The very next day another little girl, also around three years old, took one look at my baby and told me “you better stop feeding her so much.”
Where, you might wonder, does a three-year-old get an idea like that? I’ll tell you. From us adults.
Let’s face it; kids emulate what they see around them. I can’t help but assume that both of those three-year-old girls have at some point heard an adult – probably a parent – talk about how someone needed to lose some weight. Maybe the words were even directed at them. And now, at the age of three, they’ve already begun to develop unhealthy attitudes about weight, fat and eating in their very impressionable, and let’s not forget, undiscerning minds.
We’ve got to be careful, moms (and dads), about what we say. The truth is, the minute you put a child on a diet, you begin setting the stage for long term problems, including, by the way, unwanted and unnecessary weight gain. Not to mention eating disorders, which have the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder.
It’s scary stuff, to be sure, and never too soon to instill in our children positive ideas about body diversity (they come in all shapes and sizes), beauty (the outside fades; the inside stays) and identity (you are so much more than what you look like).
My little Sophia is a chunkster, to be sure. And every day I look at her in wonder, grateful for her innocence and more than a little concerned about what will happen when she loses it, as she certainly will. Each day I pray God’s protection over her, that she might be spared a lifetime of self-loathing, anger, and obsession, and embrace fully the body God’s given her. Even if some of the baby fat never fades.
May we all pray this prayer, and give our little girls the love and acceptance we wish we’d had when we were young.
They are the future.
Constance
Constance Rhodes
Founder, FINDINGbalance
Author, Life Inside the Thin Cage
TRUE Campaigner (for life!)