A few months ago, I was hit with a parenting freight train that I had no idea was coming. In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been completely unexpected. As my daughter gets older, her questions have become more and more mature. We’ve left the land of “is there a monster in my closet” and entered the next phase of childhood. I was tucking her into bed as I do every night, turning off her reading light and kissing her sweet cheeks. She looked up at me with her big blue eyes and said quietly, “Mom, do you think I’m fat?”
My heart dropped. I wasn’t ready for that, and I knew that this conversation could be one she replayed in her head for the rest of her life. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing or scar her for life, but this wasn’t something we covered in those parenting classes in the hospital before she was born! I was without a guidebook.
My daughter is 9-years-old, and while that seems young, it really isn’t THAT young. By the time I was in fourth grade, body changes were happening, and by fifth grade I had my first period (at a SLEEPOVER AT A FRIEND’S HOUSE. OMG WORST NIGHTMARE!), started wearing deodorant to mask the smells emitting from my body, and my breasts had started to grow. By sixth grade I was 5’ 8” tall and was wearing a B-cup bra. I was a bit of a young developer and odds are high my daughter will be the same way.
But she’s young for her grade, and has always been on the high end of the weight chart. It’s never bothered her and never bothered us, and while the doctor would mention it at yearly checkups, it was mostly because my daughter isn’t a huge fan of exercise and he wanted to encourage us to find athletic activities that she liked to start good, healthy habits at an early age.
So when she asked that dreaded question, I knew I wanted to investigate where it came from. Instead of replying with “No, of course you’re not fat!” I responded to her question with a question. “Why do you ask that, honey?” She told me that at her new dance class they were all required to wear leotards (which hadn’t been the case before), and she noticed that she looked different than the other girls in class. Many of the girls are on the thin side, and while I wouldn’t categorize my daughter as overweight, she does have a different body shape. She has wide shoulders, strong arms and muscular legs.
So instead of answering her question with a yes or no, I decided to start a conversation. We talked about how everybody is different, and how our shapes are part of who we are. We talked about how her strong legs help her in swimming and her arms are carry her body over itself when she does a cartwheel or handstand. We talked about exercise and healthy eating, and how we have to fuel our bodies just like we put clean gas in our car to make it go.
In the end, this dreaded question ended up being a wonderful gift! It started a conversation that I knew we had to have, but I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. In the months since, we have continued talking about our bodies in an open way, without embarrassment or shame. One of the best resources we found were the American Girl “The New You” series. Recommended by our pediatrician, these books give tons of information in an age-appropriate way about everything from body changes, to social changes to hormones as they get older. I’m so grateful that my daughter will be informed and ready as her body starts to change, instead of surprised and afraid.
And how did the conversation end that night? I told her I loved her and that she was beautiful both inside and out. “You are too, mama,” she said, and she squeezed me tight.
