Apparently the concept of “fat” has entered my five year old son’s awareness.
I blame myself.
He stretched out his Playdoh yesterday and asked me, “are skinny people stronger?” It seemed like a weird question. I answered, “Not necessarily. Muscular people are stronger.” Somewhere he had decided that skinny people were stronger than fat people. Now, I am not a person who talks constantly about their weight. I eat well, I exercise. He watches me do front and rear pushups, has seen me in exercise class. He mimics me doing pushups. He isn’t a big junk food eater (basically unless coaxed he is on a diet of air), and is clearly not at all fat. He has muscles in his legs that most would envy. He takes Tae Kwon Do twice a week, a ballet / tap class once a week and gymnastics. Fat just isn’t in this kid’s schedule.
But in the past week, two things happened. One was that we went to the doctor for a physical, and they placed his BMI in the 85th percentile, which was “not obese, but he has to be watched.”
Not to sound like a protective parent, but my son isn’t in the wildest of imaginations, fat. I know fat. Intimately. I have been fat, in plain language, as a child. My brother? Moreso. In fact, I joke my family comes in two sizes: huge and anorexic. I look at his peers and he seems right in there, if not on the skinny side. I have tried to pry out of him what has given him said body awareness, but he remains mute on the subject.
He asked if I was fat.
Instead of my usual “I could probably stand to lose a few” answer, I said, “No, I’m muscular.” Which, as of late, has been more true than not.
He queried, “but what about the stuff on your belly that never goes away?”
Suddenly I remembered that as I was in the bathroom with him at a point, as he was brushing his teeth, I had pulled at some loose skin on my front and sighed that it would never go away. It’s the stretched out skin that many of us get while pregnant, and it’s true, without surgery it’ll always be there.
“That’s from having you. That’s not fat, that’s loose skin.” Tucking same into the waistband of my yoga pants, I asked, “do you think dad is fat?”
Now, dad’s work has been a little slow as of late and he spends more time in the kitchen eating cream puffs than at his desk doing estimates. Thus, he has the dropping-of-the-pants-waist dilemma. The rest of him, in contrast, is stick thin. He would no more consider dieting and exercising than staying at a Best Western.
“Dad’s not fat. He’s muscular.”
I mulled this over. Now, with my stepdaughters, the approach had been both obvious and easy. Their mom was into health, both diet and exercise. I had been to work both for and with her and she had to work like an animal, toting heavy water cans two at a time (she was a horticulturist) and I would be sore for DAYS afterward. Even when the girls were young they would see me exercise, do walkathons, go on and off diets. They were both little tiny things that could eat pretty much everything and never gain an ounce, all clothing looked good on them. But they never once called me fat to my face. Amanda-bless her heart-didn’t even GET that I was overweight. When baggy jeans were in…the ones with the big bells (watching her run to catch up to a friend wan tripping over them was hilarious, once she got up and laughed at herself), she asked, “why are you wearing those old style tight jeans?”
“They aren’t tight, Amanda. I’ve just grown into them,” I countered.
When capris were in, Amanda repeatedly asked why I didn’t get a pair. Finally I had to break it to her that I was 5’0″ with heavy legs and they were just NOT a look for me.
So where does this leave me, aside from kicking myself that I had committed a faux pas with my son on the whole body image thing? At present, he’s had corn muffins and juice for breakfast and has not passed up on the occasional Nutter Butter. Not on his way to becoming a manorexic, yet. And I guess I’m no different from any other mom, in that I’m at war with the constant advertising for food and overly sexualized body images and things of that nature. But I will tell you that the loose skin of mine will NOT be mentioned in his presence again…at least not by me