Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.
Dear Care and Feeding,
Growing up, my mom often criticized my weight. Sometimes it was empathetic (oh, I am overweight, and I know how it feels) and sometimes much more critical (why are you getting that? Don’t you know how many calories that has?). She was also jumping from diet to diet my whole life. At 74, she just jumped off the anti-inflammatory diet to Noom. I escaped without developing anorexia or bulimia, but I have a poor self-image and a fairly poor relationship with food (see emotional eating and unconscious snacking). It is likely also why I spend much more money ordering out then cooking.
I have a 14-year-old. They visit my mom regularly and hear both her criticism of her weight and her criticizing me. I don’t want them growing up with an eating disorder or hating their body. We had the talk at 7 about being healthy and being fine at any size and that they are still growing after they commented about not wanting to be fat. They are far from it, with a thin frame and tall height. The talk seemed to get them to back off.
But the problem now is me! I heard how much they weighed at their last physical and all I can think is, “Oh they are getting fat.” Only they aren’t! They are right in the middle of the healthy range, their BMI (which I know is a poor measurement anyway) is healthy, they are right on their growth curve. They drink water and enjoy a variety of food. The pediatrician isn’t worried and says my child looks great!
So how do I help my child continue to grow healthy and get over my own weight and food issues? I’ve brought it up when I was in therapy in the past, but it didn’t help. Mostly I just don’t want my child to be worried about weight over health or internalizing generations of weight issues!
— No More Weight Bias
Dear No More Weight Bias,
It is not surprising that your internal voice is well-versed in fatphobia, given both the world we live in and the environment in which you grew up. But here’s a trick I picked up in therapy: You don’t have to believe your first thought. Just because you can’t control the first thing that pops into your head doesn’t mean you have to run with it. You can gently redirect your thoughts just the way you did above, from “Oh they’re getting fat!” to “My child is healthy and happy and while they are not fat, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if they gained weight.” That second part is just as important as the first – if you don’t want your kid to carry on the generational weight issues, you’re going to have to work on unlearning them yourself.
It’s great you had a talk with your child about accepting their body at any size, but in order to combat the messages they’re going to be pummeled with by our thin-obsessed society, these talks need to be regular and ongoing. As someone who fields a lot of questions about kids, food, and diet here at Care and Feeding, I’ve been chomping at the bit to recommend the book “Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture” by Virginia Sole-Smith. It doesn’t come out until April, but I truly recommend every parent pre-order it to inform the way they talk about food, weight, and bodies with their kids. In the meantime, you can subscribe to Sole-Smith’s newsletter, Burnt Toast, which deals with the same topics. The podcast Maintenance Phase is another great research-and-science-based resource for beginning the process of unlearning fatphobia.
I also think it’s worth at least attempting to set a boundary with your mother regarding weight and diet talk. Your 14-year-old is taking in those messages just as you did as a child. Given the effect it had on you that continues to this day, you know what is at stake.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband and I have one child, an almost 7-year-old. We’ve known she was sharp, she picked up a lot of language skills early on and is generally inquisitive, quick to learn, and observant. She started kinder halfway through the year due to Covid and expressed some difficulty joining groups of kids playing. She wants to establish rules, a name for the game, her character’s background, etc. while most kids her age won’t stop long enough to hear her questions, much less entertain them. She interprets this as being purposely ignored. It’s gotten better in first grade though it still comes up occasionally.
Her teacher recommended she get assessed for the gifted and talented program. The results came back, and the school believes she will be best served by G/T services. We are grappling with next steps as both my husband and I had less-than-stellar experiences with similar programs when we were younger (but we also both struggled in standard classes with boredom and distraction). I took the path of a straight-A student who put more pressure on myself than was healthy, and he took the opposite route and did the bare minimum because it was easy and he could still pass. We want to ensure any program she enters truly provides a challenge, not just a larger workload, but also doesn’t ostracize her from her peers.
Where is the balance? Are her social/play issues stemming from not being surrounded by kids who can play the same, and would be helped by G/T peers, or are they just normal kid adjustments that she needs to work on? How do we decide what’s best for her? I truly believe she will start to be bored next year, she’s already far ahead in math in particular, but her reading comprehension is moving ahead as well.
Any resources about G/T kids, programs, etc. would be appreciated as well as insight into assessing this choice for her. We want her to be successful—but also happy—and don’t want to pressure her and segregate her with expectations by putting her in a “special” program.
— Wanting the Best
Dear Wanting The Best,
As a graduate of Oklahoma’s strangely named “Students Experiencing Appropriate Research and Creative Happenings,” or “Search” program for gifted and talented elementary school students, I can tell you from experience that not all G&T programming is created equal. According to this 2019 NRP article, that’s because state laws often focus primarily on the identification of gifted children, much less on mandating what kind of educational offerings will best serve them.
So I’d start by researching your state’s laws around gifted education, as well as finding out what services your daughter’s school specifically provides. My Search program amounted to a few hours of time with a gifted and talented teacher per week, where I remember feeling mostly annoyed at having to perform what felt like irrelevant challenges and puzzles seemingly unconnected to our schoolwork.
Find out if the school’s offerings sound like they fit your daughter’s needs. Would she be involved in a similarly self-contained program once a day or a few times a week, or receive advanced instruction separately in specific subjects, or be given different learning options within the same classroom as her peers? And of course, not all benefits of G&T education are academic; there can also be social and emotional benefits to grouping advanced learners together. You may also want to find out more about if and how your daughter would be interacting with other gifted students during work and play, since she’s already struggling to find kids her age who are interested in the kind of world-building and narrative creativity she is expressing on the playground.
Once you have all the information, you may find it easier to make your decision. And remember that the messaging around this programming can, to some extent, come from you. I think the pressure and expectations you’re worrying about more often come directly from the parents than from the school. If you do decide that participation could benefit her, you can also take care to regularly transmit the message that her happiness is more important to you than any academic achievement.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
I have an admittedly petty question. For Christmas, my in-laws got our 3-year-old a large, very noisy toy as one of her Christmas gifts—the kind of toy that you look at in the store and think “I’d get that for the kids of someone I hate.” It is SO loud, and the noises it makes are so grating. Everyone but the 3-year-old hates it. I am not sensitive to noise, but even I cannot take this thing anymore. I suppose we could try setting a “you can only play with it for 10 minutes each day” rule, but honestly that seems like an annoying battle to choose to fight every day.
My question is: Do I remove the batteries and pretend that I am baffled about why it’s suddenly “broken?” (The whole point of it is the noise, so it can’t be played with without the batteries.) Or do I wait and take it with us when we go to the beach with my in-laws in late April, so that they can experience it themselves? (And then have it “break” after?)
— She’s Playing With It Now, Dear God, It’s Awful
Dear She’s Playing With It Now, Dear God, It’s Awful,
Oh, if it’s petty you’re looking for, you have absolutely come to the right place. Here is my elegant solution: Lose the batteries and feign confusion as to why the world’s most annoying toy has suddenly stopped screeching. Until the day before your beach trip, when you replace them and express your great joy that the toy lives to screech again, just in time for 3-year-old to show your in-laws how very much they love the Christmas gift. Finally, when the toy has been unanimously banned by all the adults on the beach, the toy gets “lost” for good on vacation. One final petty step: Secretly hide the toy away to regift to the kids of someone YOUhate.
(And also cut your in-laws some slack this time because it’s probably been a long time since they parented small children, and they may have forgotten just how obnoxious this kind of thing can be. But they won’t soon forget again.)
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Dear Care and Feeding,
A few years ago, I met another young mom while we were both pregnant, and we grew very close while struggling with pregnancy, recovering from birth, and surviving sleepless newborn nights. We still talk multiple times a week, have play dates, and share the new struggles we face as our kids grow.
My friend is drowning. She thinks her child has a detrimental developmental disorder (to which many specialists have said “no” or “very slight” speech delay), she is deep in an anxiety/depression tornado, and she is agonizing about the future. She is jealous of other families and does not look forward to raising her child.
How can I help her? We don’t have a 20-year friendship to go on, and I try to let her vent any time she needs. She won’t join me for a yoga class or a pedicure when I ask.
I have reached out to her husband, as we are also quite friendly, and he is not more than mildly concerned, but very tired and convinced it will pass (he is also not concerned about their child’s development). I don’t want to cross a line, but her husband and doctor are missing something here, and I am extremely worried about her mental health. She has taken some steps towards healing but it’s not working, and her wonderful little kid might soon suffer when they can understand that their mother is disappointed in the child that she got. I care deeply for her and her child.
— Feeling Nervous for a Friend
Dear Feeling Nervous for a Friend,
Have you approached your friend directly with your concerns, and asked her if you can offer your help? If so, and both she and her husband have declined, I think you’d be overstepping to push the issue any further. If not, I think you get one shot at that talk – I’d come prepared with a specific offer like helping her find a therapist or support group. And if she says no thanks, then you’ve got to respect that. Let her know that the offer stands any time she wants to take you up on it, but then back off. While I know it’s difficult to watch a friend struggle, it’s ultimately not your situation to fix.
What you can do, however, is the friend stuff. Listening to her vent is a great start, but rather than making offers you know she’ll refuse, try taking some things off her plate. Tell her you’d like to take the kids out for the day so she can have some time to herself, drop off dinner or send her a Seamless gift card so she doesn’t have to cook, offer to help with something specific like laundry or house-cleaning. She likely needs a strong support system right now, and if she does decide to make a change, she’ll be more likely to come to you for help knowing you’ve shown up for her time and time again.
—Emily
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