Thursday, August 8, 2013

The F Word

In the last week, Davis has called two people fat. Not behind their backs. To their faces. Bluntly. The first occurred in my absence last weekend. My parents so sweetly kept my kids for 52 hours (not that I was counting) and I had my ENTIRE HOUSE TO MYSELF. That's right, my house. All mine. Morgan was on a golf trip, kids with the grandparents, and my time belonged to me. It was lovely.

But back to the story. My parents and the kids were at a grocery store (The Fresh Market, to be precise). They were buying jelly beans, and apparently, a woman in line, who was perhaps a little round, was talking to Davis about his jelly beans. He told her, "I can't eat too many because then I'll get fat like you." 

Oh boy.

My parents didn't really hear it, but Ava did, and she reported back. Davis did not deny the incident. I didn't want to make a really big deal about it, because with 4 year olds, sometimes any attention is good attention. So, I just said it's not nice to point out to people that they are fat, and kind of left it at that.

Fast forward a couple of days. We were at the pool, and the sweetest ten-year-old girl was helping Ava learn to dive. I don't even want to get into whether or not she was fat. She's ten. It doesn't matter. Davis was sitting with me on the side of the pool, watching the diving lesson. All of a sudden, he says, "You're fat." He didn't say it in a mean way, just very matter of fact. I wanted to dive in and stay under water until the pool closed. I couldn't even look at the poor  girl. I quietly reprimanded my mouthy child, who then quietly said back to me, "But Mommy, she IS fat." 

Aarrgghh.

Luckily, the girl just continued playing with Ava, who (thank God) did not think she any physical trait that needed to be addressed. 

Now I live in terror anytime I'm with Davis and we see someone who is even slightly plump. 

I guess the upside is that I've got someone who will be honest with me if I start packing on any extra pounds.

I'll laugh at this someday, right?

2 comments:

  1. I'm sorry, but I laughed out loud about the jellybean incident. I can't eat too many or I'll be fat like you. That is CLASSIC.

    Hopefully, he'll see a skinny person soon.

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  2. I've been there. My heart goes out to you. How embarrassed I was. I wanted to die. But I chose to reprimand my daughter. In FRONT of the offended party. I scolded her and told her out loud that what she said was hurtful. She was only three, but she still remembers. My rule of thumb about punishment was if you do it in public, you get scolded in public. Then I took her to the car and told her that she was being very mean by hurting someones feelings, even if she thought she was being honest. The truth is that not every honest thing needs to be spoken out loud. I then told her that the world didn't need more pretty skinny people, but that the world did need more kind people. Deep in my heart it didn't matter to me if my kids were "super smart" as much as I cared that they were kind. And in the end, they were both.

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