So I have a pretty healthy kiddo, that's no secret. At 18 months old, my little girl weighs in at 32 lbs. She's in the 90th percentile for her weight. You should see the guns on her momma. I mean, I could bench press the kid. But anyway, she's not a chubby kid by any means. She's proportional. She just has the body of a bigger kid.
I get somewhat irritated with family members when they joke about her size and how much she must eat. Sure, she can't understand them, but let's not give the kid body image problems.
People make little comments, and it's random people, too....like the lady at the checkout or some random person at the store. It's irritating. I know they mean well, but I've had some people be like "man, she is a really big girl!" She's not about to be on Maury Povich any time soon for "Look how big my kid is!" I'm not feeding her buckets of fried chicken for breakfast or anything. She's just healthy.
So I'm not sure why I'm so irritated with a comment we heard on Saturday. We went for a walk on the Monon Trail in Indianapolis, with Aubrey in her running stroller. She was just chilling, legs hanging out, and of course you could see the little girl's thunder thighs, and we've washed her shirts so many times that they are a wee bit tight. But some bitch (excuse my language) of a lady runs by with her husband and looks at Aubrey and says "Oh, she's chubby, but that's okay!" Um, what? That's okay? For you? What?
T had to talk me down from wanting to go down and knock down her skinny butt, but seriously, who says that? You can think it but maybe next time don't say stupid statements like that out loud, lady. And thank God she can't understand what you are saying.
I realize this is a problem with a lot of people, so I hope I'm not stepping into it when I say, most people don't mean to offend when they say stuff like that. It kinda fits into the "all-purpose things you say about a baby in passing" category, and isn't attached to a judgment at all. Society has turned "chubby" from a word that was an acceptable baby adjective to the "c" word with it's obsession over obesity. One day we'll be down to saying, "Yep. that's a baby" to a passing mother and child and getting lambasted for even that.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, if a family member criticizes over "what are you feeding that child?", that's when I'd say, "I've seen pictures of you at that age, Auntie Jane", and leave it at that. But, that's just me.