How to Talk to an 8 Year Old About Weight Curiosities: Practical Parenting Tips
Last Saturday, we walked to the ice cream shop down the street after an hour at the community pool. My 8-year-old son Leo had a neon blue band-aid slanted across his scraped knee, his hair was still damp and dripping down the back of his t-shirt, and we were both sticky with pool chlorine and 85-degree heat. I was already daydreaming about my mint chocolate chip when we ran into Mrs. Henderson, our next-door neighbor who brings us extra tomatoes from her garden every summer. We chatted for two minutes about the rain we were expecting, then waved her inside her gate. Leo leaned into my side, voice loud and unselfconscious, and asked, “Why is her belly bigger than mine? Is that bad?”
I froze for half a second. My first instinct was to shush him, glance toward Mrs. Henderson’s door, and mutter that we don’t talk about that. But I bit that back. This wasn’t the first time he’d asked a question about weight in the last couple months, and I’d already fumbled enough answers to know shutting him down doesn’t work. Instead, I led him to the park bench across the street, sat down next to him, and said, “That’s a good question. It makes total sense to be curious.”
I started with the simplest answer I could think of, one that didn’t carry any of my own grown-up baggage about body size. “Bodies come in all different sizes, just like feet or hands come in all different sizes. Remember how your cousin wears a size 3 kids shoe and you wear a 2? Neither is bad, they’re just different. Mrs. Henderson’s body is just the right size for her, and that’s that.” Then I addressed the part that mattered most – the fact that he’d asked loudly in front of her – without shaming him for being curious. “It’s totally okay to ask me these questions when it’s just us. But we don’t comment on other people’s bodies out loud, because people hear a lot of mean stuff about their size every day, and even a question can hurt their feelings. If you’re curious, you just wait and ask me when we’re alone, okay?” He nodded, licked a drop of melted ice cream off his cone (we’d gotten our scoops while we talked), and that was that for the afternoon.
That interaction got me thinking about how weirdly we treat weight curiosity with 8 year olds. They’re at an age where they notice everything, categorize everything, and ask every question that pops into their head. I talked to Leo’s pediatrician about this a few weeks back, after he stepped on our bathroom scale and started asking if his own number was “right.” She told me this curiosity is totally normal developmental behavior – they’re picking up on comments from other kids at school, snippets of TV, even offhand remarks we make as parents, and they’re just trying to make sense of it all. Shutting down the question doesn’t make the curiosity go away. It just makes weight feel like a scary, taboo topic, and they’ll go get their answers from other kids who don’t know any more than they do.
I messed this up the first time Leo asked if he was fat, a couple months ago. My automatic response was the line I’d seen a hundred times on parenting memes: “You’re perfect just the way you are!” He just frowned and asked again, “But am I fat?” The vague praise didn’t answer his question. 8 year olds think concretely. They don’t need a big emotional speech about body positivity – they just need a straight answer. This time, when he got done staring at the scale, I sat down on the toilet lid next to him and asked him three simple questions: “Can you run around the soccer field for a whole hour without getting too tired to play? Do you grow an inch every year like the doctor says you should? Do you get hungry when it’s time to eat?” He nodded at all three. I said, “Then your weight is just right for your body. The number on the scale doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.”
The biggest change I’ve made is small, but it’s made a difference. I grew up with a mom who dieted constantly, and I catch myself making offhand comments about my own body all the time – “These jeans are too tight, I need to cut out sugar,” that kind of thing. I’ve stopped saying those things out loud around Leo. I don’t comment on anyone else’s size either, good or bad. That one small adjustment cuts down on a lot of the weird, stigmatizing messages he’d be picking up without me even noticing. When he told me a friend at school said cookies make you fat, I kept that answer simple too: “All food gives your body energy to run and play. If you have more energy than your body needs that day, it stores it for later. That’s what fat is – just stored energy, it’s not bad. Your body needs it to grow and stay warm. Some bodies store more than others, that’s all.”
It’s not like I’ve got this all figured out. Last week, he came home from school and said a classmate called another kid fat, and he didn’t know what to say. We talked about it, and I told him he could change the subject if he felt awkward, or say “My mom says bodies come in all different sizes” if he wanted to – either choice is fine. A couple days ago I said I was too full for brownies after dinner, and he looked up and asked, “Are you trying to not get fat?” I fumbled a little before I said, “No, I’m just full right now. I’ll have one for lunch tomorrow. My size is fine just how it is.” It’s not a perfect answer, but it’s better than the awkward deflection I would have done a year ago.
Most days, that’s all it is: small, simple answers, no big speeches, just meeting their curiosity where it is. It’s still a work in progress, but so far, it’s working better than any of the fancy advice I’ve read online.
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