CW: mentions of disordered eating, comments about weight and internal stress about body size.
When I was a little kid there was this teacher who would tell the girls (only ever girls) when were eating lunch that we were eating too much food. This wasn’t the only thing she did.
I was really excited that day, my mum as a treat had gotten me a lunch order. It was a reasonable amount of food, if anything not that much. She sat across the table from me with some of the other kids and she looked at me and said
Thats a lot of food
I was so embarrassed. From that day on I always left a bit of my food in my bag when I went out to the playground. I was afraid people were judging me when I ate, thinking I was lazy or gross.
I remember distinctly when I was very young standing in the shower and looking down at my belly and being afraid that I was too big. People in my family are fat and growing up I saw how everyone treat them like they weren’t a person.
I remember my mother once said to me when I was eating a bag of beef jerky
you need to control you’re eating or you’ll be as big as a house
That teenage metabolism is going to go away one day
Please let us change the way we talk to children about weight.