Before I had kids, I loved the stories my girlfriend would tell about her precocious little nephew, Cole.
One day, he tottered on his toddler leash in the grocery store. Based on Cole’s hyperactive tendancies, I’m sure he was on the cookie aisle when he turned to a rather overweight woman near him and announced, “Boy, you’re a fat one, aren’t you?” Much to his mother’s embarrassment, he continued, “Bet you like your junk food, huh?”
As a mother of two girls, I’m often asked what sort of messages I try to send my daughters about body image. Truth be told, bodies, ours or anyone else’s, really aren’t something that we talk about in the sense of appearances. My girls don’t even know what the word “fat” means, let alone what someone would eat to become “fat.”
While I used to giggle at the story of Cole and the large lady, I now wonder what the conversations in his home must have been like for him to say such things to that poor woman at the store. How many times had his mother called someone fat or accused them of eating too much junk food within her son’s earshot?
Not to say that I don’t have my own slips when it comes to influencing my children’s vocabulary. I distinctly remember the twenty minutes following a spilled glass of water when I was treated to a sing-song chorus of “Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap!” We’ve established a Swear Jar in our house, and if you swear in our house, guest or not, you owe a dollar to the jar. We have quite the college savings going.
In the meantime, however, I constantly am aware of the words I say and the ideas I express in front of my children. If I’ve learned anything it’s that even if my children don’t always listen, they are always listening. Crap.
