Okay, my 5 year old is in soccer. He was at a game and there was a boy on the opposing team that was very overweight. He was running around and playing like the rest of the kids. I found my eyes on him. He was probably 30 pounds overweight. His legs were easily twice the size of any other kid. He was 2 kids thick. So LB was on the field playing and then he came off and we were sitting together. I noticed that the Mother of the heavy boy and the heavy boy were making their way over to where we were sitting.
The Mother confronted us. It seems that LB told the heavy boy that he was fat, twice. The heavy boys Mother said something like "We are all friends playing soccer and you upset my son. You made him cry by calling him fat. I want you to apologize." LB admitted that he called the boy "fat" and I made him apologize. It was awkward to say the least.
Afterwards, it left me with the oddest feeling. I mean, personal comments are not nice. It is something that kids do and need to learn not to do, but... he was fat. I mean really fat. Their whole family was fat.
I don't know what else I could have done. I watched the boy myself because he was really really fat. I don't know if it is possible for the Mother to stop enough kids from calling him fat to save his feelings. He is fat. Not mentioning it won't change it.
I know that his weight was none of my business. What would you have done?
2 comments:
You really had no choice but to have your son apologize to the mother/child. It's not like you could have responded, "But he IS fat. My child is just being honest," right?
You wouldn't go up to the mom and tell her she's fat so those are the fuzzy gray lines we have to try to teach our kids when it comes to honesty and saying what we're thinking. Tact and diplomacy. Admittedly, not one of my strongest suits.
You did the right thing. I know we've had discussions with our daughter about being nice to everyone and especially about how size is not a nice thing to mention.
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