Category: Kid Issues

Weight issues in kids

“Mom, I’ve gained weight,” the Taz told me with a forlorn look on his face after weighing himself on the upstairs scale.

It’s true. Over the past year the Taz has packed on a bit of baby pudge on his once trim body. It probably has to do with the way he helps himself to thirds for every meal. It may have something to do with the obsessive snacking he does in between meals. Maybe it’s his need to sneak some money outside whenever he hears the jangle of the ice cream man riding by on his bike. It’s all of those things, but it’s also the normal weight shift that kids go through around the age of 9 when their bodies slow down for a second in growing before shooting up like a weed. His sister went through the same battle at his age, and only lost the weight this last year when she went through a growth spurt. But she had also helped along the process when she became aware of her own body for the first time, and decided that eating more healthy foods and fewer proportions was a better answer than constant snacking.

The Taz had finally noticed his body, and now wanted to make a change.

Weight issues in kids are a very slippery slope. You want your child to be fit, trim, and healthy. But you don’t want them so obsessed with their body that they develop self esteem issues or an unhealthy relationship with food that goes from love to hate. Somehow, as parents, we must help our kids to be healthy, but not give them impulses to starve themselves (which later turns to more bingeing, which then turns into more weight gain) to “fit in”.

“Am I fat?” the Taz asked me. (more...)

3

The best policy

truthI received a call from the landlord the other day. A call from the landlord is rarely a good thing. If you pay your rent on time (which I do), keep good repertoire with your neighbors (we borrow sugar from each other regularly, as well as pawn each other’s kids off on each other), and follow the rules of the complex to a tee (kitty? what kitty?), you can pretty much keep the landlord away. So a phone call from the landlord was not on my list of favorite phone calls to receive. We exchanged the normal pleasantries before she got to the meat of the phone call.

“Was the Taz at your apartment over the weekend?” It was the Ex’s turn to take the Taz and DQ from Friday through Sunday, and I was away on vacation, so I breathed a sigh of relief.

“No, he was at his dad’s house all weekend.” But then I thought a little harder.... (more...)

3

"Mom? Mom? MOM???"

toddler

I heard recently that toddlers interrupt their mothers nearly 400 times a day. That is roughly 40 times during every single waking hour of their day! I find this number to be astronomical – yet completely believable. I mean, how many times have we answered question after question when we are in the middle of another conversation, or have had to finally acknowledge the “Mom? Mom? Mom?” after ignoring it (or not even hearing it, as we’ve become so used to tuning it out) the first 20 times? (more...)

2

The Excuse Maker vs the Howler Monkey

Howler MonkeyThere is a certain sound resonating in my household that is akin to fingernails on the chalkboard or a dog howling out of tune in the middle of the night. Without warning, this noise modulates into a higher pitch with each note, getting more frantic if it is left to continue. This annoying clamor, unfortunately, is an epidemic. What starts out as an innocent first becomes a habitual occurrence. They come more frequently as time goes on. And the result of this reverberation to anyone within earshot (mainly those it is directed at), is an elevated heart rate, a clenching of the fists and teeth, an ability to see red, and a sudden burst of mania that comes forth as a string of shrill commands even louder than the original sound.

I am, of course, talking about the “excuse maker”. (more...)

6

Loving the Bully, part 2

We live in an area where bullies are a part of day to day life. There are kids who have families that are not exactly on the right side of the tracks, and who are destined to go down the same road. Except, in this day and age, that road is a lot rougher. A mom wrote me today regarding an article I wrote about bullying, and relayed her own story of her son being bullied. When the school wouldn’t do anything, her husband finally went down and let the bully know in no uncertain terms that if he bullied his son again, the bully would be dealing with him, the dad, in the same sort of manner. This was years ago, of course. Nowadays something like that could never happen without legal repercussions resulting. But how many of us parents have been tempted to knock the block off of the overgrown kid that is tormenting our child? (more...)

7

Fuzzy Legs

When I was a kid, I was so embarrassed about my hairy legs. It wasn’t like the blonde, almost invisible body hair of my friends. I had thick, dark, Italian hair. And it was very noticeable. As a young tween, I was at an age when every single blemish on anyone’s body was noticed and made fun of, and my hairy legs had already been pointed out to me. There really was no question about it. I couldn’t wear pants in the heat of summer for the rest of my life.

It was time to shave.

Of course, I was afraid of shaving. I had been told that if I started shaving, I’d never be able to stop. What if I decided afterwards that I really wasn’t ready to shave? I’d be a prisoner to the razor for the rest of my life! I was told that the hair that would grow back would be even thicker and darker. I imagined my legs covered in big, black polka dots of hair that I would have to chisel off to keep my legs looking bare. And then there was the question of how MUCH to shave. Do women shave their legs AND their arms? When shaving their legs, do they shave all the way up to the hip? Is a woman’s body supposed to be completely free of hair altogether? (more...)

1

No Kids Allowed

“They just lifted the ban on kids in hospital,” my friend, a local nurse, informed me. “And let me tell you, it’s madness.” She went on to describe situations where people were crowding hospital rooms, bringing the whole family to visit their loved one who had the misfortune to end up in the hospital. “With this economy, there are no private rooms,” she went on. “Families are coming into a shared hospital room, crowding up the whole place. And that person’s neighbor has to also share a room with all these strangers. People are trying to get better, attempting to get some rest, and there are screaming children in the rooms.” Just this past week, a mother had left her crying baby in the hallway while she visited. A patient in another room pulled my friend aside, pleading with her, “I just need to get some rest.” (more...)

5

Representing the Family

When my sisters and I were small, my dad was adamant that appearances went hand in hand with being considered a good kid.

“You’re representing our family,” my dad would say to us gruffly whenever we were out of line, or when we decided that the wrinkled clothes on our bedroom floor were perfectly acceptable to wear to school. I still remember the look on my dad’s face, and the way he couldn’t speak to me for days, when I shaved the bottom of my head for a more punk look. I was only trying to find myself, to separate myself from the drones of prep students who I didn’t fit in with anyway. My mother was irritated at the action I chose to took, but decided that it was just hair, and that it would grow back. My dad, on the other hand… “You look like a butt,” my dad said when he could finally talk to me. (more...)

2

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