PARENTING

I Helped My Son Overcome the Stigma of Being Overweight

I found ways to do it without hurting his feelings

Image by Sabrina C from Pixabay

The sight of that chubby kid always draws the comment “how cute!” but the same kid ends up facing unpleasant situations as they grow up.

My son was that “cute kid.” His classmates loved to pinch his cheeks. He was good-natured about it. But he had an unexpected growth spurt along with an accident that broke his collarbone when he was 6 years old, and the two-month recovery added on some extra pounds. He wasn’t lazy. In fact, quite the opposite. Loved to run around the school grounds, take the stairs to the third floor, and was always ready to run an errand. Yet, he never shed those extra pounds.

Then, people started talking. His peers called him names. Until he got to middle school, he didn’t care. Around the sixth grade, even the teachers were occasionally mean.

It almost seemed like bad luck that he was the tallest in the class, heavily built and towering over the other students. Any mischief in class was automatically blamed on him. If he got into an argument, the teachers assumed he was the culprit. Over time, when the teachers got to know him better they stopped being unkind, but some of his classmates didn’t. The damage was done.