Why Kids Are Obsessed With Weight, and What to Do About It

‘Am I Too Fat?’

By Deirdre Wilson

It doesn’t take much. Glamour magazines left lying around the house. A self-conscious declaration of “Ugh, these pants make me look fat.” Raising an eyebrow as someone takes a second helping of dinner.

If you’ve done any of this, and you have kids, you’re sending them a potent message: In a culture obsessed with weight, they need to be thin.

For five years now, public health officials, doctors and the media have sounded the alarm on the nation’s obesity epidemic, warning of the health dangers of eating too much and exercising too little. Our problem with weight is well publicized and hard to ignore.

But while we’re learning to watch what we eat and exercise more, we haven’t learned how to talk effectively to our kids about weight and body image. And our culture hasn’t stopped glorifying rail-thin fashion models and airbrushed celebrities.

This combination of idolizing the “perfect body” and fretting over a national weight problem is a lethal mix for impressionable kids.

Parents know it. Puzzled about how to respond, they swap stories of their 7- or 8-year-old girls asking if they’re too fat.