From Lisa, Child's Age 9 - 06/16/02 - IP#: 195.92.194.xxx Click here to reply
My daughter is 9 years old, 4'7" and weighs 105. She has alwasy been chubby but in the last six months she has more than 20 pounds. I'd now consider her fat rather than just plump. She can't fasten up most of her clothes and usually has to leave the top buttons of her jeans undone. I keep buying new ones and she keeps growing out of them. She has a huge appetite and often sneaks food when no-one's in the kitchen. Her thighs are fat, she has a double chin and her tummy is huge, really bulgy. My other chidren are slim, as are my husband and I. I buy fruit for after meals, which she loves, and she'll eat that, then I'll catch her in the kitchen later on, eating leftover pasta straight from the refrigerator! She can't possibly be hungry! She is not an active child, and, although we try to encourage activity (going for family bike rides and walks, etc) she usually tries to find an excuse not to join in. I know she is self-conscious about the way she looks, she had a humiliating experience recently when a bridesmaid dress she had been measured for 2 months previously wouldn't fit on the big day. She couldn't get the zipper up around her middle and it had to be let out at the last minute. Her auntie and cousins were teasing her and she told me later that she feels fat and wishes she could be thin. She asked me if I think she's fat and I told her that she's beautiful and I'm so pround of her, but that she has a few excess pounds and we just need to be a bit more active and eat a little less. She agreed, then I found out from her friend's mother that she ate four doughnuts at the friend's birthday party! I was hoping that some of the other parents who use this column might have some advice for me. I'd love to hear from anyone who has had similar expreiences!
Reply from Lucia, Child's Age 11 - 07/13/03 - IP#: 198.81.26.xxx O my God, I know how you feel. I have a daughter who is eleven years old, five foot one, wieghs 213, is morbidly obese, and has a thirty-five inch waist. Yes, that is incredable. She hates her size, but she can't stop eating. She knows she's a mess, and hates herself, but she loves food. Plus I am just totally crushed on her wieght too. I feel as though I should cry all my days for what I did to her. She was always an extreamely large child, always having food in her mouth, always the largest in her class, always gaining weight. She has always loved food, not as a means of escape, but she just loves the tatse. In fact, as a baby her sixth word she learned to say was food, and she's been saying it ever sence. And it's not as though I was denighing her wieght all though years, It was just that I thought she looked cute. Yes cute. I mean, as I looked down at that so perfectly round body, wide as can be, a belly that keeps gettin biger, and a fat head with plump, rosey cheeks, I couldn't help but giggle at her. And since she uses this to her advantage to get what ever she wanted, including food, she just ate as muck as she wanted. I just coudn't say no her when she wanted exta servings at meals, or her many extra desserts. After dinner, I would tell her she is to only have two mini-dounuts, but after she is done manipulating me, which I know she does, she walks out with six mini-dounuts and two twinkies. And the fact that our family is semi-wealthy, so that we have all the food we'll need, and that we have little need for our daughter to do work, just adds to the problem. She justs sits on her butt all day and eats. All her life she ate and ate, while her waist, hips, breasts, and thighs got soo big that it soon became very hard for her to do phisical stuff: such as jumping, running, walking up stairs or hills, or sometimes even breathing. The thing I'm most scared about is when she falls down doing something. She's just so big that she can't lift herself back up when she falls. Plus at school it's murder. She's three times as big as anyone in her class, and she comes home crying almost everyday because of the teasing. She tells me that she is as common to make fun of as momma jokes. Luckely, most of the girls in her class acceptes her, so she has fiends. But it's the guys that rip on her all the time. Her main name to the boys is "hippo", so that just makes her want to die. Not to mention the fact that she needs a larger desk than anyone in the class, and that she gets constant compaint notes about her wieght from the school nerse and P.E. teacher. And shopping, that was the biggest problem of all. No shop had her size, even in adult stores. The fact that she was so large but short was the biggest thing to get over. We'd go into a store to buy her clothes and we'd find out that she yet again went up to another huge size. It was so embarassing to go into an adult store, try to squeeze anything on her while the whole store looked at me with disgust, and then hear the news "Sorry, it won't fit." Now I have to shop at fat girl stores, where all the lables say "VERY generous in the waist and thigh area". And now your thinking, what am I doing to help her? Well I'll tell you, ever sense she became life threatingly obese, I put a diet on her right away. (The docter finally made his point when he said she was becoming an abomination only made for eating) I first had a talk with her and she agreed to go on it, and from then on we have benn working on her weight. Although she still eats a considerable amount of sweats, even with the resrictions. She's been on the diet for four monthes, and although she still can't run or jump, she has lost a couple of inches around the waist. I've been doing all that I can to help her, including looking on the internet for ideas. In fact, that's how I found this site. Thank you very much for listening to my story, and I hope learned something from it. And if you didn't, here's what I trying to tell you. Let your child eat and have sweats but don't let them live on it. And also admit if your child has a wieght problem. Don't just say she's\he's a bit chubby, and that extra weight showing is just the cause of tight clothes. Trust me, esecially you parents of obese children. Obese means that one-fith of there body is nothing but fat. Because of over-eating, my daughter had so much fat that it was even hard for her to move. All this and she's only at the age of eleven! So listen to what I have to say. You'll be happy and so will your children. Thank you.
Reply from Mary, Child's Age 13 - 06/17/02 - IP#: 66.188.231.xxx My daughter had an experience some what like that when she was around 8 years old. We had my sisters wedding and she was a flower girl and we had been measured about 2 monthes before and when the big day came we could barely get the dress on her. It was a bit tight but it worked. That is too bad. I think bringing her to a doctor and putting her on some diet might be a help. By the way you describe how she grows out of clothes so fast and can't zip her clothes she has now. A doctors visit might help. If she still sneaks food i would say maybe just keeping the foods that she sneaks somewhere else where she won't get them and just give them to her now and then
