Friday, September 4, 2009

HELP PLEASE!!!!!!!!

I need some advice. Today while we were at McDonald's waiting in line there was a very heavy man (probably about 400+) sitting at a table beside us. Phabian started staring and tugging at my shirt. I had no clue what he was talking about til i looked up and he was pointing at this man. I tried to play it cool and told him it was not nice to point at people. Then he did what i dreaded. He announced loud enough for anyone within ear shot to hear, "Mommy that man is really big". Besides dying of embarrassment and wanting to take them and run from the restaurant i told him that it was not nice to talk about people and i made him apologize to the man. The man didn't seemed fazed about it and even laughed. I however wanted to crawl under a table and cry.

I needed time to process so we could talk about it more so i really didn't say much else about it to him (other than pointing out that his dad is also big and so his his favorite aunt). Tonight when i had finished dinner and sat it on the table he yelled at his dad to,"Get your lazy butt off the couch". When i told him that he was not aloud to talk to his dad like that or any other adult he told me, "well daddy is fat too". I know it really hurt Marcus' feelings and it hurt me as well to hear my 4 year old talking like this.

Somewhere he has learned to associate fat people with being lazy. So we talked about it after we said prayer. I ask him where he learned that fat people were lazy and at first he told me his teacher told him (which is his answer for anything anytime i ask him where he "learned" something). So i reworded it and ask him where he heard that. He never did really tell us. Then we ask him if he thought daddy was lazy. He said yes and we explained all that daddy does and how that makes him far from lazy. We talked about how anyone can be lazy, not just heavy people. We also talked about how everyone is different and how the world would be boring if we were all the same.

I am just stunned and a little hurt that he has somehow picked this up. It is not something we ever talk about so i know it had to have come from either TV (but i can not imagine where since they usually only watch educational shows) or somewhere outside the house (school, playground,etc...). I am just not sure if we are handling this the right way. Please help me out here. If this was your child how would you go about handling it? Have you ever had a situation like this? Am i going about this all wrong? I am just so upset!

I come from an obese family and it just breaks my heart that my son would think that they are all lazy. I don't really know what to do here.

HELP!!!!!

1 comment:

Brittany said...

Oh gosh. I wish I had some advice but I don't I have no clue what I would do if Kaci were to say something like that. I feel like I would do what you are doing and try to talk to her about it. Him saying it to the man at Mcdonalds didn't shock me near as much as him saying it to his daddy. I know that had to hurt him. I wish so badly I had advice but I am such a newbie at this I am just glad Kaci cant talk....yet.