Blogging inspiration can come from the most random places and at the most random times. While browsing the net. While sitting in rush hour traffic [and going out of my mind]. While washing my hair (this one is the most annoying). And, most recently, while standing in line at the gas station.
So there I was, eyeing the racks of I-don’t-need-these-things-but-they-look-so-appealing-right-now while I waited to pay for my purchase, when my ears picked up a snippet of conversation from the mother/daughter pair standing behind me. The shock of the entire situation interfered with my ability to recall the exact words that were spoken, but it went something like this, and please keep in mind that the little girl was a scrawny little thing and all of 6 or 7 years old.
Daughter: “Mommy, can I have that bag of Skittles?”
Mother: “You don’t want that. It’ll make you fat.”
I.was.shocked. I mean, I remember my mom telling me I couldn’t eat something because it would ruin my teeth or give me a stomach ache, but nowhere in my memory banks can I recall a time where my mom told me I couldn’t eat something because it would make me gain weight. Never. And although my mom didn’t give in to all of my pleas for sweet treats, not once did she bring up weight or suggest that I should feel bad for enjoying some candy.
I know the development of an eating disorder is a lot more complex than simply having a parent model negative thoughts and behaviors in front of their child, and my own mom’s levelheaded approach to food obviously didn’t save me from succumbing to an eating disorder when I got older, but at least I was blissfully free of disordered thoughts during my younger years. At least I was allowed to be a kid.
It breaks my heart to see young girls missing out on their childhoods because they’re too busy thinking about calories and weight. 7-year-olds on diets? 8-year-olds suffering from anorexia? Ugh… there really are no words. And don’t even get me started on the psychotic-ness that is beauty pageantry. I seriously just want to hug all those girls, give them a cookie and a teddy bear, and tell them to go play…
I realize this might make me sound like an old fart, but kids seem to be growing up way too fast these days. Wearing makeup, rockin’ cell phones, worrying about how they look… My mom let me start using mascara and eyeshadow when I turned 16, and I didn’t get my first cell phone until I was 18. As for worrying about how I looked… well… I’d do my best to smooth down my cowlick bangs after a goofy night’s sleep made them stick straight up.
I realize that times are changing, but dang… talk about reminiscing about the good old days. What ever happened to just letting kids be kids? Or has the concept of childhood become so radically different from what I remember? I have to admit that I’m not exposed to a lot of kids on a regular basis so my assumptions might be way off, but tell me… has anyone else noticed the same thing? It honestly scares me to think of what times are going to be like when I have my own kids…
And just for fun… How old were you when you started wearing makeup? And at what age did you get your first cell phone?
When I see today’s kids, I often feel less grown up than them. I hadn’t touched a computer until I was 13, got my first mobile phone at 18 and started using make up regularly about that time too. I guess this really has something to do with the development of technology but society has changed a lot too. I didn’t understand the concept of dieting at all until high school and mum never told me I would get fat if I ate this or that. On the contrary, during my childhood parents and grandparents always repeated how important it was to eat your whole meal in order to have energy to grow up and be strong. It must be horrible to see food as a threat from such an early age.
I’m not going to say you’re getting older, but times have drastically changed. I actually had a pager (do you even remember those things? Now who’s aging themselves?) back in high school. I think so much of it is technology based; seriously things have blown up in the last ten years, but that in no way makes it ok for a mom to tell her kid it’ll make her fat. That is disheartening to hear and an eating disorder in the making. We need to focus on health and strength, not size, especially at that age.
Agree with everything in this post. It makes me so sad to see young girls worrying about their weight, boys, etc., especially since I had such an amazing (& sheltered) childhood. (Seriously…I didn’t put the American Girl dolls or barbies away till middle school.) Like you, my mom didnt always let me have sweets or other junk food, but she NEVER said anything about weight/appearance. I live in “pageant country” (the south), & it sickens me to see girls with makeup & clothing like hookers!
I started wearin a little earlier than you, but it was triggered by the ugly trampoline burn I got on my face the night before school photos, lol. And I didn’t get my own cellphone till college!
I couldn’t imagine living in pageant country. Seeing it on TV is bad enough, but in real life? Yeah,.. I’d be horrified. The thought of 5 year-olds with better tans, hair, and makeup than me is a little scary.
You are absolutely spot on with this. While it is true that candy and junk food in large quantities can make a person gain weight, there are so many other reasons for telling a child why it might not be a good idea to have that as a snack. Try, “its not a very healthy choice”, or “you will not be hungry for dinner” or like you said the teeth thing or tummy ache thing, or even just “no” with no reason, sometimes a parent can just say no we aren’t having that and that is ok. What a messed up mentality to be teaching that child already…I’m going to assume that’s what the mom says to herself too when she wants to indulge “I can’t have that it will make me fat” which must be something she struggles with too…why put a child through that
I think I was 14 or so when I got my first cell phone. I’ve seen 8 year old kids get a cell. I think that is ridiculous!
Hey Amanda- I’m Amanda too 😉 love your blog! I’ve been a reader for ages and was wondering if you would ever consider doing a vlog one day? I would love to hear your voice 🙂 – back to the subject at hand- kids should not have to worry about “fattening foods” or calories! I know my older sister who is and always has been slim was always “watching her weight” and occasionally would comment that I should cut back- and I was a tiny athletic child! Adults and older teens really do impact young minds that are still developing their own opinions. I started wearing kid makeup for a month when I was 8- got boring lol but real makeup When I was 15 as I looked so much younger then everyone at school (I’m small and Asian) cell phone when I was 17 🙂
Hi Amanda 😉 I’ve actually been playing around with the thought of doing a vlog for a while now, so it’ll definitely happen… someday 😆
I think I was 15 when I got my first cell phone. It was one of my mum’s hand me downs. I thought I was so cool with it too. 🙂
As a teenager myself, I definitely feel a LOT of this today–I got my first cell phone at age 10, started wearing makeup at age 12, etc. I don’t think it’s the fault of the kids or the parents, but somehow, somewhere, the timeline of our generation feels like it got compressed–childhood’s been shortened drastically, and now, as soon as you’re eight, BOOM you better be a teenager ‘cuz by the time you reach 13 you’re gonna be an adult.
I think this can be good in some ways…but it does create a heck of a lot of unnecessary pressure and stress. I kinda feel sad thinking about the fact that a century ago, I might still be allowed to be an unruly tangle-haired kid, rather than a button-down social-media-surfing formula-memorizing private school student. The question is, is there anything we can do about this?
I had two other points to comment on, and I promise I’m not usually such a contrary person! My daughter is 11. She has had a cell-phone for two years now. It’s not an iPhone or even anything remotely fancy. It’s one of those cheap, $20 prepaid jobs, but I got it for her when she started having sleepovers with friends. She was invited to a slumber birthday party at a friend’s house when she was 9. We didn’t know this family well, but in the interest of “letting her be a kid”, we let her go. Around 2 in the morning, a situation went down that involved a child getting slapped by an adult, the birthday girl calling her grandmother for help, an uncle coming to the house and taking every single little girl that was at that party to a completely different house to get away from the drunk, violent adult, but also taking them through the drive-thru at Taco Bell first. We got a call from my daughter at 9 AM the next morning saying “Um, can you come get me? I’m at Birthday Girl’s grandma’s house.” Turns out she wanted to call us at 2 to come home when everything went down and these people wouldn’t let her because “Aw, your mom and dad will be mad if you wake them up.” Had she a cell phone, she could have called us to come get her and I could have contacted the police like the situation called for. What we did or didn’t have 20 years ago has become completely irrelevant today. The times have changed and for our children’s safety, I think it’s important we keep an open mind to change as well. It’s just a matter or raising them to understand that their phone is a communication device, not a game system.
Also, I have allowed my 11 year old to wear mascara, eye shadow, blush and lip gloss in public. I bought very subdued colors for her, taught her how to apply it, including the important rule “It should look like you don’t have any on” and let her go. It was fun for her to put on for about a month, and now she never wears it because “It takes too much time.” By not keeping it from her, make up became a non-issue, and now, if/when she chooses to wear it regularly, she knows how to apply it, which will hopefully avoid the raccoon black eyeliner phase most girls go through early on.
Thanks for sharing, Nicole. It’s always good to see things from both perspectives.
No problem. I remember being younger and looking at what people were allowing their kids to do and saying “I would NEVER have been allowed to do that” but now that I have two daughters of my own, I see everything from a different angle. Would I let them carry guns? No. Will I supply them with a cell phone for when we’re not together? Oh yes. Will I let them start drinking margaritas? No. Will I let them wear small, unseen amounts of make up that only they really know they’re wearing? Oh yes. I’ve found that, in regards to most things with kids, if you “restrict” them from having something, they just go ballistic when they do have access to it. If you remove the mysticism around something and, this is the important part, teach them the proper usage, the taboo disappears and the years spent wishing they could be more grown up aren’t there. My daughters realized early on that having a phone or make up isn’t the big deal they thought it would be and now they’re just kind of tossed to the side in favor of playing with Legos and Monster High dolls, which are infinitely more interesting. It’s not really any different than the idea of “everything in moderation”. Denying yourself any certain food is a surefire way to cause trouble down the road. I kind of took that same approach to raising my children and I think that it has worked out well. Once they’ve realized being “grown-up” isn’t some magical key to awesomeness, they became much more content in remaining children. Alright, off my soapbox now. I just hope I could help shine some light onto what goes on behind the scenes of some of these decisions that people find shocking today. There are a few of us parents who have a method. I will gladly admit that there are a whole lot more of us who are just trying to shut up their kids and avoid having to be parents.
My jaw literally dropped when I read what the mother had said to her daughter. I’m sure the mom didn’t think twice about the long lasting effects she could be putting on her daughter, but even so, that’s just something you DON’T say to anyone. It’s horrible, and absolutely breaks my heart into so many pieces!
Stories like this break my heart. The mother in the gas station likely has no idea how deeply her daughter is taking those words to heart, and I’m guessing the daughter doesn’t either. Messages about weight, body image, and beauty swarm around us from day one, yet I don’t think they begin impacting actions, thoughts, confidence, and body perception until the pre-teen/adolescent years. However it’s the backlog of subconscious opinions about food, weight etc.–those messages just like this mother’s—that can really affect us later in life.
I was fortunate to grow up in a home where healthy food was plentiful, but “junk” food wasn’t forbidden. However, like you, my parent’s normal relationship with food didn’t shield me from an eating disorder. What DID impact me, however, was comments from classmates, other adults, and babysitters. I vividly remember the day my favorite babysitter told me that the pepperoni on my pizza was fattening. While I didn’t stop eating pepperoni pizza that day, I remember thinking about her words in junior high school, and opting to bring my lunch from home instead of eating pizza with everyone else on pizza party days. Likewise, my best friend’s mother most definitely had a rocky relationship with food (although I didn’t realize it at the time). She would pick us up from school every day (always in her running clothes), take us home, and feed us carrot sticks. We could have ONE cookie afterward, but only if we ate ALL those damn carrots.
I’m rambling, but one more thing. 🙂 I was a nanny for a very wealthy *too busy for their kids* family during college. Both parents were extremely Type A, and sought the perfect family. That meant I had to implement strict study hours, play hours, and eating hours. One of the first weeks I was working for them, I took the kids out to ice cream for a little treat. When the mother found out, she was irate, telling me that her kids were only allowed to eat ice cream on “special occasions.” I never took them out for ice cream again, which broke my heart.
Almost done! Makeup: age 15; Cell phone: age 16. Happy weekend, Amanda! <3
Strict play hours and no ice cream?!> Talk about being robbed of a childhood 🙁