Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Disturbed by the Doctor

I took the kids to the doctor for their annual physical. It was all good. My kids are healthy. But the doctor said something that disturbed me. She said we need to watch Motor Mouth's weight. WTH!!

My son has abs. You can see his abs. He is not bone thin, but he is NOT fat!! He is in karate, swimming, and baseball. He wears the SLIM cut from GAP!! Motor Mouth is in the 75th percentile for his height.
Does this look like a fat kid?

Is this because I am fat? I never used to be. Was I skinny? No. For the first 30 years of my life, I was not fat. I was within my BMI range. Does she think my child is going to be a fat kid because I'm his mom??
I have been a mean mommy. I don't give my kids a bunch of junk at home. They get milk in the morning and 1 glass of apple juice at lunch. The rest of the day, it's water.
I go to people's homes and they have all kinds of fattening cookies and chips and sugary cereals, pop, juice. Just junk for their kids to eat. No offense if that is what you feed your kids. We don't feed our kids a bunch of junk food. Last month, I bought Pop Tarts, marshmallows, and Dum Dum's to keep in the house because I saw other parents doing that and I thought I was been too restrictive.
Motor Mouth BEGS for dessert EVERYday. I tell him everyday he can't have dessert. And that you don't have dessert at every meal. We have dessert maybe every 2-3 weeks!
Well, fine. I'm going to go back to being a mean mommy. 
My kid will.NOT.be.fat.

4 comments:

Mary Anne Mohanraj said...

That doctor is nuts. I have many doctors in my famiy, and so I can testify that they're just as prone to diet hysteria as the rest of the population. The kid is absolutely fine.

That said, we didn't eat dessert growing up, or have sugary cereals in the house, or drink soda, and I didn't feel particularly deprived. There was always a ton of fruit around if we wanted it. I think that's basically going to be our approach -- tons of fruit, relatively healthy snack food, like Pirate Booty, and some ice cream and cookies available for special treats once in a while.

(If you're pregnant, you deserve a special treat every five minutes or so, I've decided.)

Jen said...

Some doctors go by charts alone and if he's, say, at 75th for weight and 70th for height, they get antsy. C was built almost exactly like Motor Mouth at M M's age, and is now a tall, lanky teen who can eat anything and not gain an ounce (and no, we don't do a lot of junk, either, but he does have dessert - usually homemade stuff that i can control the sugar on). When he was m m's age, he got a similar spiel, but then our doc said, "I'd probably just ignore it, though, because he's active and healthy - just make sure he stays as he is."

Yuck... sometimes we get TOO much information these days.

Serenity said...

We all beg for sweets after every meal, and we usually find a way. I'm the very worst one of the bunch. Our only salvation has been a tight grocery budget. There's not much room for pop tarts and marshmallows, so we don't have a lot of that around either. I love to get stuff like that every now and then, though, because it seems like such a waste to never splurge on sweets when life is so short anyway. It sounds to me like you're doing awesome. I feel in this decade (century?), lack of exercise is a much bigger problem (equal anyway) than too much or the wrong foods. I'm not very disciplined with snacks and desserts, but we're trying to raise kids who enjoy being active - like you're doing with the swimming, etc.

Threeundertwo said...

That's just amazing. He's definitely not fat!