To be furious with weight comments made to my 10yr old

It really isn't, sorry.

Being bullied for any reason is horrible but calling someone skinny isn't as bad as the opposite

Do you have any evidence that being called fat is worse than being called thin? I'd be interested to read such evidence.

It happened in school therefore it is for the school to deal with.

How bothered was your daughter? Any more bothered than if they said her hair was too short? Or something else a bit cheeky?

If she wasn't that bothered I don't think you have anything to worry about. Don't project into her.

Being too thin surely won't cause your daughter to stop eating or make herself sick to try and be thin, like someone who is called fat, so it won't lead to eating disorders.

We need to raise a generation of strong young women who let insults go like water off a ducks back and not let insults hurt them. A fast polite comeback would be good though.

I think this could have more to do with your fears for your daughter OP, based on your experience at work. Your daughter isn't those girls and she's doing ok so you don't have to worry.

Over one comment?

Calm down

There used to be a really diminutive girl at school who so say did martial arts 🥋
No one EVER bullied her, her quiet confidence was definitely an advantage.
Maybe she wasn’t a Black Belt after all - but no one wanted to find out!

It's one comment.

It's not bullying and really doesn't need any intervention from anyone unless it becomes a repeated action.

I too thought it strange that OP should mention the bullying girl’s body masses.

That wouldn’t normally enter a parent’s mind.

When DS was bullied for being “small” in junior school ( Late summer birthday-so almost a year younger than some of the kids in the class)

I just remembered their names, not what they looked like.

(At a school reunion he towered over the bullies as he’d grown a lot - well over 6 feet- and one of the bullies actually apologised and said “ We don’t know why we did it”.

Three is always a hard number for school friendships, and probably hard generally.

I would focus on DD and how it made her feel. And teach her to be happy in her own skin. You can’t stop me a comments and sadly secondary is worse.

My DD gets lots of small comments. And more recently fat comments. She can just laugh it off, confident that years of competition gymnastics and other sports has made her strong as hell!

I already proposed that she speak to the mother if you read my comment!

Calm down

My dd went through this in year 6 when another girl joined her and her best friend's friendship. This girl started calling my dd fat (amongst other things). My dd is a perfectly normal size and is very sporty and athletic, and she immediately started trying to cut down on what she was eating to the point of barely eating a thing for days. I was very worried about the impact on her and made the mistake of thinking her best friend's mum would sympathise with what was going on and speak to her dd about not going along with the other girl's nastiness, but instead this mother immediately went into attack mode and started firing abuse at me about my dd. I will never approach a parent again after that tirade. So I went to the school and after months of complaints, they eventually dealt with this child. And I spent a lot of time working on my DD's resilience, conflict management skills and body confidence. You can't control what other kids say, but you can help your dd in how she deals with difficult situations.

Why do you doubt that? And what do you propose instead? A public beheading?

Girls can be little bitches. They call each other names, exclude some kids, gang up on some. That's the way they are. Nasty. Encourage your daughter to make new friends, and help her to boost her confidence. One of my granddaughters has been bullied at school "for being fat". Certainly don't contact the parents or the school.

Is this a dig at the bully girls sizes?!

The fact that someone is a mental health nurse does not mean they have good judgement or the ability to keep normal unpleasant teenage behaviour in proportion.

The OP is reacting over emotionally (in fairness to her she seems to recognise this) and is liable to turn one passing comment into a big deal for her daughter.

Sorry to say you will hear much worse from high school

It’s not about her weight.

it’s about finding a weakness they can use to upset her.

Which they’ve done, haven’t they? Your dd will see your reaction and learn weight is a sensitive topic, and she should be reacting negatively to the issue. In fact if the bullies get wind of your reaction they may well use your behaviour to bully her.

focus on teaching your dd self esteem and how to deal with this stuff. Tell her the intention is not really her weight, her ears, her name, or anything else, it’s to make themselves feel better by trying to make her feel bad. There’s nothing wrong with her, they don’t like themselves so pick on any differences…

but surely you should know all this as a rmn? That food isn’t always about size and weight, it’s control.

Look, I'm not going to get into the ins and outs over which sort of body shaming is more hurtful because as I said, it affects people differently and we all have different insecurities.

Fighting back at this stage (or rather body shaming back) would be wrong because the OP has contacted the school, so she should let them deal with it for now.

These girls were being mean, but could have used anything at all to be hurtful towards your DD. So please don’t talk to her about weight or body image, or mention that jealousy may be behind this behaviour- all that does is place an emphasis on weight/shape/size as being important. Instead, help your DD build a robust self esteem that’s based on her talents, attributes and values so that body image is a less important part, and only one part, of how she assesses her worthiness.

No one develops an eating disorder solely because of comments like these, but rather because these comments resonate more deeply with people already struggling with issues like low self esteem, high levels of sensitivity and perfectionism.

You shouldn't comment on weight agreed but you're very unaware of the world around you if you think it's just as rude to call someone thin as it is to call them fat. Why don't you try it out on a few people as an experiment and see if people's reactions vary.

That’s not the situation I am commenting on here so I won’t derail with my views on this. But if you have any literature or evidence in this area, I’d be interested to read it. Most of my knowledge base is around obesity stigma.

It was a silly, unkind and wrong thing to say. I’m sure she’ll be told that.

Told that by whom though, I doubt the school will do it

You do know, you view is clouded my your experiences. In almost the entirety of western civilisation/high income countries, thinness is valued and fatness is abhorred. I don’t have to tell you this, you watch TV, interact with other people, read the news.

You need to calm down, OP. This was one comment from a peer, and your daughter (unfortunately like all women) will have enough world media and societal pressure on her body anyway. Is that OK? No. Is it realistic? Yes. Therefore all you can do is instil your daughter with your values and resilience against this.

Have a quick word with the teacher to point out that comments of body negativity should be actively discouraged and focus your energies in bringing up a strong-minded kid.

Because you don’t comment on weight either way. It’s just as rude. Doesn’t matter what you think societal norms are. They’re not the same in all cultures anyway.