Will my weight impact my children

[ShakerMakerGirl]

I am obese, BMI 35.

I saw on a thread yesterday (the whole thread was taken down before I could ask) Someone say she didn't have any friends at school because her mum was fat!

Is this actually true, will my weight have an impact on my children in this way?!

I've struggled to lose weight and I am not completely stupid in terms of the impact of my weight on me (luckily none so far at 36) but surely it won't affect my daughters ability to make friends?! (They are currently 1 and 5 so haven't noticed my weight).

Does anyone have an opinion. This is not an area I have considered I might affect them before!

Kids will pick on anything. I remember finding my best friend crying in the toilets in middle school because someone had told her that her mum's pixie haircut "made her look like a man" :(

A lot of it depends on what you do together as a family and how you teach them to associate food with feelings.

My parents were overweight and we spent a lot of time indoors. As an adult I felt I’d missed out on stuff friends had done with their parents (family bike rides, tennis at the park, swimming the sea etc).

It was more of an issue though that they associated boredom or any non-desirable feeling with food - that was harder to unlearn as I’d grown up with them eating between meals, thinking a good trip out was a coffee shop etc.

My MIL has been obese all her life. My DH - her son - said it impacted his childhood because it limited her so much in terms of what she could do. Now, age 75, she is bedbound and can't see our daughter as much as she'd like to.

At bmi 35 you’re not hugely obese. If your bmi was 40+ then yes it may impact your DC but not at your size.

It was deleted. A mum didn't want her son to spend so much time with a fat kid with a fat mum because she was concerned he was going to get fat too.

I read that thread. The mum’s concern was that every time the kid came round he had lots of food that her son went on to eat. The mum didn’t care about the boy’s weight and definitely didn’t care about the mum’s weight - she cared about the food. So that is pretty easily solvable - don’t send your kids with lots of food every time they go to someone else’s house.

Being honest your kids will be completely embarrassed about your weight when they are about 12. However, if you lost 5 stone then they will be completely embarrassed about your hair or your voice or your clothes or the way you breathe. I was at a sports event with Dd the other week and the tweens were sitting together and I was chatting with the parents about 10 metres away. The tweens started doing cartwheels (badly!) so for the amusement of the other parents (and my own selfish pleasure!) I did a (very very good) cartwheel. Poor Dd still hasn’t forgiven me!