For background DD (9) is slightly overweight. Lockdown and the fact that I work insane hours hasn't helped but there's no dodging the fact that she should probably lose a bit of weight.
She came home yesterday saying another child in her class not a close friend but one of her peer group had said "when you're older you should probably go on a diet".
I'm privately really upset and raging that this child has presumed to do this. I told DD calmly that diets weren't a good idea and that it wasn't a great idea for children to be handing out this sort of advice and that she should disregard it but that we would work together to do some more exercise and try to eat more healthily. But I do want to tackle it either with the parent or the school.
DD has asked me not to contact the girl's mum and talk to her, which was my initial instinct. What I would like to do is to contact the teacher and suggest that she might want to talk to the whole class without singling this child out about the danger of diets and pressure on children to lose weight, in a way which is framed in the context of lockdowns etc and emphasizing exercise and healthy eating, but making clear that its not cool for kids to fat-shame other kids and maybe touching on the pressures that children are subjected to aesthetically.
I'm wary of appearing to be seen as a busybody, lecturing teachers about how to handle this when they are clearly dealing with a huge amount of more urgent priorities. And I don't want to be a diva about it.
But I also think it needs to be tackled. What would be the most constructive thing to do?