‘Your mum is fat’

[Dingalingading]

So aibu to not know how to deal with this.

Daughter (10) joined a new school a year ago and generally gets on well with kids and staff. Apart from one it seems. A week ago, ‘I am not coming to your stupid party’ (which I reassured DD was maybe more about the fact that this child does a lot of competitions outside school so couldn’t come because of that) but now this ‘your mum is fat!’. Totally unprompted and DD was

I do know the mum to talk to - tho not well. How do I approach it? I do need to work on my weight - had a baby 9 months ago - but it’s still a shock.

Keep it within school. Contact the teacher and say that these interactions have been taking place and upsetting DD. Let the teacher deal with it.

At home, talk about bullying and instead of going to Mum all guns blazing try to diffuse it.

'Ellie can be quite mean, can't she. She tries to say silly things to upset you because it makes her feel better. We know they're not true...
'Your Mum's fat?'
'Well done Ellie, you've got eyes! I've had a baby - of course, I'm bigger than I was!'

'I'm not coming to your stupid party!'
'She's jealous she couldn't come. Your party wasn't stupid. Didn't we have so much fun!'

If she's getting upset, get her to tell the teacher. If not, get her to reply factually and directly.

'No one wants to be your friend, Emily.'
'Of course they do, you're just trying to upset me.'

'Emily's ugly.'
'That's a really mean thing to say and it's also not true. I've got lovely hair.'

A 10/11 year old knows what is acceptable to say and not say but not always the effect upon someone else. I expect she was casting around for a wounding thing to say to your DD and that was what she drummed up. Personally I might have a quiet word with the school as they might be able to diffuse things. Try and nip this in the bud. Don’t speak to the mother about it.

Who knows whether she is parroting a parent’s comment about your weight specifically or hears one of her parents making remarks about people’s weight in general? You are guessing that it comes from the mother. I think we tend to have a bias about what we think others think based on our own self criticism; it’s that self-criticism you can change. As for the child in question, yes she needs to know it’s not OK to say these things but you need to laugh it off in front of your DD so she can take her cue from you that weight and human value are not correlated.

Kids say horrible things all the time.