Hi everyone! It’s my first time posting here, so please tell me if I’ve got anything wrong.
I’ve recently had a significant argument with my sister. She has an 11 year old daughter who I babysit sometimes. Recently, having picked her up from school, I offered her a biscuit and she declined, telling me that her mother had recently said she was “getting a bit fat”, and that because of this she was trying to eat fewer “bad foods”.
I would not say my niece is fat at all- she was a very small, skinny child and whilst I would agree with DSis that she has put on a bit of weight recently, she is still fairly slim. She is also at an age where I think many girls are coming up for large growth spurts, so I think it surely seems natural that she may put on a bit of weight. She is also very active, participating in sports and exercising most days.
After my niece made this comment I decided to speak to DSis about it as I felt not just that it was misguided to see my niece as “fat” even without mentioning it to her, but also that telling a little girl she is getting fat is inappropriate, particularly when she just isn’t.
DSis told me that she had only said this out of concern for her daughter, and that she didn’t want her daughter to become unhealthy. I asked if my niece’s school had weighed her or anything like that, as this is something I remember happening when I was in primary school, and DSis told me that they had and that my niece was in a higher percentile than in previous years (I think- I was a little confused about this but as I understand it her weight relative to her height was higher than it used to be). I asked if it was outside of the normal range and she said no, it was right in the middle of normal. I said surely that meant that she was healthy and DSis said that this was not the case as “most children are fat nowadays”.
She then essentially told me that because I have yet to have children (though I would dearly like to) I cannot understand what it is like to raise a child or what it is like to be “the fat one”, that I am meddling, and that if I had my way her daughter would be obese.
I feel she is projecting her own issues onto her daughter. When we were growing up she was always a fairly middling size- not fat, but never the slimmest of her friends. On the other hand I was always very “lanky” and actually remember being quite jealous of her curvier body type. However, I remember her continually dieting from about the age of 13 in an attempt to lose weight, something which our (now deceased) DM heavily encouraged. I worry that she is continuing that cycle with her daughter.
On the other hand, when I was a teenager a very close friend of mine suffered from anorexia and ended up facing health complications which still limit her life many years later, so I can see that I may be uptight about how to communicate with young girls about issues of weight.
I feel that the most important thing is that DSis encourages my niece to live an active lifestyle and eat healthily. If she is doing these things then her body should follow, staying at a size and shape which is healthy for her. However, I can see that it may be none of my business how my sister raises her daughter, and that perhaps I do not understand the issues in the same way as DSis as I am not a mother myself.
My question is- AIBU to tell my sister that her daughter is not fat and that even if she were, she shouldn’t be talking to her about it in the way that she is and should instead encourage healthy habits?
Sorry this is so long, I just wanted to explain the situation as fully as possible! Thank you all.