4yo daughter calling strangers fat

[Twobirdsinatree]

I think I might be overreacting here but this has really upset me and I dont know how to handle it at all.
My 4yo daughter has started calling strangers fat in a derogatory way.
Today we were in the doctors waiting room and she walked over to a young woman who was very obese and said 'you are a fat chungus, look at the fat chungus' and laughed. I was absolutely mortified. She has not heard this from me or her father. I am overweight myself and I would never in a million years call someone fat as an insult or comment on anyones weight in front of my daughter.. or at all! I also try not to criticise my own appearance in front of her.
I apologised to the woman and told my daughter that it was rude to comment on peoples appearance because it might hurt their feelings and if you dont know that person you dont know what might hurt them so dont say anything at all about their body.
shortly after that i went outside to speak to my son.. my mum was with my daughter.. and as I came back in I heard her doing it again! So I got a little angry with her and said 'no dont do that'
After the appointment the woman was still in the waiting room and as we walked out the door my daughter started saying 'fat chungus fat chungus' !!

When we got home I tried to talk to my daughter about it and tried to reason with her and ask her why she said that, and she said 'I dont like fat chungus its yuk, I dont want to see fat people at the doctors' I tried to explain to her how sad saying that might make someone feel but she didn't seem remotely moved she just kept saying that it was yuk and she didn't want to see it.
It really shocked me.

Am I unreasonable to be very worried or is this just a normal phase I should chill out about?
My son is older and he never did anything like this. He was naughty/cheeky of course sometimes but he always seemed to naturally understand about caring about other peoples feelings and not being nasty.
I'm finding it hard to get my daughter to understand.

Just so as to add any relevant information my daughter is on SEN register at the moment and has traits of ADHD I think.. altho not extreme. Apparently at school she cares very little about authority or what she's supposed to do and can be a bit ungovernable!
She has also just gone on the brown inhaler which contains steroids which could possibly be effecting her?
Also shes had a bit of upheaval because her grandad, my dad dropped dead unexpectedly a couple of months ago and he lived abroad so I went away for a month to help my mother who is disabled (he was her carer) sort everything out.. and my mother has now come back to live with us so I can take over her care and is sharing a room with my daughter..
She was quite close to her grandad.

Does anyone have any advice about how I should be reacting to this behaviour? Am I overreacting? Is she just unsettled at the moment and it will pass or do you think there's something I'm not doing right?

Or either I just wouldn't consider taking someone to the Drs in a wheelchair an errand..

The op is clearly horrified and feels awful about what her daughter said. It is all said and done now. All that the op can do now is teach her daughter better manners and give her appropriate punishment. You do not need to keep giving her a hard time when she already feels bad.
in fact you need to wind your neck in

I never knew that something could be vastly insulting but also hilarious at the same time

There's a young woman who at best probably went home utterly humiliated and in tears and at worst won't want to leave the house again. Yeah how fucking hilarious.

You need to apply consequences. Hard to do in a doctors surgery as they work best if they are immediate and you can't exactly take her straight home!

With everything else you say I agree, put for me there's probably nothing more irritating than people who allow their children to wander around in waiting rooms treating them like playgrounds. That seems to have been the easiest way to have avoided this yet not once has OP even recognised that perhaps if she wasn't letting her child wander around approaching people she doesn't even know In the first place, todays incident may never have happened. Not everyone dotes on your little Sadie's and Hugo's the way you do. We don't all want them coming up to us in the Dr's surgery. Some people just want to be left to sit alone quietly.

Don’t feed them OP, no one is that dense so they’re being ridiculous on purpose.

1. I was asked what I would have done differently.

2. You don't get to decide who posts what.

Have a nice weekend x

Banning her from sweets / puddings for a week? Something like "Well you think it's okay to laugh and be unkind to someone who eats lots of sweets, so obviously you don't want any yourself"

I wouldn't recommend OP use food as a punishment or associate sweet foods with causing someone to be overweight.

OP has acknowledged she didn't handle it in the best way, she posted asking for advice going forward, she can't fucking turn back time. As a PP said, wind your neck in and stop sticking the boot in

WTAF have I just read? I am not going to jump on the bandwagon of slating and berating a 4 year old, but no small child I have ever known, would EVER have spoken like this. I have 2 kids myself, I have nephews and nieces, and know plenty of small children via friends, and neighbours. I have never heard anything like it. Do children REALLY turn around and say vile and hideous things like this? Not in my world.

So, this 4 year old child of your friend thought it was OK to spout nasty derogatory insults to a stranger because she was told she should always 'tell the truth....' Hmmmmmmmmmm.

I can't believe some people are downplaying stuff like what happened with the OP's child, as funny and hilarious and saying 'aww she's just a kid!' What the child said is completely out of order, there is NO excuse for it (nope not ONE!) and no child I know (or have ever known,) would say such things. NO! They really WOULDN'T!

@JoyBeorge she wasn't wandering around... we were on the same row of chairs as this woman.. she literally just stood up and took like two steps forward so she was standing in her eyeline.. she wasn't even that close and she was just stood still. I didnt think anything of it coz she wasn't invading personal space and she's never said anything like that before so I did not expect it.
I dont try and make her sit on a chair because thats a battle I dont have strength for ive already said they suspect she has adhd.. but she wasn't treating the place like a playground she was just stood there.

@FTY765 I would never say that dont worry. Because it also gives the idea people get fat because they gorge on sweets.. which is not the case. I dont use food as punishment... altho I must admit I've used cake as a bribe as a last resort before sorry!

Yeah its very sad, i can imagine she went home humiliated and if her obesity is linked to inactivity , staying inside more is probably the last thing she needs.

WTAF?

My Autistic DS is very like this about his bedroom, we had to get him a bigger bed and it wouldn't fit in the same spot and it took him a long time to get used to it. Have you considered if there's anywhere downstairs for a bed to go for your Mum? Save carrying her and DD could have her space back. Or could the bunks go in DDs room and DS sleeps in their too? It's a tough situation all round. At 4 Id be telling them those comments hurt people but I wouldn't be expecting that to cause empathy and to stop them repeating it. It's more shutting it down, so if she says she doesn't like to see Chungas (not sure if that's right spelling) at the doctor, don't try and make her feel empathy tell her she's not allowed to say it and that if she does you will leave an activity, or if it's the doctors and you can't leave xyz will happen. The more immediate the consequence the better. Remind her on the way somewhere what will happen if she calls some fat or a chunga. That would be leave if it's something she enjoys, time out/removal of a privilege if it's a necessary appointment, it's individual what works. You could also remind her that if she keeps saying this then you won't be able to take her out to fun places because she's hurting people by calling them names. Consistency and repetition. Remind before, praise a lot during or immediately after outings if she hasn't said it.

Please take this with a pinch of salt as I don't know if it's appropriate for the SEN you mention.

If one of mine had done this - the first time would have been an apology from me, a comment to the child like "everyone is different. It is rude to comment like that". Second time would have been an extremely sharp "stop saying rude things right now and apologise to this lady. You DO NOT comment on people's bodies". Once I got home a sit down conversation about where this language has come from, why I don't want to raise a mean little girl, and why these things hurt feelings.

She's 4. Still little, for sure, but old enough to know when she's being nasty.

It doesn’t matter that the insult she chose was fat. It matters that she is deliberately insulting others (adults!!) for fun, in front of you, repeating the behaviour after you objected, laughing about it, and that you have not found an effective consequence to make her want to change her behaviour.

My three year old majorly pissed me off once. Got a three month screentime ban: no ipad, no tv. It was VERY hard on me but every single time she asked for screen I said “No because you did XYZ and that was very bad.” She didn’t do it again I can tell you.

Kids don’t care about “you hurt my feelings” or “that made me sad”. They know that their behaviour did this, that’s precisely why they are behaving badly, to feel that thrill of power. You need them to associate the bad behaviour with intense regret, only then will the behaviour change. You don’t have to go over the top (and don’t shoot yourself in the foot by taking away exercise / social time) just have clear rules such as ‘be polite to others’ and clear consequences for breaking them such as ‘no TV this week’.

Good luck! It’s a total pain, but the earlier you do it the easier it is. If you did this at age three it would have been easier but doing it now is MUCH easier than doing it at 7…

Please let it go now. You cannot go back in time. You have far more important things to concern you. Really. One day you will laugh about the time that.... 🌹

Would be hard not to give a light spanking

That's what I think too.

OP, I'm probably one of those people your DD might have called a fat chungus. My weight problems are an extremely sensitive issue for me and are influenced by other medical issues.

I wouldn't have been very upset at your daughter spouting such bile even if she is only four. I might even have mentioned it to staff and wanted her removed from the waiting room if she continued it (which it sounds like she did) without you taking effective action.

You need to come down like a ton of bricks on this shit before she insults someone who perhaps doesn't control their reactions well. If she's out to provoke it reaction then she might just get more than she is bargaining for.

That should say I would have been very upset.

Huh? Are you saying she’ll one day look back on this fondly and laugh about the time her kid insulted an obese young woman sitting by herself and clearly so humiliated she pretended to ignore it?

What is she watching? on youtube or wherever? If she likes ryans world, I find them extremely rude and bad example to kids

I doubt the woman in the waiting room will laugh about it one day.

It was an awful thing she said OP, but it does sound like you have more than enough on your plate at the moment and I hope things get easier for you.

You need to ban YouTube completely for both your children. It's a shitty influence as this episode seems to show. And the chat about hurting feelings clearly isn't cutting it; bad behaviour needs consequences.