My gorgeous dd2 is fat! I can't kid myself any longer that its puppy fat or that she'll grow out of it. I'm gutted. Her weight measures on the 86th Centile, but her height is only on the 25th. I've had to search out 10 to 11 yr old uniform cos its the only things that fit her. The greatest heart ache is that she's really into Hello Kitty but most outlets tend to stop the bulk of their hello kitty stuff at 8. At the same time I'm painfully aware that a couple of her class mates have called her fat. She's not really worked it out yet, she's still chuffed that she's into such older clothes and sees it as meaning she's more grown up than others but it wont be long.
So..... How to resolve this. I have been working on it but am getting nowhere. Firstly she's a very very active child. She does two hours of ballet and tap, 2 hours of running, 1 hour of swimming, 1 hour of gymnastics each week outside of whatever they do at school. She doesn't spend a lot of time indoors and can normally be found either on our trampoline (trying to do sommersaults) or on her bike. So lack of excercise is not the issue.
Next, I am a really into eating healthly and naturally. I'm trying to teach all four of my children how to put together their diets each day (so ok the toddler can't do it but I'm hopping you get my drift). I don't like low sugar things I'd rather than did low sugar but cutting down their sugar intakes. Equally however I've always been of the opinion that nothing should be denied to them so sweets, biscuits and crisps had always been around but were for treat times and after healthy food is eaten first. BUT I've found that shes started to hide food and steals it during the night. At the moment she's no idea that I know she's stealing/hording food. At first it was biscuits so biscuits ran out and never got replaced so she then found the fun sizes that I'd been using a rewards for my ds for when he gets a certain number of stickers at school, so they've 'run out'. Crisps are now 'running out'.
I desperately don't want to tackle her as I feel she'll just hide it even more. Equally I don't want her to work out that she's fat. At 18 I suffered from anneroxia so I'm very very aware of how wrong things can go and I don't want this for my wonderful 8 year old. BUT she's obsessed with food! We've just returned from a holiday and she spent the whole time wanting to know where the next bit of food/chocolate/icecream was coming from. When she's bored she's hungry. What the heck do I do?