Lately, I’ve been noticing how my obsession with
getting fit again is affecting my children. It started with my daughter, the
youngest and only child at home with me as of this new school year. Every
mid-week morning, after dropping her brothers off at school, our routine is
pretty simple and consistent. I make our shake, which consists of spinach,
banana, strawberries and/or raspberries, sometimes Greek nonfat, plain yogurt,
a little cinnamon, and a dash of vanilla extract from time-to-time. Right after,
I pull out the iPad, find our favorite instructors and do 10 – 30 minutes of
Pilates or Zumba. After that, I shower while she works on her learning
apps.
One day, this schedule changed. We returned home, I
told her to go ahead with her learning and I headed to my room to prepare to
shower. She looked at me like I had lost my mind. “Well, go on,” I encouraged
her. Still she stood, looking at me. “What?” I asked.
“Mommy, how about our shake? It’s not learning time
yet.”
I tried to explain to her that I had an appointment,
and we needed to head out earlier than usual, so we’d have to skip our shake.
“But…but we didn’t work out yet. We can’t go
anywhere.”
I was getting agitated, as my little workout buddy
wasn’t getting the drift that I was in a hurry to get on so I could make my
appointment. I sighed and explained that some days, things come up and we have
to be flexible. She then asked if we would be having our shakes when we
returned and working out then as well. I further explained that we might be out
until her brother was out from school, so for the day, we would have to forgo
our usual routine.
“But, mama, you said drinking our shake helps our
tummy so we can poop, and pooping is good; that’s what Aunty Sarah say(s).”
I knew there was no winning, so I rolled my eyes,
shook my head, and went on about my business. Then, a few weeks later, I was
making dinner and overheard my children talking. My oldest said, “Yah, she’s a
fat little girl.” Taken aback, I stopped stirring the soup I was making and
asked to whom he was referring. He rattled something about one of her past
teachers and how his brother had said he could not be a teacher like her,
because she’s a woman and he’s a boy. I stopped him there and asked who he was
referring to as “a fat little girl”.
“Mrs. ----” he replied, not batting an eye.
“Excuse me, we don’t call people fat! That is so
rude! How do you think she would feel if she heard you talk about her like
that?”
“I don’t know, but she is…fat, Mommy. I’m not
lying.”
A discussion followed in which he stated that when I
look at my belly, I refer to it as fat, and that that particular teacher had “a
really fat belly”. I knew right then that I had just walked into a trap of my
own making. I simply asked that he to be more considerate when referring to
people and asked him if he thought she was a good teacher. “My favorite!” was
his response, so I asked him to focus on that aspect of her instead, and
“Okay!” was his simple response.
I thought we’d moved on, but about two weeks later,
as I was washing dishes from breakfast, I heard my oldest son sighing and
huffing, so I asked him what was wrong.
“Mommy, I don’t work out; that’s why my leg is so
fat,” he sighed, bent over touching his calf area. “You told Daddy he should
work out because his leg was fat.”
Apparently, he had missed the whole first part of
the conversation, in which I was encouraging my husband to try to make some
time, even if just twice a week, to take walks or walk on the treadmill, to get
in some exercise. My husband’s response, which he must have only caught the
tail-end of was: “Why would I do those? Don’t you want me to work more on my
abs and arms? My legs are fine. They don’t need the workout as much as my arms.
Or, are you saying if I don’t work out my legs they’ll be fat?” We laughed over
it, not knowing we had an eavesdropper. Either way, I had to reassure my son
that his legs were just fine, and that I really like his daddy’s legs.
Now, I have to hide when weighing myself in the
mornings, because all three children want to know how much they weigh, too.
Sigh. They know our homemade pizza is going to have spinach and tomatoes on it.
They know they won’t win an argument about putting cream cheese icing on their
cinnamon rolls. They long ago lost the battle over whether or not spinach had
to be added to their morning shakes, and after many weeks of complaints, they
request the shakes now. They know when I’m running up and down the stairs for
exercise, I do not like to be blocked or interrupted. They know every breakfast
contains some kind of fruit and lunch and dinner contains some kind of
vegetable.
I really like that I’m instilling great habits in
them, but at the same time, I realize that in my attempt to look and feel
better, they are watching more closely than I’d like. My complaint over the 0.6
lbs I gained since Monday but eventually lose by Thursday doesn’t go unheard. I
found my whining moments to my husband over my failed attempts to lose excess
skin from my last pregnancy were a cause for a concern with them when my youngest
two asked, on different occasions: “Mommy, do you want me to pray for your
tummy? Maybe Jesus can take it away.”
Sigh…I guess I just need to learn the importance of balance,
watching my words, and being committed without the obsession.
