Picture it: Halloween night. Adorable children are in their costumes, gleefully skipping from house to house saying, "Trick or Treat!" and filling their baskets with yummy candy. Except, when they say "Trick or Treat," they don't actually expect a trick. Particularly not as nasty a "trick" as this one employed by a heartless woman in North Dakota.
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| Photo from www.today.com |
That's right, folks, some wonderful lady decided to help kids celebrate Halloween by telling them they're fat.
A nasty trick, indeed.
Now, I don't always tip my hat as to what I think about a particular issue when I want to hear from a variety of people with different perspectives. And I would welcome your comments. But I simply couldn't contain myself with this one.
I certainly acknowledge that there is an obesity problem in this country, and that the problem extends to children. I am aware that many kids watch too much TV or play video games rather than getting out and playing in the neighborhood like my friends and I used to when we were kids, before DVDs and Xbox and Facebook. I am aware that it's important to teach kids healthy eating and exercise habits.
But holy crap, can't you give kids a break on Halloween? For God's sake, it's a holiday. And who is she to be judging what is "obese"?
First of all, it's not up to anyone else to tell a parent how to parent their own child. It may be tempting, but it's a no-no. We often encounter people in society and see them doing things with their kids that we wouldn't allow or saying things we wouldn't say. But unless it's a safety issue where the child is clearly being harmed somehow, it's not our place to step in. Maybe I should speak for myself. I don't feel it's MY place to step in.
So it is with this judgmental Halloween note. I don't care what kids look like when they come to our door on Halloween. It's a holiday about giving out candy to all kids who ring your doorbell, until you run out. If you don't feel certain kids should have candy, here's a simple solution:
Turn your lights off and don't give out any. It's really that simple.
Seriously, can you picture a group of kids walking up to this lady's house? "Trick or treat!" they'd say hopefully. And she'd reply, "Here's one for you, one for you, and .... oh, I'm sorry, I have something different for you."
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| Photo from www.danvers.patch.com |
What are you going to say if you're that kid? Maybe brush it off and say nothing, trying not to cry?
How heartless can you be?
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| Yep, this is you, lady. (Photo from www.villains.wikia.com.) |
This is the second point I want to make: we live in a society that's superficial enough already. Kids, especially girls, are implicitly told they need to be skinny to be pretty. You can see it in every ad for kids' clothes, in the bodies of the dolls they market to girls, everywhere. An alarming number of women - probably most- have body image issues as they grow older. And boys are not immune to having these same issues, either.
So why speed it up, lady??
In this age of vicious online bullying and kids' suicides, our kids are fragile enough as it is. They face challenges we couldn't have imagined as children. Yes, bullying is an age-old problem, but it's even worse now that it can be done for all the world to see, and now that bullies can hide behind the Internet to more easily accomplish their ridicule of other kids.
Our children are more vulnerable than ever. Chances are, they're already well aware of the things that make them "different," the things they're not happy with about themselves. Maybe they feel self-loathing when they look in the mirror. Maybe they get teased and called names at school for being overweight. How cruel is it for an adult, who should know better, to make that worse than it already might be?
Besides, is this note really going to accomplish anything besides being a blow to the self-esteem of the child, angering the parents and making the child feel sad or angry? What kid is going to get this note and say, "You know, you're right. I AM fat. Thank you SO much for making me realize that. And I shouldn't be eating this candy. I'm going to give my treat basket to my friends and go jogging now." Seriously.
Yes, it's our job as parents to help our children to be and stay healthy, but we can do that in positive and encouraging ways. And it's also our job to nurture them and feed their emotional health and help them build confidence. We don't do that by tearing them down. And there's no way in hell I would let some other person tear my child down either.
If my kid got this, I would be furious - and grateful she doesn't quite know how to read yet. This woman would get an earful from me, sometime out of the presence of children so I could say what I really think of this horrible tactic.
So she's concerned about kids' health. Well isn't that nice. Then give them a healthy treat in their Halloween basket - a lot of people do that. Or don't give anything at all. Either would be better than giving some poor kids some hurtful, mean-spirited note that attacks them and their parents.
What do you think? Does anyone out there think this lady is doing a good thing? Or do you agree with me that she's a modern-day Wicked Witch of the West? Tell us in the comments!
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