"We Don't Say Those Words in Class!"

My niece was in the grocery store with my sister when she was about four years old. While they were waiting in line to checkout , my niece pointed at a lady ahead of them in line and said in a loud voice, “Mommy, look at that fat girl! Why is she so fat?” My sister was mortified and tried to hush my niece, then distracted her with something in the cart. She whispered a quick apology to the lady in front of them but did not really make eye contact.

My sister may have communicated the message to my niece that it is not okay to talk about physical differences or why people might look different from one another. By suppressing my nieces childlike curiosity in this instance, my aunt may have helped to instill in my niece the belief that she should keep her questions about differences to herself. She may also very well have intimated that it is bad to be fat; this message was reinforced later in my nieces childhood when she became heavy and my sister kept putting her on different diets. To this day, my niece has lots of issues with weight and has suffered from anorexia. The root of these issues may well have begun when she was small and absorbed her mother’s beliefs about weight and people who are overweight.


An anti-bias educator may have responded to a similar situation by telling the child that people come in all shapes and sizes, and helping the child think about the people in that child’s life and how their body shapes differ. For instance, the educator could point out taller and shorter adults that the child knows and ask the child to compare his or her own body to others. This approach would have led to frank discussion of bodily differences and the message that it is okay to talk about differences. Another strategy might be to turn the question back on the child, asking the child why he or she thinks that a person might be fat. This may give the teacher a glimpse into children’s misunderstandings and help the teacher figure out how to address these misconceptions. For instance, a child might believe that the person is fat because they have a horse in their stomach, based on hearing someone say, “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse!” Other children may not have misconceptions and may give logical reasons based on their life experiences and/or what they have been told. If a child says that she thinks people are fat because they eat too much junk food, the teacher might acknowledge that is one reason people may be fat, but give the child some other reasons as well (e.g. some medical conditions make people gain weight). Above all, an anti-bias educator would emphasize respect regardless of physical differences.