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Tag: pediatricians

  • Beyond the Screen: How Trading Cards Support Learning in a Digital Age

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    Tisha Lewis Ellison

    Parents, teachers, and even pediatricians have tried everything to manage kids’ screen time — banning phones from bedrooms, requiring outdoor play, encouraging reading, even prescribing medications. But the pull of technology isn’t going away. Social media, streaming platforms, and artificial intelligence tools are programmed to grab the attention of young people with remarkable effectiveness.

    That has raised alarms and prompted calls for a solution to what some describe as the attention crisis among young people. FormerU.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy proposed warning labels on social media platforms, blaming them for the youth mental health crisis. Lawmakers at both the state and federal levels are considering new limits on how young people use these platforms. But banning – or severely restricting –  digital technologies won’t solve the problem.

    And the truth is we probably should not go down that path anyway. Today’s kids are not just passive scrollers. They are active consumers of digital media – creating graphic content, composing unique sounds and beats, designing their own video games, as well as producing digital stories and podcasts to express themselves, empower others, and bring awareness to issues that matter to them.

    The challenge, therefore, is not about depriving kids of these creative outlets. It is about finding balance and giving young people appealing alternatives that provide slower, more tactile experiences that strengthen skills they will need in school and beyond. And one old pastime that is gaining popularity is showing us why this balance matters: trading cards.

    Collecting and trading cards may sound nostalgic, but the hobby is a powerful developmental tool with lessons that prior generations likely took for granted. Kids who collect and trade cards aren’t just chasing favorite players or characters. They are exercising executive function – a set of mental skills that allow people to plan, organize, focus, follow instructions, and manage time.

    And the wider world is beginning to take notice. The global trading card market, valued at $15.8 billion in 2024, is projected to grow to $23.5 billion by 2030. Driving this surge are parents tapping into nostalgia, kids drawn in by Pokémon or star athletes, and a growing awareness that card collecting isn’t just a pastime, it can be a profitable venture. Yet beyond propelling the trading card market to financial heights, the hobby leaves children with practical instruction and meaningful interactions.

    Collecting and trading cards encourage negotiation, compromise, persuasion, and other skills valuable in any society, let alone one built on commerce like our own. Unlike the instant gratification of the online world, the act of collecting and trading cards also demands patience and long-term thinking – just as journals, jigsaw puzzles, board games, and other recreational activities of the past do.

    Consider what it takes to amass and maintain a collection: saving money, making calculated acquisitions, and learning to assess the value of what you have in your collection. It means knowing what conditions to sell in, or when to trade for something with greater promise. In the process, kids learn to work with peers and, like budding entrepreneurs, develop the focus and accountability that endless clicking and swiping rarely demand.

    Educators are noticing too. Some teachers use trading cards for real-life applications of math skills and reading comprehension. Others bring them into classrooms to promote focus and spur constructive social interaction. The same qualities that make cards fun—organizing, tracking, forecasting, and making comparisons—mirror the very skills students will need to succeed in school and later in the workplace.

    None of this, however, means kids should abandon what the digital world has to offer. Quite the contrary. My research in digital and STEAM literacies (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) shows that young people thrive when they move fluidly between digital and analog practices—gaining strength both academically and socially. Digital tools, when used well, can open doors to creativity and opportunity that analog practices alone cannot. But in an age of constant pings, alerts, and distractions, analog activities like card trading require kids to plan, adapt to challenges, weigh options—and pause long enough to reflect.

    Breaking the digital trance may be closer than we think. In a world that moves faster every day, slowing down with something tangible, like a pack of trading cards, reminds us that learning, connection, and joy can still be held in our hands.

    Tisha Lewis Ellison, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, Mary Frances Early College of Education. Dr. Lewis Ellison has received numerous accolades and awards for her research, which examines the intersections of family literacy, multimodality, and digital and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics) literacy practices among Black and Latinx families and youth. 

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    Dr. Tisha Lewis Ellison

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  • 5 parenting practices that have changed since you were a baby

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    (CNN) — Parenting is not for the faint of heart. It can take new parents a beat or two to fully tune in to what their baby’s cries could mean. So many small but consequential decisions need to be made on a daily, if not hourly, basis. There are also questions. Many questions.

    At a time when misinformation abounds, pediatrician Dr. David Hill is the calm voice of reassurance and reason, grounded in science. He encourages new parents to ask their baby’s pediatrician questions, including about any advice they find on the internet.

    “People come to me with stuff all the time,” Hill said, noting the importance of forging a solid parent-pediatrician relationship. That trust, he said, is what’s “going to steer us through this swamp of misinformation and disinformation that’s out there right now.”

    Hill is a father of five in a blended family who has been in practice for more than 25 years. He has been the associate medical editor of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ book “Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age 5, 8th edition,” and is slated to be the editor-in-chief for the next edition. He also cohosts the academy’s podcast “Pediatrics On Call.”

    “The question I get the most often from new parents, and even those who have been at it for a while is, is this normal?” Hill told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently on his podcast, Chasing Life.

    “As somebody who’s seen probably over 10,000 children … it is a joy for me to almost always be able to reassure, and be like, ‘Yeah. That’s fine. They do that. Kids do a lot of weird things, and they do a lot of things at their own pace,” Hill said. “Normal can be all over the map.”

    You can listen to the podcast’s full episode here.

    Hill said he strongly urges parents to seek out trusted, reliable sources for guidance. “Sources of information that have been validated, that use real data,” he said. “And honestly, talk to your child’s doctor — develop that relationship, because that’s what we’ve dedicated our lives to doing.”

    Hill works closely with the AAP on the organization’s parent-facing information. “I do that because I know, over decades of experience, how dedicated everybody in that group is to making sure we get this right, including being willing to get egg on our faces and say, ‘You know what? We were wrong,’ when we were wrong,” Hill said. “And that’s really critical. Anybody who’s never wrong, I don’t trust, because none of us is perfect.”

    During the decades Hill has been in practice, he has witnessed some of the babies he saw at the start of his career become parents themselves. During that time, he has also watched the science of child health evolve.

    “What I tell these new parents is sometimes the complete opposite of what I said when they were babies!” he said via email.

    Here are the five biggest changes Hill has seen over his career.

    Safe sleep practices

    Sleep guidelines literally flipped in 1994, when Hill finished medical school. That year, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development launched the first “Back to Sleep” campaign urging parents to put their baby to sleep on their back. Before then, parents had been told to put an infant to sleep on the belly to avoid aspiration.

    But that’s not all. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission banned drop-side cribs from the marketplace in 2011 and warned against inclined sleepers in 2019, Hill said. And the Safe Sleep for Babies Act, signed into federal law in 2022, outright banned the sale of drop-side cribs and crib bumpers that could potentially suffocate infants.

    He noted that in 1990, there were 154 sudden unexpected infant deaths per 100,000 babies, a number that fell 44% to a low of 86 in 2011. (It has since gone up to 100 deaths per 100,000 in 2022).

    “While some of those deaths are from mysterious or unavoidable causes,” he said, “many could still be prevented by following all the safe sleep guidelines, including not only placing infants on their backs to sleep, but never co-sleeping (and) avoiding soft bedding.”

    Advice to prevent food allergies

    Complete avoidance is out, and small exposures are in.

    “I still remember in 2015 searching all the drawers in our practice for outdated infant feeding handouts that, if parents followed them, could put their babies at increased risk of developing life-threatening food allergies,” Hill said. “These handouts told parents to avoid giving their infants and toddlers anything containing peanuts or eggs until they turned at least 2 years old, even 3 if they had eczema or a family history of allergies.”

    But, Hill said, in 2015, the results of the LEAP trial confirmed what some earlier studies had suggested: “That it wasn’t early peanut exposure that had caused a doubling of peanut allergies in the preceding decade. It was the advice in these handouts!” he said.

    Now parents and guardians are advised to introduce peanut-containing products and eggs along with other solid foods in the first year of life, as soon as babies are safely taking solids, usually around 6 months of age.

    Preventing babies from having any exposure to potential allergens apparently left their immune systems oversensitive when they finally did encounter them later on.

    Umbilical cord care

    Umbilical cords used to be treated with a messy (for doctors) purple “triple” dye — an antiseptic to keep bacterial infections at bay. Now, the recommendation in well-resourced countries and communities is to let the cord dry on its own — and to keep a close eye on it.

    “The purpose of the dye was to prevent potentially dangerous infections of the umbilical cord and surrounding tissues (omphalitis),” Hill said. “Then, a few brave souls, perhaps fed up with their dry-cleaning bills, decided to see what would happen if we used alcohol instead of the dye. It turned out … nothing.”

    Hill said the next step was to just let the cord dry on its own, taking care not to trap it in a wet or soiled diaper for extended periods and to avoid soaking it at bathtime. That practice is where the guidance stands today.

    Some known risk factors for omphalitis, Hill said, include low birth weight, prolonged rupture of membranes or prolonged labor, maternal infection, nonsterile delivery or home birth, and improper cord care.

    “If you see the skin around the belly button turning red or notice an unusually foul discharge, get your baby seen,” he advised.

    What about bathing? Should new parents avoid baths until the cord falls off? “Advice on this one varies, but it’s not clear there’s any more danger from a brief immersion than from a sponge bath,” he said.

    New and better vaccines

    The vaccination schedule for infants and children has been updated throughout the years as new shots become available, offering better protection against childhood scourges.

    “My dad is also a pediatrician, and I grew up hearing horror stories of babies suffering from meningitis and sepsis. It seems my dad was always dashing off to the hospital to perform spinal taps,” Hill recalled. “This started to change, however, in 1985, when a vaccine against Haemophilus influenza B, one of the most dreaded infections of childhood, came out.

    “In training and early in my career, I saw awful infections from another bacteria, pneumococcal pneumonia. These infections became much rarer in 2000, when the first pneumococcal vaccine for children came out,” he said. “Since then, that vaccine has expanded from covering seven subtypes of pneumococcus to covering as many as 23.”

    Just in the past year, Hill said he witnessed another infantile infection he dreaded, RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, plummet in frequency and severity thanks to both vaccines for expectant mothers and antibody injections for babies.

    Considering the big picture

    Another change involves a paradigm shift in the way pediatricians think about health and well-being, Hill said.

    “In pediatrics, one of those tectonic shifts hit in 1998, the year I started practice and the year the ACEs Study came out,” he said, referring to a study that looked at adverse childhood experiences. Those potentially traumatic events include physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse; the death of a parent; mental illness; or violence or substance abuse in the household, any of which can create toxic stress in a child, leading to changes in brain development and affecting future mental, physical and emotional health.

    “Many people had noticed that traumatic events in childhood … seemed to impact later health,” Hill said. “The ACEs Study measured and quantified the extent and duration of these effects, and the results were more dramatic and longer-lasting than anyone had guessed.”

    An explosion of research followed, Hill said, which led to a new approach in pediatrics.

    “Every child faces stressful events, some severe enough to impact their health. But the safe, stable, nurturing relationships that children build with the adults around them can protect them,” he explained. “Understanding these interactions inspires trauma-informed care, an effort to work with families to address the stresses in their lives and to build those emotional connections that can help their children thrive.”

    Under this approach, Hill said, pediatricians pivoted from asking “What’s wrong with you?” to asking “What happened to you, and how can we help?”

    “A key concept here is the ‘good enough parent,’” he said. “No parent is perfect, but perfection is not required to be safe, stable, and nurturing.”

    As a parent himself, Hill said that thought “brings me a sigh of relief.”

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    Andrea Kane and CNN

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  • Pediatricians Suggest Electric Scooters, Curling Irons & Desk Magnets Are Frequently Landing Kids In The Hospital

    Pediatricians Suggest Electric Scooters, Curling Irons & Desk Magnets Are Frequently Landing Kids In The Hospital

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    Pediatricians are calling on parents and kid-friendly communities to be more vigilant with certain consumer products and children.

    According to NBC News, this year’s Academy of Pediatrics National Conference will feature key research on hospital visits involving child injuries. The conference began on Oct. 20 and will last through Oct. 24 in Washington, D.C.

    Meanwhile, this particular research will reportedly name consumer products that are “increasingly or frequently” sending kids to the emergency room. That list reportedly includes electric scooters, curling irons, and desk magnets.

    The reported research will explain injuries related to burns caused by curling irons, ingestion of the magnets, and injuries on the scooters.

    RELATED: 7.5 Million Baby Shark Toys Recalled Over ‘Risks Of Impalement’ & ‘Punctures’

    Hazards Of Electic Scooters & Curling Irons

    Pediatric resident Dr. Brandon Rozanski seemingly reflected on his curling iron-specific research with NBC News. He revealed that between 2013 and 2022, over 31,000 burn injuries came from hairstyling tools in people ages 24 or younger.

    Dr. Rozanski added that the majority of those affected were aged 10 or under, but only about 1,000 of those cases required an emergency room visit.

    For context, Dr. Brandon Rozanski is currently stationed at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. His research relies on data from the Electronic Injury Surveillance System.

    Meanwhile, research from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) suggests that electric scooter injuries rose 71 percent between 2020 and 2021. ER departments reportedly named over 13,000 related incidents in that time period, particularly in ages 16 to 18. The most common injury sustained was head trauma, with 67 percent of the affected users not wearing helmets.

    “If you’re going to have your 15-year-old teenage boy riding [an electric scooter], they don’t need one that goes 55 miles per hour,” pediatric orthopedic surgeon at CHOP Dr. J. Todd Lawrence seemingly told NBC News.

    ER Pediatric Physician Explains Dangers Of Swallowing Products Like Magnets

    NBC News spoke with Dr. Leah Middelburg of the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Middelburg’s research largely focuses on “rare-earth magnets,” which are sometimes sold as desk toys for adults.

    She told the outlet that the magnets, which can come in “tens to hundreds in little sets,” are “up there with the things” she worries “a lot about kids getting ahold of.”

    “Unfortunately, there are a few products that unto themselves pose a danger to a child,” Dr. Middelburg said.

    Take Brandon Bruski, for example. In January 2013, Brandon — pictured below — ended up in the hospital with sharp stomach cramps and vomiting. Doctors later discovered that the child, about 8 or 9 years old at the time, had accidentally swallowed two magnets from a set of desk toys called Buckyballs, per The Press Of Atlantic City.

    After a second visit to the hospital, Bruski underwent emergency surgery to remove the magnets and sections of his large and small intestines. The magnets had reportedly clamped his intestines together and caused ulcerations in his intestinal lining.

    RELATED: Woman, 61, Dies After She’s Swallowed By Clothing Donation Box In California
    Pediatricians Say Electric Scooters, Curling Irons And Desk Magnets Are Frequently Landing Kids In The Hospital
    Brandon Bruski, 9, holds dozens of Buckyballs on Thursday, April 11, 2013, in Crystal Lake, Illinois. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

     

    Thankfully, Brandon was able to return home a few days after surgery. But that’s not always the case. In 2005, toddler Kenny Sweet Jr. died after swallowing rare-earth magnets from some Magnetix toys, according to the Chicago Tribune. The magnets had cut off the blood supply in his digestive tract, causing the death of surrounding tissue called gangrene.

    Dr. Middelburg’s research relies on data from 25 children’s hospitals in the U.S. The data shows nearly 600 cases involving people 21 and under swallowing high-powered magnets or stuffing them in their noses and ears between 2017 and 2019.

    Though the pediatric physician cites an increase in related cases as of 2017, doctors remain hopeful that a mandate passed last year will address the concerns. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reportedly passed requirements for magnet products to be too weak to cause internal injuries or too big to swallow.

     

    RELATED: Hey Papi! Maluma Reveals He’s Expecting A Daughter With Girlfriend Susana Gomez: ‘I’ve Always Dreamed About This’

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    Cassandra S

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  • Q&A: Maybe Kids Don’t Need to Lose Weight

    Q&A: Maybe Kids Don’t Need to Lose Weight

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    Feb. 22, 2023 — After the American Academy of Pediatrics’ new guidelines for treating obese kids came out, I wrote “What Parents Should Know” for WebMD. It included insights from several experts and two moms of overweight children. The guidelines have proven controversial due to the recommendations of medication and bariatric surgery for older kids — but also because a growing number of people question whether telling a child to lose weight is ever a good idea. 

    One of the most prominent voices reaching parents about kids and weight belongs to Virginia Sole-Smith. A journalist and creator of a newsletter and podcast focused on fatphobia, diet culture, and parenting called Burnt Toast, she’s also the author of a forthcoming book on the subject. Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture will be published in April. I spoke with her about the AAP guidelines and how to parent a fat — or thin — child in our seemingly inescapable diet culture.

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    Q: This is probably due to my own history as a fat kid, but when I read the new AAP guidelines, they struck me as thoughtful and empathetic, though the idea of medicating or operating on teens made me uneasy. But you point out that encouraging weight loss in the first place is likely to cause more problems than it solves.

    A: We don’t have a ton of evidence that high body weight itself is the problem. There are reasons to be concerned about weight-linked health conditions, but pathologizing body size brings with it a whole other set of complications. When you do that, you start telling kids their bodies are problems to solve, you start focusing on food in ways that can raise their risk for disordered eating and eating disorders. There’s a whole ripple effect to this that the guidelines aren’t reckoning with. 

    Underpinning this whole conversation is anti-fat bias. We live in a culture that believes fat bodies are less valuable, less lovable, and less attractive than thin bodies. Our whole world is built to celebrate and welcome thin bodies and push out larger ones. This is just another way we’re doing that.

    Q: People may wonder why the AAP would put out guidelines that might be harmful for kids since this is an organization that clearly cares about children’s health. 

    A: It’s really tricky. Officially, in their paper, they say, “We have no financial disclosures to reveal, everything’s on the up and up.” But the AAP itself receives donations from pharmaceutical companies, including Novo Nordisk, which is the manufacturer of two of the biggest weight loss drugs. A lot of the authors on this paper have received research funds, speaking fees, consulting fees, etc., or they’re employed by centers that do bariatric surgery. That doesn’t need to get disclosed because it’s just their job. They’re considered an expert because of it, but they’re financially entangled with weight loss being a thing we push for. (Editor’s note: WebMD reached out to the AAP for comment. This is their reply: The AAP has a strict conflict-of-interest disclosure policy and process for all authors of policy statements, clinical reports and clinical practice guidelines. The authors include medical experts with a wide range of perspectives, medical specialties and professional experiences, including some who have conducted research on weight and obesity and others who have devoted their careers to this aspect of medicine. Their knowledge and expertise was important in the development of these evidence-based guidelines. The guidelines also underwent an extensive peer-review process among many other groups of pediatricians and pediatric specialists, and ultimately were approved by the AAP Board of Directors.)

    Q: Is trying to lose weight always bad? The moms I interviewed for that article, both of whom use the new injectable weight loss drugs, said they found it reassuring to have a medical solution to their weight problems. It removed a lot of the shame to know it was a physiological thing. And doctors point out that if your child had diabetes you wouldn’t hesitate to give them drugs. So why is this different?

    A: Why is because body size in and of itself isn’t a medical condition. Doctors have pathologized it and made obesity a diagnosis, but there’s a lot of evidence to suggest it shouldn’t be. So it’s not the same as giving your kid an inhaler for asthma or insulin for diabetes. That’s what I want — I want doctors to medicate the actual medical conditions. 

    The moms you spoke to are being told over and over that their kid’s body is a problem, and they are to blame. Parents in general, but moms especially, get so much judgment if they have a fat kid. And if you’re a fat parent with a fat kid, doubly so. They’re being told if you don’t get this problem under control, your child will have lifelong health consequences. Your child will be bullied. Your child will be unpopular, unlovable, less employable, and so on. All of that is driven by bias. That’s not medical. 

    I empathize with parents — they’re terrified for their kids so making kids smaller feels like the answer. But when we choose that, we reinforce anti-fat bias and we make it more powerful. And we say to these kids, yup, the bullies are right, your body is the problem, you are the problem. We need to change you. We don’t need to change this whole system.

    Q: The AAP guidelines say that the treatments they’re recommending statistically don’t lead to eating disorders. You argue that in reality, they do. 

    A: Eating disorders are really underdiagnosed in fat people because we assume they only happen to thin white girls. But we know they happen to people of every age, every gender, every race. There’s a lot of evidence to show that fat folks, by the time they do get treated, are much sicker because doctors have been reinforcing that disordered behavior along the way. They’re so happy to see weight loss, they don’t question how the loss was achieved. But you absolutely can have an eating disorder, you can be experiencing the physical complications of eating disorders, the heart issues, the fainting, all of that, in a larger body. You don’t have to be emaciated to deserve treatment.

    As for the AAP saying these programs don’t cause eating disorders, the research they used to determine that didn’t follow kids long enough. Often studies only follow people for 1 to 2 years. If you put a 10-year-old on a diet and follow them until they’re 11 or 12, that eating disorder may not onset until age 14 or 15. 

    And then when they did check for eating disorder symptoms, they looked for things like binge eating, overeating, purging. They looked for the symptoms they expect fat people to show, but they did not look for restriction, skipping meals, cutting out food groups, because No. 1, they don’t think fat people do that, and No. 2, that is exactly what they’re teaching the kids to do: to restrict. 

    Q: There are diseases with clear correlations to excess weight. I was just diagnosed with arthritis in my hip, and I suspect it has to do with the fact that I was 100 pounds overweight for years. How should we be talking about that?

    A: We often rush to say weight is legitimately an issue without investigating. Might a thin person with the same habits have the same risk for the condition? Just focusing on making body size smaller won’t necessarily affect whatever lifestyle factors are at play. 

    There’s also the fact that people in larger bodies receive significantly worse medical care, so a thin person reporting symptoms might get treatment faster than a fat person. I remember interviewing a weight-inclusive doctor, and I asked about knee issues. I’m fat and I have knee problems. And she said, “I have knee problems, too. I get physical therapy, I’ve gotten surgery, I’ve been prescribed all these different treatments.” But fat people get told to lose weight to take pressure off your knees. They don’t get referrals to physical therapy and things that might help these issues. The bias becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    Of course, there are conditions where weight may play a causal role. I’m not disputing that. I don’t think anyone is disputing that. What we’re disputing is treating fat people like it’s their fault — if only they’d had more willpower, they wouldn’t be in this situation. Denying them care in a punitive way. That’s the harder thing for the medical community to wrap their heads around. Even if you’re fat and unhealthy, your body is still worthy of dignity and respect and health care. 

    The last piece is that sustainable weight loss doesn’t work most of the time. Dieting has a huge failure rate. Medications and surgery may be starting to change that, but they come with significant side effects. The surgery is going to be lifelong, and the medication you have to stay on for life to sustain the weight loss. You’re looking at a lifetime of consequences.

    Q: Let’s talk about the more positive side of things. In your book, you write about fat positivity and how to instill it, telling your child, “Your body is never the problem.” What does a kid get out of hearing that?

    A: It’s not the doctor’s fault, but doctors always see bodies as problems to solve — why is this symptom or behavior happening? For a kid sitting under the microscope, what a gross feeling that is, knowing someone has to invest time and money into fixing them. And with weight, it reinforces this whole larger bias. 

    But you can’t necessarily control what the doctor says in an appointment. You can ask not to discuss BMI or weight, you can try to set boundaries, but you can’t guarantee how the conversation will go. The only thing you can control is what your child hears you say. If you say to the doctor, “I don’t view their body as a problem,” at least your child comes away with the knowledge that my body is safe in my home, with my family. My parents don’t see me this way. It feels like an important foundation that so many fat kids don’t get. 

    Q: What about parents of thin kids? What should they be doing?

    A: I really want parents of thin kids to be talking about this, for two reasons. One, thin kids aren’t immune to the harms of anti-fat bias. Not every thin kid will grow up to be a thin adult. I say this as a former thin kid who’s a fat adult. It’s really important that thinness not be so interwoven with their identity, that if they can’t maintain that thinness, they feel like they’re failing.

    Thing two is, parents of thin kids need to talk about anti-fat bias the same way parents of white kids need to talk about racism. If we don’t have these hard conversations, if we don’t teach our kids to name and unlearn this bias, the rest of the culture is going to teach them instead. 

    It’s not that I want parents to try to keep their kids in a fat-positive bubble with no exposure to diet culture. I want parents to be naming these things, to be learning alongside their kids, to be having conversations so that we can help kids develop critical thinking skills. Then they can start to point out diet culture to us, they can say, “Hey, this is a really messed up way to talk about bodies in this TV show or this book I’m reading or this person I’m following on TikTok.” That is going to do more to buffer kids against these influences because we’re giving them the option to disagree with it. We’re giving them the option to think about going a different way. 

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