{"id":4394,"date":"2008-05-04T06:10:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-04T13:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/05\/04\/teaching-children-to-judge-themselves-by-their-weight\/"},"modified":"2008-05-04T06:10:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-04T13:29:48","slug":"teaching-children-to-judge-themselves-by-their-weight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4394","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Children To Judge Themselves By Their Weight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeff Dinelli at The Left Coaster<\/a> just sent this email to his daughter’s vice principal.<\/p>\n

Ms. (Vice Principal),<\/p>\n

My name is Jeff Dinelli, and I am the father of two (local school) students, one of whom is (my daughter), a 6th grader. I am writing to express my extreme concern over a Physical Education project that started this week in Mrs. (Physical Education teacher’s) class.<\/p>\n

The kids were to enter their height and age into a computerized program, which informed them of their “ideal” weight and percentage of body fat. They have been instructed to count their daily caloric intake. Wednesday night I picked up a pizza on the way home from (my 2nd grade son’s) little league game and (my daughter) was frantic because the box didn’t indicate how many calories were in each slice.<\/p>\n

She and her friends now discuss each other’s weight, body fat, and how many calories they ingested the night before.<\/p>\n

Frankly, I am furious. Let’s leave aside the very real problem of the overweight children in the class who assuredly are suffering from utter embarassment right now because they are heavier than their classmates and are surely being harassed for it. We live in a culture where the ideal of what a female should look like is extremely unrealistic. From the models on the covers of magazines, to actresses on television and in movies, girls are taught to starve themselves to match up with their role models. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of the horrific prevalence of serious eating disorders such as Anorexia nervosa, Binge eating and Bulimia (if you need help please Google the Center for Mental Health Services or the National Institute of Mental Health).<\/p>\n

If an “ideal” weight or percentage of body fat is taught to 12-year-old children in school, it should concentrate on the absurdities of what our culture expects girls to look like and the often deadly diseases that can easily begin to affect young women who become obsessed with squeezing into the latest fashions and looking “good” exposing their midriffs or wearing that two-piece bathing suit at the pool.<\/p>\n

There are many ways to teach the importance of proper nutrition and exercise without being told what they “should” weigh or how their bodies “should” look.<\/p>\n

I would like this program justified, though I cannot think of a way that could possibly be done. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yay for Jeff! And lucky for his daughter to have such a great father. (And I say that even though he’s a Hillary supporter. :-p )<\/p>\n

There’s more at Jeff’s blog. I hope he gets a good response… although I’m not optimistic. There’s a lot of pressure on educators to make children more focused on, and more fearful of, their own waistlines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff Dinelli at The Left Coaster just sent this email to his daughter’s vice principal. Ms. (Vice Principal), My name is Jeff Dinelli, and I am the father of two (local school) students, one of whom is (my daughter), a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fat-fat-and-more-fat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}