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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Meet the Screamers
My kids are so loud they go to group speech therapy.
By Jennifer Moses
[11/02/99]

My grandparents were pioneers in the battle for visitation rights
To me, they were dependable, a security blanket I would never lose.
By Damien Cave
[11/01/99]

Eager saints and sweet-toothed sinners
The blessed Halloween of my youth
By Kate Convissor
[10/29/99]

Halloween hand-wringing
Are the stories about trick-or-treat mayhem for real?
By Jill Wolfson
[10/29/99]

Please, God, don't let him be a penis grabber
Then again, if he is a penis grabber, keep him away from mine.
By Jonathan Kronstadt
[10/28/99]

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Long after he has gone to bed his mother says, "Sometimes his size gets to him." Not that much, she says. Not like hers got to her when she was 11 and in her yearbook Henry Ramos wrote, "You are nice for an elephant." Her son suffers less than she did because he has a lot of friends as fat as he is, she says. Fatter.

In the awkward lull that follows I force my eyes down from kitchen shelves crammed with fudge sauce and Cap'n Crunch.

Scott eats no more than any ordinary kid, she says. I wonder. On the day I visit he has pancakes for breakfast. In his sack lunch go a steak sandwich, cookies, a Snapple. After school when his mom is at work he does homework while watching Jackie Chan kick butt in "Rush Hour" on TV. He makes a bowl of popcorn, adds butter, pours sugar over it. White crystals shimmer in the sun.

"This is my recipe," he beams. He is smart and good-natured. His self-confidence seems real. He sees himself as a world traveler, an athlete and a math whiz. Which he is.

Is he OK? Emotionally, yes, as kids go. But, physically, no. Obesity can seriously cut your lifespan -- just ask researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who contributed their own study last week to announce that fat kills.

Who denies that every child deserves high self-esteem? No one wants fat kids to feel bad about themselves. Look how my mother suffered. Billboards that glorify skinny bodies create hordes of bulimics. Kids have shot themselves after being taunted about their weight.

How do you let a child know he or she is loved and powerful and fine but also, ahem, may be on the road to major health problems? To having difficulty climbing stairs, fitting into theater seats, chasing buses? Is it wrong to discuss with them the possibility of losing weight? Is it wrong not to? That is the dilemma.

For dinner my friend heats up a casserole that is comprised of ground beef, cream-of-mushroom soup, cheese and tortillas fried in oil. Scott dislikes vegetables so she has chopped tomatoes fine and obscured them under the cheese. Then they bring out the ice cream.

Diets do not work, my friend says. She knows this from her own youth, and current research bears it out. The body will not stand that sense of deprivation, forced starvation, and fights back by lowering its metabolism. Which is why, after the diet ends, nearly all dieters quickly gain back what weight they lost.

"Nobody ever told me I was fine the way I was," my friend says in a voice that stretches thin and cracks. "I tell my son which foods are good for him and let him choose."

I want to laugh. If my mother had let me choose, at 11, I would have lived on Goober Grape and Hostess Sno-Balls. Her nightmare would have come true.

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