Yesterday Annie went for her ballet lesson and came back once again thinking she was fat! Her ballet school teachers try to 'encourage' the students to control their weight, but I seriously do not like the negative methods which they use. Annie is of above average height, for her age, and will of course weigh more than some of her shorter peers. She is, in my (I think more reasonable) opinion, neither over nor underweight!
I understand that weight is an issue when you want to take ballet seriously. Yes, it's pretty hard to jump gracefully when you waddle like a hippo, but as this age, most of the girls are just taking up ballet for fun or exercise. Every week, the teachers will remind them not to eat too much. They will weigh the girls and announce who is the heaviest in class! Annie will always come home worrying that one day she will be the heaviest (in fact there are a few rather overweight girls in her class)! I also understand that obesity is a serious problem with children nowadays. It is a good thing to address that, in fact, but I am sure there are much better ways to go about it.
I have confronted her senior ballet teacher and she seems very proud of the methods which they are using and was even more pleased to hear that Annie thought she was fat!! She felt sure that they were doing their job well, if they could make the children aware of their weight issues! I argued with her, but to no avail. She insisted that it was part of their job as ballet teachers. I agreed that they needed some form of discipline but reminded her not to take it too far.
For goodness sakes, we are talking about 8-9 year olds here! I told her she could use gentler, more positive methods, or educate the parents of children who had real weight issues (not mine!)! She said that those methods didn't work, and some parents were in denial that their children had weight problems! (Ahem... I think she was hinting that I belonged in that category!)
Okay, so let's say you manage to get a child to lose weight with your boot camp methods, but at what costs? The use of shame on such young, tender children can seriously injure their self esteem. You might have 'rescued' her physically, but in the process destroyed her emotionally! There are also other issues like anorexia or bulimia which are more prevalent than we think.
Well, yesterday, Annie told me that they were going to have a 'competition', where everyone would be weighed and the heaviest of each age group would have their photo put up on the school board!! Furthermore, everytime you gained one kilo, you had to run one round or something like that!! This really got my blood boiling!
Well, I had been wondering whether or not to pull Annie out of ballet class, because of these 'crazy' teachers, but I do want her to continue learning ballet, and so I thought I could use this situation to teach Annie a thing or two about 'adults'. It's time they learned that adults don't always know everything and you don't have to be afraid of them!
I told Annie not to listen to her teachers, that aside from ballet, just ignore whatever they said because they were plain stupid! I try not to use this word when talking to the kids, because it's not a very nice word, but in this case, it was just begging to be used! In fact, other more 'colourful' words were also begging to be used, but I managed to restrain myself!
How do you expect children to grow without gaining weight?? These people are downright stupid. I suppose it's a good thing also, so Annie can see that adults are not always right. I want my children to respect elders, but at the same time, I do not want them to trust adults too much or be afraid of them. In this day and age, there are just too many bad people out there, that we have to teach them from young not to be too trusting. Of course we have to try and strike a balance. We do not want them to become too scared and cynical, just aware and less naive, I suppose.
I want my children to be more like Hubby and not me. I find he thinks outside the box better than most people. Where most people see dead ends, he can look beyond and see many different paths. He is not afraid of authority, whereas I'm the type who can lose sleep over unpaid bills, parking tickets or summons!
I think the systems set by society, are designed to keep everyone in check, to produce law-abiding citizens who do as they are told and not cause trouble. Those who challenge authority and think outside the box are those who are more likely to break free of the system and go on to do great things! :) Well, that's my conspiracy theory anyway...
So anyway, I have another theory, as to how Hubby got this trait of his. It goes like this:
What are the two authorities children are afraid of most? (Other than fictional characters like ghosts and goblins!)
1. Teachers and
2. Police officers!
I know this very well, because these are the two threats which have the highest success rates with my most recalcitrant (for the moment) child.
The threats usually go like this: "Eva! If you don't ____________, I'll tell your teacher?!!!", or
"Eva! If you don't ___________, I'm going to call the police!"
(With Eva, I've exhausted all other options and am usually forced to resort to these threats!)
I suppose children see teachers as these mythical goddesses (only women have the patience to teach preschoolers!) who dwell in their school and know the answers to every single question in the universe! And police officers are strong, uniformed, superheros who save the world on a daily basis!
Hubby was not disillusioned like thus, because:
1. his dad was a high ranking police officer, and
2. his mum was a school principal!
So as you can see, Hubby grew up being totally unafraid of police officers, or teachers because mum and dad were the bosses of these people! He knew they were regular people like you and me. Thus, my theory is that the more your kids are afraid of adults/authority, the less 'balls' they have to take on the world in the future!
Okay, I think I've rambled on too far... hope I made some sense!! Adios!
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