madmilt wrote:

In any event, James would prefer to not qualify for a booster seat than to gain four pounds of fat. What is wrong with letting him stay thin?

It is only to a very limited degree that you can enforce assimilation in the form of fat from the palate, and you cannot at all enforce assimilation in any other form from the palate. Do the math. If this were not true, how much would you yourself have weighed at the end of your first year?

Sorry, I fail to see a problem, for child or parent, with his not gaining weight.

Once again, for the 10,000th time, THE PROBLEM IS NOT IN HIS GAINING OR LOSING WEIGHT. THE PROBLEM IS HIS ACTIVELY EXPRESSED FEAR OF GAINING WEIGHT.

I personally don't care if he weighs one pound, or fifty, or two hundred and fifty. I care that my FIVE YEAR OLD is actively expressing fear of gaining weight. It's actually a running joke, among the pediatricians that we've developed a relationship with at his doctors office, that the kid just seriously can't put on weight. He stayed with my mom for a week over the summer (while we were on our honeymoon), and she fed him McDonald's Double Cheeseburgers every day. He didn't gain an ounce.

You know milt, if you've got nothing remotely useful to say (and you seem to not...), it's perfectly OK to say nothing.

Btw, does he know that he weighs 36lbs? Is he weighing himself regularly? I honestly can't remember knowing what my bodyweight was until maybe 5th grade or so (gosh, even that sounds young).

My daughter loves to weigh herself and measure how tall she is and her classmates at e-school do as well. There was a scale at the last field trip we attended and the scale was a big hit. It's perfectly normal. She has known how much she weighed since she could comprehend what it was.
My daughter has a highly expressed fear of gaining weight as well, but like I said I'm pretty sure I know where hers is coming from. She wasn't the only one though either. From teaching I have noticed that girls take an interest in their weight and being thin at a much earlier age, which has also been talked about in some of my college courses. Nothing has been said about boys, just girls.

That is big difference- you do NOT know where James is getting it from correct? All you can really do is find the root of the problem and fix it, and do what his pedi suggested and encourage healthy eating and language usage in regards to weight. It could just be a phase. Kids go through all kinds of phases, even as they get older. Maybe he likes the attention he gets from being so tiny and is scared if he reaches a normal weight or gets bigger that he might lose this attention. Or maybe he feels that being small for his age is a strong part of his identity and he doesn't want to lose this. Just a few thoughts out there.

Sorry Theresa, what threw me off is that, although James has mentioned a fear of being fat, your four posts on this thread do not express any manifestations of such a fear. Quite the contrary: He has been making a heavy effort to gain weight.

We've been laughing for forever about James' not being able to put on weight.

Could his telling you that he did not want to be fat be a defensive response to your laughing – and at something that he apparently cannot control? Please note that I am mentioning this only as a possibility, not a probability. Also, your aunt’s concern might be triggering such a defensive response.
On the other hand, his pediatrician would not have expressed concern, much less mentioned psych disorders, unless he actually had manifested such a fear.

^Dude really?

Theresa wrote:


He told me today that he didn't want to weigh over 40 pounds, because he didn't want to be fat. I questioned him on why, and he said it was because he was afraid it would make him look bad.

It said as much in her first post! How is that NOT a manifestation? The kid has told her he doesn't want to be fat.....

Holy cow Milton..... you tend to say some crazy things occasionally but this thread takes the cake for me.

Oh no, this is something that's physically manifested itself as well. When he was two, they had me keep a journal of everything he'd eaten, in an effort to figure out why the kid can't gain weight. It got so bad - he'd pick up food, touch it to his teeth, go "Mmm!", and mime like he was chewing. And I know he never ate any of it, because two year olds aren't exactly subtle - his mimed chewing was painfully obvious.

I immediatly discontinued the journaling, and report back to the doctor specifically why - I can't foster an eating disorder in a toddler, just because his doctor thinks he needs to weigh 25 pounds instead of 20, or whatever.

So James and his general dislike/outright fear of gaining weight is a long documented problem that he's had. The pediatrician wasn't tossing around the idea of an eating disorder just because. This is just the first time he's verbally expressed an outright fear.

I also agree with you weighing yourself and saying that you weigh this much but you're not fat. And emphasize that he NEEDS to grow and when he starts to weigh more it's because he's getting taller and stronger and that's a GOOD thing. Try to emphasize the gaining weight is a good thing and it means he's healthy.