When Your Kids Talk About Weight Issues

My 8 year old son does the same thing. When he does ask, I do not push away knowledge and I simply answer the question that best suites the way he will understand it. I try to imply what food choices would be better than others and that physical activity is important. After a few mths, he did stop asking so much about it. It goes to show you that this is your lifestyle now!

I personally think it's great that kids want to know the numbers.

My father always told me life is not like a video game, but for all the brilliant things he taught me, and with respect to the old man, he was wrong on that count. You play by the rules and you remember to have fun, and you take breaks once in a while. That applies to gaming, as well as to life. There is a lot of wisdom in gaming, and a lot of fluff, like any medium -- books, TV, and movies included.

In roleplaying games like Oblivion and Skyrim (I know of no other genre this readily applies to), you have several factors that apply to each item (weapon, armor, potion, scroll, food) you use, every spell you cast, etc. Just like food in real life. There's the weight of the food (how much sustenance you're actually taking in), the calories, the protein, the fat, the carbs, etc. All of these are important. Just like picking the right weapon (a high-damaging sword that deals fire damage isn't going to be as effective on a fire atronarch (demon, sort of) as a lower-damage axe that deals ice damage) you have to pick the right foods.

Granted, it's just as well that kids eat what they want, within reason, generally making smarter choices. They're gonna run/play it off anyway. But I think it's neat that kids want to know the numbers as well. And it's better they count calories than judging people based on body size. I think I humbled my niece, when, at 6 or 7, she asked me why I was so fat. I told her I made some bad food choices in my 20s and I'm working on better choices in my 30s. She then went on to ask me about that... I don't think she meant anything bad, was probably just parroting something her mother (one of THOSE kind of people, haha) had said. Since then she's noticed a couple times that I've lost weight, and has said so. (Don't get me wrong, I still don't make all the right choices. But at least, most of the time, I keep my calories under the limit.)

My eleven year old son does the same thing. I just tell him the truth. He could use to lose a few pounds, and since I am trying to be healthier, we talk about good foods and calories.

I love that he wants the knowledge. Maybe he will grow up differently than I did...a chubby kid

I'm 25 now but when i was a teenager I had a bad case of anorexia. From my experience I absolutely feel that you should not talk about diets/calories/weight loss in frong of your children and ESPECIALLY NOT at the dinner table.

I'd say tell him, but like another poster said frame it as an energy source, not the evil little things we treat them like. Emphasize the importance of getting the right amount of energy for the body to grow strong and healthy. I wish I had learned that from my mom, instead of clean my plate and no sense of healthy versus unhealthy foods. Maybe he'll grow up asking himself, do I need this energy fuel, or just want it, and learn how to make good choices more often than most of us on MFP probably used to do.

My four and six year olds will ask about calories too. They don't really understand what it means, and I tell them that it isn't as important for them to worry about how many calories something has in it, just whether it is a sometimes food or a food that they should have very little of, or something that they can eat whenever. I don't make them clean their plates, but if they don't eat their fruits and veggies, they know that they don't have the same options for snacks. This way, nothing is truly off limits for them, but they know that they don't have free reign on the snack cupboard.

To sum - redirect the question to something they can understand better. To a 4 year old, 100 is a huge amount. It is the largest! Now imagine telling them that their meal has 600 calories?

Little kids often just want basic answer. "how many calories in this?". " 200". The number 200 means nothing to them, in terms of calories. It's just a question.

And, like others have said, treat calories simply as units of energy.

My son is 3 and my daughter 17 months, and I am careful not to talk about calories, trying to lose weight etc in front of them. They know I go to the gym a lot, but my son does gymnastics lessons, so I guess he assumes I am just going off to do what he does! He says 'Mummy's going to mummy's gym, not Jack's gym.'

He has always been a poor eater though, he lived off yoghurts until he was well over 2, he just was not interested in food, and is on the 98th centile for height but only the 50th for weight. At the stage when he was being weaned, I was being stupid and living off salad, and obsessed with losing all my baby weight, and I'm worried it affected him. He's a lot better now, but still doesn't eat that much. My 17 month old eats more sometimes.

Since having my daughter I have become much more sensible and I eat properly and healthily instead of living off lettuce leaves, and apart from the fact that I have lost more weight doing it this way, my daughter is a very good eater and will try anything, and enjoys healthy food. So I think I've done something right this time!

I think at 11 it's fine for them to understand calories, and that we should eat a certain amount, and they should be aware of it, but not at 4.