Mom Asks Pediatrician Not to Mention Weight at Her 9-Year-Old Daughter's Checkup to Prevent Body Shaming
“We have managed so far to keep a body neutral and body positive environment for her childhood, preserving that,” Caroline Hardin wrote in a letter to her child's doctor
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One North Carolina mom is trying to create a body neutral environment for her 9-year-old daughter — starting at the pediatrician’s office.
Caroline Hardin posted a viral video to TikTok saying that she was “trying something new at the pediatrician” and would “report back on how it goes.” She then cut to a letter she wrote to her daughter’s doctor asking that he or she “refrain from using qualitative words” when describing her daughter’s weight.
“We have managed so far to keep a body neutral and body positive environment for her childhood, and I appreciate your cooperation in preserving that for as long as we can,” Hardin wrote. “Feel free to ask to speak with me outside the exam room if you have any concerns. Thank you!”
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She captioned the video — which garnered over 100k views, over 900 likes and 146 comments — “Don’t judge my handwriting. i was writing in the car on top of a captain underpants book lol,” along with the hashtags “body neutrality” and “body positive parenting.”
Several people swarmed the comments of the video praising her for taking the initiative to write the letter. One parent wrote, “I wish I had done this earlier with my kids. They dread the yearly checkup because of this specific complex.”
Another said, “As a kid who was deeply scarred by my pediatrician’s comments about my weight, thank you so much for doing this for your child.”
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In a follow up TikTok, Hardin reported that the doctor’s visit “went really well” after she handed the letter in. She noted that the nurse “made no comment” when she was weighing her daughter and the doctor showed them a “growth curve with no numbers on it.”
“... [The doctor] told my kid, your body is growing exactly the way it wants to grow. Hooray!,” Hardin said in the video. “I was actually pretty happy with that ‘cause I feel like where my kid was at, that was appropriate for her.”
She added that there was “no mention” of her daughter’s weight or body shape and the doctor mainly just asked questions about how the child felt and if she was “able to exercise and eat lots of fruits and veggies and meats and balance meals.”
“So my kid’s takeaway was that the doctor noticed her nail polish and that she got to tell her that she had eight friends,” she said.
Related: Mom Explains Why It's So Important to Be Body Positive in Front of Kids — Even When Bikini Shopping
Family physician and parenting expert Dr. Deborah Gilboa told TODAY, which initially broke the story, that conversations surrounding a child’s body that are based in shame can lead them to possibly have an unhealthy relationship with food in the future.
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“It can drive kids toward hiding their eating and attaching eating to emotional regulation in negative and positive ways,” Gilboa told the outlet, adding that she instead recommends that doctors have emotion-based conversations about health rather than making it about what they should or shouldn’t eat.
She also recommended asking questions like, “Is your body doing everything for you that you want it to do?” and “What are some of your tools for when you don’t like how you feel?”
She added, “When I see patients, I talk about healthy habits.”
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