Matthew's winning camp essay

Why I Want to go to Wellspring Camp

Last summer I went to a YMCA camp in Tennessee. Everyone, including me, loved it there. This camp was at a lake, so a lot of activities were in the water. A favorite activity was called "The Blob," which was basically a huge inflated balloon on the water that was connected to a ladder, which was connected to a bigger part which had a slide on one side. At the front was about an eight-foot jump to the Blob. If you wanted to be launched into the air by someone else jumping on the Blob, you would crawl to the front. This was the part that was hard for me, almost devastating. I saw my friend be launched about twenty feet in the air by someone, and it looked like so much fun. On that first day I tried about five times to go to the edge, but I never made it. Every single time I couldn't pull myself up. I kept trying throughout the week at camp, persevering as long as I could, but I finally had to give up. I think this problem was caused by my weight.

Sometimes I feel like I myself am a Blob. Many people at school call me names that make me think this. I know that I am not a Blob but it is sometimes hard to remember that. When I look at myself in the mirror, I feel like someone I am not. When I was younger, I was able to do things that everyone else could, but that was when I lived in the country in Oregon. When I moved to the city, I didn't get as much exercise, and things slowly got bad. I go to a magnet school with a lot of homework, which means I'm sitting a lot. The movie Supersize Me inspired me to avoid fast food restaurants, and I'm exercising more at a gym that my family joined. But I'm still not losing weight, and I need help.

Almost everyone at school thinks I have a nice personality, but still they make fun of me as if they think it won't bother me. I want to go to a camp where I can do all the activities and where the other kids know what it is like to be overweight. If you've ever read the book Holes, you would know that Stanley, the main character, dreams about going to Camp Fun and Games, and he too was overweight, and he was made fun of by everyone at school. I think if I go to Wellspring Camp, it would be like going to Camp Fun and Games, then because of camp, I would have a chance to think better of myself. And I'm sure when I lose weight from this camp, I would be able to go back to the lake at that other camp, and climb right up on the Blob like everyone else. Also, people will stop making fun of me. By going to camp, I'll be able to conquer the Blob in more ways than one.

Boys and Girls

Do you think the experiences around obesity are different for boys than girls? Do you think girls are more compassionate toward boys??

Swimming is going well for Sadie. Food journals, not so well. This weekend we resume our Saturday morning walking training together. One step at a time!

Happy AND Sad

Last year, when Matthew was gaining so much weight, I began to be very concerned about what was in store for him socially. Middle school can be brutal anyway, but for an overweight child...it can be unbearable.

He only recently let on that he is being teased these days: on the bus, in the halls at school, at swim practice. Good god. When I let myself feel it, it hurts so bad. But I have to let myself feel it, cry even, if I'm going to get the emotional energy and clarity I need to do something about it.

I believe that you have to feel all the emotional impact of something that has impacted you. Your energy gets extremely restrained if, for instance, you've been hit by a train and you go around pretending that you haven't been hit by a train. And if you're upset about something that's happening to your child, and you don't acknowledge how it makes you feel, it can make you very tense and anxious around your child, which adds to his own stress. I have to have the courage to feel, and teach my children to do the same.

And the teasing - it makes him want to eat more. Now that I'm extremely sad, let me back up to explain the one bit of happy news.

When Matthew was 7, the week before his first swim team practice, we went swimming and I showed him what "freestyle" swimming was, and had him try a few strokes. Two weeks later, he got his first blue ribbon in a swim meet. The kid can swim fast. He's had success during all these summer swim seasons, even as he's gained weight.

So this fall, we decided to enroll him in year-round competitive swimming. He goes to practice three times a week, and each practice is nearly three hours long and involves dryland cardio and weight lifting as well. He's liked it, but not as much as I thought. Then he finally admitted the other kids on the team tease him. Swim meets are optional in the age group he's in, but Bob and I decided to push him and have him swim in the meet Saturday. He didn't want to. But he did it and he came in first place in his heat in the 100-yard butterfly and second in the 100-yard freestyle. We were thrilled. He was thrilled.

His coach shook his hand and said, "It's good to see you smile for once."

Talk about happy and sad. I was so happy to see how happy he was. And so sad to realize that Matthew, the kid most known (until he hit 12) for his huge smile, was not smiling lately.

I pray that we can build on the swimming.

It sounds like two really fortunate things happened in your family, Jan: Sadie choosing to join swim team and Callie being asked to keep a food journal. If naturally-thin Callie is the one who's been assigned to do that, and the whole family participates in some fashion, then Sadie doesn't have to feel singled out at all if she's asked to participate.

I've been thinking about a scene from a movie we saw (part of) last week. The parents are recently divorced, there are two girls - 8 and 6 I think, and the mom is seeing someone new. The new boyfriend is a fitness nut, and he's trying to help the 8 year-old, a little chubby, with her diet and exercise. The dad comes over and has a righteous fit about it. To paraphrase his reaction, it's something like this: How dare you make her self conscious about this!? She's only 8!

Emotionally I was totally on his side. His anger came from genuine love and concern for her feelings. So it's complicated, because on this blog I'm advocating for taking conscious steps if a child is heading for obesity. And I'm advocating for that because in our household the problem got away from us, and by 11/12 years old our son was very overweight and the effects on his life were making him really unhappy.

I guess the middle ground is for the parent, who like the father in the movie is motivated by unconditional love and a desire to protect the child's sense of self, to help the child out. And what I've learned is that to be conscious about it and actually talk about it doesn't damage the child like I thought it would. Like it would have for me as a child because any parental "help" that came my way was more...rejecting.

Which leads me to how we're doing around here. I've noticed in the last week, as the weather's getting a little cooler, that I've wanted to pig out in a way I haven't since I started this new way of eating in July. But I haven't gained any weight because I've been eating, for instance, nearly a whole bag of fat-free pretzels at a time. While watching Project Runway or something.

So I'm going to address what's going on for me that's making me do that, but it's not a huge problem because of the food I've been pigging out with. I've noticed that Matthew, too, loves to eat and eat. He's always been a cereal afficionado. But now he eats Special K with fat free milk. My dilemma has been whether I need to say something if I see him eating bowl after bowl. It's so hard for me to stop the policing, but I have to. He put on a few pounds over the last few weeks, but now he's taking control again. I'll tell more about how he's done that and how I've tried to stop myself from policing and replaced those kinds of messages with supportive cues that help him with his own goals in my next post.

How is Sadie liking swimming? Matthew's swim practice is two hours long, includes "dry land" training (usually running) as well as swimming, and he comes home totally wiped out but with a sense of achievement. It's been very good.

How is it going with Sadie?...

What really struck me in your recent post was, how did you say it, "we are committed to the journey without being very focused on a specific goal". Wow! So, how's it going here?....

Well, we were delighted when Sadie chose for herself to join swim team this year. She is really enjoying it, comes home tired and aware of her body in new ways after workouts. She said to me, "maybe if I do this, I'll get thinner". I responded with your advice in mind, but was also aware that she is trying to make changes. We've been working with the "how hungry/full am I" measurement of 1 - 10, which has given us a new language. We even bought pedometers for her and me!

But we started back to school which brings a realm of distractions, frustrations, things that get in the way. She is struggling with her classwork and homework. (Talk about feeling that I've failed her!) But what has been hanging over me, or nagging at me, is the realization that we can't just take this weight issue on, reach the goal and be done with it. That it is hourly lifestyle choices, a way of life. And let's face it, I've spent decades trying to ignore that fact in my life.

Now, I hate to make her issues all about me, but my reluctance to deal with her issues, to lead her to new choices and validate her current feelings is all about the very same things that I've been running from my entire life. It sickens me that she will have to deal with this her entire life. Okay, I've got to get over that.

So your words about the family committing to this, embracing this, really helps me see this differently. What Sadie weighs as an adult is probably not my responsibility. Giving her the skills to make choices, understand how her body works, find her strength, find ways to express her feelings...well that is my responsibility, our responsibility.

Callie has been assigned by her ballet mistress to keep a journal of what she eats. (I inquired: "did she talk about weight or being thin?" to which Callie replied "no, she just wants us to be eating healthy food"....let's hope!) But what a perfect time for us all to start keeping journals of what we eat for a few weeks, to create new awareness, to get me focused on the things that I've been avoiding for the past decade, to commit to the journey of healthy living.

We'll see how we do today.

Comments Welcome!

If anyone is reading this blog, we would love to have your comments.

I need to not think so hard about my replies

Because then I hesitate to post, because I want to be sure I'm being as honest with myself as possible, so I put it off to think about it, then life intervenes--business trips, family trips, taking a kid to college, and a little back spasm.

But this is not so hard to answer.

There was a long, intermediate period between "he'll grow into it" and "we must take this more seriously." I would notice how heavy he was getting, fret about it, look for an answer, then put it aside. I mean really, I would feel, especially in the middle of the night, like I'd really failed my child. It was awful. It's a lot of why I want to write this blog.

Giving straight answers, but not wanting to create failure. That's the tightrope. If I could go back to the first "Mom, am I fat?" question I would give him some height/weight numbers, introduce him to the BMI, but make very clear that we're all going to work on being healthier. We're going to watch what we eat and we're going to get more exercise. I think it would be a bit like walking a tightrope - not overemphasizing the goal, but really commiting to the project - but I think the possibility of "failure" could be avoided. We are walking that tightrope here at this very moment and will continue to. As parents we're totally committed to this program and are finding it easy. Bob has lost 15 pounds and I've lost nearly 20. It's not as easy for Matthew, but he's committed.

My neighbor's pediatrician informed her at a well-child checkup this summer that her six-year-old daughter was obese. The girl is as cute as can be, and seems minimally chubby. My neighbor didn't even consider giving the news to her daughter, because the girl has no awareness or being overweight whatsoever. What the mom did, though, was gently and gradually say no to the requests for juice, the desserts, and she increased exercise in her whole family. She has one beanpole daughter and two who love to eat. I think she took the right approach, and I wonder if I would have done the same if my pediatrician had brought out the "O" word when Matthew was that young.

How's it going with Sadie?