Lately, my eight daughter has been obsessed with her size.  She has been weighing herself constantly – with her clothes on, without her clothes on, before a meal, after a meal.  She’s been reporting her weight to the tenth of a pound several times a day.  “I weigh 56.2!”  “Now it says 54.9!”  It’s like she’s calibrating the single most important thing in her life.

Needless to say, I’ve been feeling guilty about this.  Evidently, I have transferred my own obsession with my weight to my daughter, who now faces a bleak future of strategic dressing, incessant dieting, and warped body image.  Sign me up for the Mom of the Year award!!

But then yesterday, I asked her (with feigned non-chalance — all those acting classes I took in High School were not in vain!)  why she cared so much about her weight.

“I wanna get to sixty!” was her answer.

She’s hoping to get bigger — as any shortest-in-the-grade kid would — not smaller.

So I haven’t (yet?) transferred all of my issues to her.  She’s still the same little girl who, at three years old, stared at herself in the the mirror and told me she was just checking to see how beautiful she was.

Mother of the year award…I’m ready for you!