VISIT TO THE DIETITIAN

As expected, my 7 year old son’s visit to the dietitian today didn’t go terribly well. She weighed and measured him and yes, he is “above average” (v. PC way of putting it) both in height and weight. She wanted to know what my other two children were like. I told her that my 12 year old daughter was extremely tall and very slight, to which my 7 year old said “what ARE you talking about, she’s really really fat”. I felt like I was in a scene from “We Need To Talk About Kevin” (excellent book – read it if you haven’t already), in which the child is completely able to manipulate the situation to his advantage. His comment made me feel like a complete idiot – like she was going to believe him and not me – because my daughter really is not remotely large. What an inappropriate thing to say in front of the bloody dietitian because she clearly thought that I was mad and a completely inept mother. He of course thought it was hilarious.

Obviously the “food diary” I had been asked to fill in over the last two days did not look good, owing to the excessive amount of food consumed during the festive period. Obviously I tried to play it down, but, for some reason, he saw the meeting as some sort of confessional, so when she asked me if he ate chocolate and I said “yes, but not too much” he said, “mum, I eat loads – remember I told you that dad let me eat 14 of my advent calendar chocolates in one go yesterday, because I hadn’t been to stay at his house for ages and you didn’t put that on my list”.

She gave us some advice on how to reduce his sugar levels and suggested that he do more exercise daily and then said she would like to see him again soon, to which he replied “I don’t think I’d like to see you until some time in 2009”.

He very proudly took away various glossy brochures promising her that he would definitely be eating cereal with no sugar for breakfast and that he would not snack in between meals. On the way back through the hospital we passed the cafe whereby he said “oh can we stop and have a snack or a packet of sweets?”. Hopeless.