Kids' Eating: Don't (Over)Feed the Children

For some reason, my husband's entire family is on a mission to make my kids fat. My mother-in-law drops by to "bring cookies" on a weekly basis, and takes my daughter out to McDonald's or for ice cream whenever she finds the time. My sister-in-law calls with "healthy and filling" recipes "for growing kids." Even my husband gets in on it. He constantly worries about how much our daughter is eating. He always tells her to "clean her plate" or "eat a few more chicken nuggets."

You'd think my kids were starving or waif-thin. They're not. They're on the small side of average. It's just that my husband's family has a penchant for breeding extremely large children and they've decided that my kids (who are dwarfed in comparison) are simply not big enough.

My son is 5 months old and my nephew is a week older. My son weighs just under 14 pounds while my nephew weighs just over 23 pounds. As you can imagine, my son looks tiny next to him. But instead of chalking it up to differences between children (the pediatrician says both kids are healthy as can be) and kids' eating habits, my mother-in-law has decided that I don't have enough breast milk. She chastises me about supplementing with formula and gets on me about starting to feed him solids so he can "bulk up." I don't want him to bulk up! He's just fine.

Similarly, my other nephew is a few weeks older than my daughter. He is also a giant (healthy, but big) compared to her. So every time they're together, my daughter is constantly getting compared to him. "If you eat as much as your cousin, you'll grow to be big and strong," my mother-in-law told her last time she visited.

I'm sick of it! My kids are fine. No, they're better than fine. They're healthy, active and not at all at-risk for obesity. In fact (don't tell my mother-in-law), I'm kind of glad my kids are on the small side. In fact, I'd like to keep them that way ... which means I need to keep them away from my husband's family and their food!