A mom delivered an unforgettable reply when her daughter called her “fat.”
“Today, my small daughter told me that she didn’t want to be fat like me,” Sharon Johnson, a mother of six in Utah, said in a TikTok video. “Now, instead of breaking down in tears or saying, ‘We don’t use the word fat,’ I simply looked at her and said, ‘Why is that, sweetheart?’”
Her 5-year-old daughter’s answer: “Well, because I want to run fast and you can’t run fast, Mom.”
Johnson told her daughter that her speed has nothing to do with her weight.
“I said, ‘The reason why I can’t run fast is because I haven’t practiced running fast. I should be running more often so I can practice,’” Johnson said in the video.
“I said, ‘And did you know, just because someone has a thinner body, doesn’t mean they can run fast?’” recalled Johnson. “She said, ‘You know, I have a friend that’s thin and she can’t run very fast!’
Johnson replied, “I know, and that’s because you can’t tell what someone can do just based off what they look like.’ She said, ‘Huh. I guess so! Mom, do you think you could start running fast?’”
The mom went outside and ran four blocks.
“Stop making excuses because you’re fat,” Johnson said in her video. “It’s not the reason you’re not doing things. The reason why you’re not doing things is because you think you can’t do them because you’re fat. When really, you can just go do things fat.”
Johnson’s commenters said hearing about the conversation was curative: “I needed this as a child” and “Getting curious instead of defensive or judgmental — KUDOS to you!!”
Some were already living by Johnson’s advice.
“I started doing taekwondo at 270 pounds. I love it!” wrote a TikToker; a second commented, “I love paddle boarding but I find myself being so self conscious the whole time I’m out there; but there I am, out there doing it.”
In an interview with TODAY.com, Johnson says she teaches her children to appreciate what bodies can do, not what they look like. She wants to believe it too.
“It’s been really hard for me to stifle my inner critic about body image without practice,” Johnson tells TODAY.com. “I’ve worked really hard to eradicate shame from my life and look at things objectively, which has been incredibly transformative in how I view my own body. There’s power in saying it — and hearing it —even if I force it.”
When her daughter previously commented on her “big belly,” Johnson said she had answered, “Yes — isn’t it cool how snuggly it is and that it grew you?”
Responding with neutrality, she says, removes the sting.
“Adults tend to assign ideas to concepts, saying, ‘Shh — don’t say the word fat!’ when kids make observations and ask questions to understand the world,” says Johnson. “My daughter wasn’t trying to be mean — she made the correlation between my size and my abilities and I was able to correct her.”
Johnson says her size isn’t everything her daughter notices, adding, “She calls me beautiful and says she loves me.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
