Brittany Cole (@brittmcole), a mother of two from Shawnee, Kansas, faced a challenging moment when her 4-year-old daughter Norah came home from school excited about her new friend, describing her as "the fat girl with pink glasses."
Cole was taken aback by the description, recognizing that it could be hurtful, but also aware that her young daughter might not understand the negative connotations associated with the word "fat." In a TikTok post, Cole shared her dilemma and asked for advice from other parents, sparking a thoughtful conversation about how to address sensitive topics with young children.
This Mom Was Torn — She Wanted To Inform NOT Fat Shame
Cole found herself in a difficult position: she wanted to guide her daughter toward using more respectful language without shaming her for an innocent observation. She knew that describing someone as "fat" could be seen as offensive, but she also didn't want to ruin her daughter's innocent view of the world by imposing adult perspectives on her. Cole was concerned that if she didn't address the issue, her daughter might unintentionally insult her friend or other children. Yet, she wanted to find a way to do so without turning "fat" into a forbidden word or making her daughter feel guilty for her choice of words.
Watch Brittany Cole's Video:
@brittmcole If its all about intent this is okay right? 🫠
Hundreds of Helpful Suggestions Came Pouring In: Here's What They Had To Say
Cole's TikTok video quickly gained attention, with parents and experts offering a wide range of advice. Some commenters suggested encouraging Norah to describe people based on other characteristics, like hair color or height, instead of focusing on body size. Others recommended explaining to Norah that certain words can have different meanings depending on context and that calling someone "fat" might hurt their feelings. A common theme among the suggestions was to start conversations about body image and self-esteem early, emphasizing that everyone is unique and valuable regardless of their physical appearance.
"It’s normal for kids this age to start to notice differences between themselves and others so I do think it’s important to have a conversation with her about how pointing things out like that can make."
- @nosk2212
Parents Don't Have To Know It All! Don't Be Afraid To Ask For Advice
Two little children sitting on a couchBrittany Cole / ABC News
Cole's experience is a reminder that parenting can be complex, and there's no single right way to handle every situation. By sharing her story and asking for advice, Cole demonstrated that it's okay to seek guidance from others when faced with challenging parenting moments.
Parenting experts like Rachel Simmons recommend that parents start these conversations with their children as early as possible, acknowledging that certain words can carry different weights in society. Cole's openness and willingness to learn from others show that parents don't have to know it all — they just need to be willing to listen, learn, and adapt as they navigate the journey of raising compassionate, empathetic children.
Emotional Wounds: Why Even Stupid Rejections Smart a Lot
The following is a Goalcast exclusive excerpt from Guy Winch's Emotional First Aid: Healing, Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Hurts, now available on Amazon.com.
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Rejections can cause four distinct psychological wounds, the severity of which depends on the situation and our emotional health at the time. Specifically, rejections elicit emotional pain so sharp it affects our thinking, floods us with anger, erodes our confidence and self-esteem, and destabilizes our fundamental feeling of belonging.
Many of the rejections we experience are comparatively mild and our injuries heal with time. But when left untreated, even the wounds created by mild rejections can become “infected” and cause psychological complications that seriously impact our mental well-being. When the rejections we experience are substantial, the urgency of treating our wounds with emotional first aid is far greater. This not only minimizes the risk of “infections” or complications but also accelerates our emotional healing process.
In order to administer emotional first aid and successfully treat the four wounds rejection causes, we need a clear understanding of each of them and a full appreciation of how our emotions, thought processes, and behaviors are damaged when we experience rejections.
Emotional Wounds: Why Even Stupid Rejections Smart a Lot
Imagine you’re sitting in a waiting room with two other strangers. One of them spots a ball on the table, picks it up, and tosses it to the other. That person then smiles, looks over, and tosses the ball to you. Let’s assume your tossing and catching abilities are up to the task. You toss the ball back to the first person, who quickly tosses it to the second. But then instead of tossing the ball to you, the second person tosses it back to the first person, cutting you out of the game. How would you feel in that situation? Would your feelings be hurt? Would it affect your mood? What about your self-esteem?
Most of us would scoff at the idea. Two strangers didn’t pass me a stupid ball in a waiting room, big deal! Who cares? But when psychologists investigated this very situation, they found something quite remarkable. We do care, far more than we realize. The ball tossing scenario is a well-researched psychology experiment in which the two “strangers” are actually research confederates. The “subject” (who thinks they are all waiting to be called for an entirely different experiment) always gets excluded after the first or second round of ball tossing. Dozens of studies have demonstrated that people consistently report feeling significant emotional pain as a result of being excluded from the ball-tossing game.
What makes these findings remarkable is that compared to most of the rejections we experience in life, being excluded by two strangers tossing a ball is about as mild as rejection gets. If such a trivial experience can elicit sharp emotional pain (as well as drops in mood and even self-esteem) we can begin to appreciate how painful truly meaningful rejections often are. That is why getting dumped by someone we’re dating, getting fired from our job, or discovering that our friends have been meeting up without us can have such a huge impact on our emotional well-being.
Indeed, what separates rejection from almost every other negative emotion we encounter in life is the magnitude of the pain it elicits. We often describe the emotional pain we experience after a significant rejection as analogous to being punched in the stomach or stabbed in the chest. True, few of us have actually been stabbed in the chest, but when psychologists asked people to compare the pain of rejection to physical pains they had experienced, they rated their emotional pain as equal in severity to that associated with natural childbirth and cancer treatments! As a counterpoint, consider that other emotionally painful experiences, such as intense disappointment, frustration, or fear, while highly unpleasant, pale in comparison to rejection when it comes to the sheer visceral pain they cause.
But why do rejections hurt so much more than other emotional wounds?
The answer lies in our evolutionary past. Humans are social animals; being rejected from our tribe or social group in our pre-civilized past would have meant losing access to food, protection, and mating partners, making it extremely difficult to survive. Being ostracized would have been akin to receiving a death sentence. Because the consequences of ostracism were so extreme, our brains developed an early-warning system to alert us when we were at risk for being “voted off the island” by triggering sharp pain whenever we experienced even a hint of social rejection.
In fact, brain scans show that the very same brain regions get activated when we experience rejection as when we experience physical pain. Remarkably, the two systems are so tightly linked that when scientists gave people acetaminophen (Tylenol) before putting them through the dastardly ball-tossing rejection experiment, they reported significantly less emotional pain than people who were not given a pain reliever. Sadly, other negative emotions like embarrassment do not share these characteristics, rendering Tylenol ineffective when we get the date wrong for our office Halloween party and show up to work dressed like Marge Simpson.
Excerpted with permission from EMOTIONAL FIRST AID by Guy Winch, Ph.D. Published by Plume, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2013 by GuyWinch, Ph.D.
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Watch Guy Winch's viral TED talk below, How to Practice Emotional First Aid: