It’s Hard to Be a Little Kid . . . When You’re Not

Photograph: Image Source/Rex Features

I saw this photo not too long ago and it hit me like a punch in the chest.

A gym full of kids swinging on ropes, laughing, being kids.

And one boy (maybe 10 or 11) sitting alone on the bench, watching from the outside.

He’s already carrying more weight than his frame was meant to hold at that age.

. . . and I thought to myself, “It’s hard to be a little kid . . . when you’re not.”

It’s hard for that boy to keep up when every recess sprint leaves him gasping.

It’s hard when you’re the last one picked, or worse, not picked at all. 

It’s hard when you learn at ten that it feels safer to sit out than to try and fall behind.

And it’s just as hard for little girls.

An overweight 9- or 10-year-old girl often starts her period years before her classmates.

She’s forced to deal with bras, pads, cramps, and grown-up worries while everyone else is still worried about who gets the swing next. She should be focused on cartwheels and hopscotch, not on hiding blood stains or figuring out what these new feelings even mean.

Little girls deserve to be little, too.

Both (the boy on the bench and the girl in the bathroom stall crying because she started her period again) are having childhood stolen one extra pound at a time.

And that stolen childhood doesn’t vanish when they grow up. I meet them decades later:

👨‍🦰Men who still hear the echo of “just sit this one out.” 

👩Women who still feel like their body betrayed them before they ever got a vote.

The boy on the bench and the girl with the too-soon period aren’t statistics.

They’re kids who deserve to climb ropes and do cartwheels and feel light and free and ten.

If you’re a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, coach, teacher . . . look a little longer at that photo. That moment on the bench or in the bathroom stall is when the future gets decided.

Don’t let another kid grow up believing the sidelines are their place, or that their body is something to be ashamed of before they even understand what’s happening to it.

They still get to be little. 

But only if we refuse to look away.

It’s hard to be a little kid . . . when you’re not. 

Let’s help them stay little while they still can.