This week at dance class, my wife took our 5 year old daughter. I’m usually the one who takes her, but we decided to switch it up this week. When my daughter’s class is dancing, usually towards the end of class, there are girls that are slightly older that are waiting for the room. They end up watching the rest of the dance class while waiting.

Usually, the older girls are nice and talk about how the girls in my daughter’s class are so cute, especially when they do silly things. It’s always positive chatter and there hasn’t been any issues. Apparently this week, that was not the case. For some reason, one of the older girls commented on how the younger girls in my daughter’s class look fat. She kept making those negative comments and talked about how the dancing was also terrible. Didn’t matter that all the girls in my daughter’s class were younger and also learning how to dance (hence the purpose of dance class…). The negative comments kept coming.

My wife was visibly annoyed as she put it. Some of the older girls that were outside the class made more positive comments to compensate and talked about how the younger girls were trying hard to learn (and doing alright at it). My wife didn’t end up saying anything to the older girl with the rude comments and she ended up leaving the facility with my daughter right when the class was over.

I’m just glad the younger girls were still in class when all those negative comments were made. I’ve seen kids hold on to negative comments or thoughts for a long time and even through adulthood with some of my friends that remember negative things from their childhood. Those types of hurtful words sting and at an age where kids are still finding themselves, it can really shatter their confidence in themselves or their will to learn something new.

If I was there, I would have shared my thoughts with that older girl to let her know that kind of talk is inappropriate. That behavior needs to get corrected before it does some really hurtful things to some little girls. The last thing I want to do is for those little girls to grow up thinking their body type is not ok and developing an eating disorder (extreme, I know, but that’s where my mind goes). People need to know it’s ok to be themselves and to slowly build healthy habits. They don’t need negativity to tear them down. If I see that older girl next time at dance, I’ll be sure to listen extra closely for any residual negativity to come out of her mouth so I can educate her to do better.