Sometimes you just want to smack people

Enter a new hurdle in the weight loss game.

We homeschool, and up till now we have included our daily exercise as the PE segment of our day. When it is not raining and we are not swamped with work, we go out for a walk. On the days when the weather is icky we use the Wii, weights and DVD's to work indoors. It's not perfect, ,but it is a routine we can keep up with according to our lifestyle, budget, transportation limitations and so on. And up till yesterday, we pretty much have the place to ourselves. Gym membership is out because we have no way to get to one, cannot afford it ( homeschooling and Autism intervention take up any extras we have), and because son is under 18 all of them want for him to attend an orientation class that meets at times when it is impossible to attend. So we do what we can, without disturbing the neighbors.

Last night we decided to go out for a walk as a family after dinner, and there were numerous other famililies and kids out there. School let out for the public school kids yesterday, so it was the usual first day of summer thrill sort of vibe in the air. Dads playing soccer, a few parets trying to organize kids play and other little kids on bikes. We started walking and a couple of kids around 8 yrs old kept riding past us on bikes, and one kept looking at Nick and yelling "baby" because he was walking with us. (Yes kid, this is some baby at 17 yrs old, 6 ft tall and over 300 lbs). We told Nick to just ignore him, that he is not a baby, but the kid kept up and it was really starting to upset Nick. One thing that I have to deal with that most parents do not is that my child is big enough and strong enough that if he lost his temper he could actually kill a kid unintentionally, so there are just things that you intervene in that other parents have the luxury of just letting ride it's course. So rather than have the situation escalate to a potentially dangerous scene, I suggested we go walk at the store. It's not perfect, but it is moving. He agreed , and we had a good time.

This morning I told Nick we would go out for our walk early, and he started getting upset that the kids would make funj of him. Score one for bringing him into more awareness, but minus several for having that awareness be a painful one. I told him the kids do not tend to play outside early, so it will be fine. He was protesting, but I managed to talk him into it. We got outside and there were a couple of adult men sitting on the picnic tables and Nick started freaking that they would make fun of him, and I assured him this would not happen. So we walked, they kept staring at us and Nick was very nervous about it. I told him that it does not do any harm to look, and they were probably wondering what we were doing and maybe they would think about exercising themselves . Each trip around brought a new level of anxiety for him and he was really eager to be done. We finished without incident, but it seems this is going to be a factor to deal with for a while.

It really sucks for my son, but there is a potential to teach him how to be very resiliant. He has so many strikes against him here- he is not related to one of the families, he does not speak spanish, he is homeschooled, he is Autistic and has speach difficulties, he is overweight and he is part of a family that does a lot of things together. Several of these things , sadly, are considered to be strange things in today's society.

This is not a sort of strategy that Weight Watchers meetings will teach you to use.