Opposites Can Be Offensive

Today, in first grade, we learned about "opposite" words. We played with words like: short, long / on, off / in, out, etc. The kids really loved one of the pairs a little too much though. As I wrote out, "fat/thin", one of my students immediately said,

 "My dad is the fat one!"

I quickly responded, "please don't call anyone fat."

He said, "But he is. He has a round ball on his belly and I like to touch it."

Great. Look what I've done.

All of the kids chimed in about how their dads are so fat. I must be creating little monsters. Then I realized that Kurds have no problem saying that someone is fat. I tried to combat this and realized that it was okay to let them talk about their dads in this way. It isn't offensive here. After all, they were using the adjective correctly!