Cruel to Be Kind by Cathy Glass

Author:Cathy Glass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-06-16T04:00:00+00:00

The next day was Friday and that evening, before Max had his bath, I took the scales from where I stored them in my bedroom into the bathroom and weighed him. I was weighing him once a week as I’d been advised to and was keeping it all very low-key. I didn’t want him to become fixated or anxious and to start counting pounds or become disappointed if he didn’t lose weight one week. The diet wasn’t drastic, just healthier eating with fewer sweet and fatty foods and more exercise, so change was likely to be slow. He’d actually lost four pounds, but I simply said, ‘Well done.’ I left the bathroom for him to finish getting undressed and returned the scales to my bedroom, then I waited on the landing until he’d finished his bath. Max had a bath every evening now as part of his bedtime routine, just as Adrian and Paula did. Later, I recorded his weight in my fostering log.

For the next few evenings, when I took Max to contact, one of his sisters answered the door when we arrived and saw him out when he left. After Kelly’s comments about fruit, I was now buying extra again so that Max could take some with him, as he had done at the hospital, but not the bag of sweets. When I asked him if he’d had a nice time he always said he had and that he’d shared the fruit with his sisters before going to his room to read. From what he told me, he spent most evenings in his bedroom because he didn’t like watching the television as his mother and sisters did. While this seemed isolating to me, it was what he was used to and happy with, although I suspected that had they all played a game of cards, for example, or watched a good children’s film or wild-life documentary, which Max loved, he would have joined in. He had started leaving some books in his bedroom at his home so he didn’t have to keep taking the one he was reading at my house. He brought them back when he’d finished them and exchanged them for different ones.

On Sunday we visited my parents and, as usual for a Sunday, Mum cooked a full roast dinner, followed by delicious homemade apple pie with melt-in-your-mouth pastry, served with a choice of warm custard or vanilla ice cream or both. I’d already had a quiet word with Mum and asked her not to offer us second helpings, as Max was on a diet. Mum loves to feed her family. She didn’t offer second helpings, but the portion sizes of the first servings were so generous that we couldn’t have eaten any more anyway. We had to leave at 4.30 p.m. so we were back in time for Max’s evening contact.

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