Have you ever gone into groceries stores and seen a parent who is extremely overweight? I am sure you have. What disgusts me is when the parent has overweight children too. I can't really get disgusted by extremely overweight people anymore, there are way too many people struggling with obesity.
I saw a woman who was 200+ pounds in the grocery store earlier, her kids were very overweight. I feel like this a form of abuse and child services should intervene in these cases.
Perhaps not to take away the kids, but to admonish and educate mothers about what kind of health risks they're passing off on their kids. It's just like a parent who smokes in a car with their kids in the backseat.
Do you think the government should intervene when parents are undermining their kids welfare like in the case of morbid obesity?
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Comments (85)
there's never really a right answer, intervening then would be late anyway. best not be morbidly obese in the first place...
depends on what you count as overweight or morbidly obese. A 200+ pound 10 year old is in need of some help. But I knew a kid in texas that was 3 and weigh 50pounds. He was not fat, just big. 2 of his 3 older brothers were football jocks in school and his father also played sports. They were a huge family, and had muscles in places that I did not know existed. is the 2 year old in trouble healthwise? who knows but he was considered obese by his BMI.
I do not like the BMI and fell like health should be on an indivudual basis between the patient, the doctor and the parent of the patient if the patient is under 18.
Neglect =/= abuse.
Abuse would be carried out if they were purposely causing their child's obesity, or doing so with the intent to harm them,
Neglect would be failure to keep them healthy.
I think intervention should depend on the severity. If the kid is morbidly obese or just way too fat, I think intervention makes sense. But often it's the kid's fault, too. It's way too easy to get hold of food.
soooo basically because i am overweight and i have a child who is over weight i am abusing them. i hate simple minded people like you. you disgust me!
@Sirius_Fan_Girl@xanga - Neglect does equal abuse. If this is a case of neglect (which can be debated and saved for another day), then it is abuse. Abuse comes in many forms: physical, emotional, mentally, AND neglect. Therefore, it can be something that child services needs to intervene in.
What you should be debating is not whether or not neglect is a form of abuse (since it is), but whether if this is neglect. Is food such a deadly weapon that overfeeding a child is the same as leaving a child with a loaded gun? In a way, yes. You overfeed a child and they get used to it. In their teenage life, they're going to take comfort in overeating and will be at risk of being teased, bullied, and more. This could lead to low self-esteem that could lead to eating disorders, depression, and, in extreme cases, suicide. Lovely thought, right? I overfed my child and because they were teased and depressed, they committed suicide. But let's say they make it past those teen years. Well, society has little sympathy for fat adults. By that point, it's not the parents who are blamed but the person themselves. If they don't commit swift suicide by then, they might slowly kill themselves by finding comfort in food and getting fatter and fatter. Not stopping until they can't move and have to lay in bed all day, can't even shower and bath on their own, their heart being crushed by their fat, high blood pressure, and diabetes. And all because a parent had to pass on their bad habits. It would be, in these cases, like putting the loaded gun in the child's hand.
One thing I despise is seeing fat children. I don't think it's fair for the child. I grew up as a fat child and because of it, I've been teased relentlessly and my body image is shot to hell. Suicide is thought of on a daily basis, followed by cutting, starving attempts, which lead to binging. I'm not happy and I feel trapped in my body. Parents need to have more control over what their children eat. They have to teach them healthy habits; no seconds, eating vegetables and fruit, snacking on healthy things, eat fast food and candy sparingly. Make sure they get exercise, keep them healthy. If they truly cared for their children, they would make the effort to make sure that they are healthy and not at risk.
@MomoWakahisa@xanga - I don't feel they're quite on the same level but perhaps very close.
I do think parents should put forth effort to keep their children healthy and fit. But after a point, I don't think there's much more parents can do. Children do not always obey their parents, and if they enjoy the taste of certain foods, they will probably obtain them somehow. Oftentimes parental teaching does not stick because the child is stubborn or for some reason angry at one or both parents. Unfortunately raising kids correctly isn't foolproof.
After a certain point, information on health is far too available for people not to be able to take personal responsibility. From the beginning of schooling we are taught which foods are healthy and that we should have exercise every day. Even if a parent is neglectful or overfeeds the children, they still have access to other resources. It's too difficult NOT to learn about health to entirely blame the parents, unless they lock their child in the house and never allow them access to the outside world. Once grown, at the very least, people should be able to make the correct choices and themselves.
I truly, truly hope you start to have a positive self-image. If you feel trapped in your body- meaning you don't like something about it?- then there are plenty of healthy ways to adjust, mentally and physically; and whether or not you employ them, hopefully you'll become happy. :) I'm sorry you had such a sad childhood, too. But remember, every day is a new chance to start fresh- in fact, every minute is a chance! I think we all have strength within ourselves and the potential to find happiness, and hopefully you'll find it too. :)
Hopefully that didn't sound stupid and cheesy. I was going for encouraging, eheh. :\
Wow... what assumptions to make. First of all, how in the world do you know that the family members are overweight because they're eating too much and not exercising? How do you know that it's NOT a genetic problem or maybe they're on medication that causes them to gain weight? The fact is, you don't, and making judgments about someone you see in the grocery store is not fair.
I am overweight. I wish I was not, but I am. I have two different disorders (hypothyroidism and polycystic ovary syndrome) that are sometimes interconnected with weight gain/loss. I do my best to eat healthy and exercise, but I will still struggle with my weight unless I wanted to take on the "diet tricks" of an anorexic.
My kids are perfectly normal kids. We eat healthy food in this house and they don't eat much sugar (except the occasional popsicle, usually just when they're sick). My daughter is rail thin and freaking tall. She was actually underweight when she was a young toddler, and you want to know what the nutritionist told me to do? Give her chocolate and peanut butter 3x's a day. WTF? So instead of healthy fruit and good fats (she really enjoyed eating hummus and black bean quesadillas and things of that nature), they were recommending sugar... and lots of it. My son, on the other hand, is quite solid. He wasn't ever fat (except being quite chubby as a baby), but he's always been pretty solid. And yet HE is the one who is a semi picky eater and doesn't want to eat much beyond fruits and vegetables.
I think it's absolutely ludicrous to call someone an unfit parent based on how they look. BMI is pretty much BS anyhow, like @ProudToBeAChristianFruitcake@xanga said.
that's a slippery slope, that one.
@Morningstarrising@xanga -
well if Proud to be a Christian Fruitcake said it,
it must be true
?
Weight issues can be caused by a lot of things. It can be the muscles, as mentioned in one the above comments, or even a glandular problem that passed down, such as MorningStar seems to point to. I can personally vouch that certain medicines make it difficult to lose weight and can in fact make you gain weight. HOWEVER, it does NOT make you 2009 + pounds!
Obses parents who are obese all by the own fault and eating habits will influence their children into their ways. Children learn from their parents. If they see mommy and daddy eating a lot of fatty foods and not exercising it off, they get the idea that it is okay to do this. It doesn't matter what a parent says, it is what a parent does. If those parents do not even know how to take care of themselves, how are they to know how to keep a child healthy? Then again, you cannot deny these people the right to have a child.
There is really nothing you can do about it, even if you educate the parents. It's a vicious cycle of obese parents and obese, suicidal-to-be children. It's not something we can easily turn our heads away from. It's not something that should be ignored. But honestly, the only solution is to clean up the parents because that's where the children pick up their habits, whether the parent(s) does) it intentionally or not.
First of all, just because a child is overweight doesn't mean their parents aren't making sure they eat well and exercise. Some children, and some families, are just overweight. Where can the government possibly draw the line? How would it decide whether the child is just naturally bigger, and if the parents are doing enough? Think about how much the government would have to interrogate you in order to get that information. And if they deem you are "abusing" them, what steps can be taken? A fine? As if that's a good idea, since many overweight families are also low-income. Plus, we'd have to have some sort of medical standard for determining whether or not the child is being "abused", which as some have said can be fairly ambiguous. Doing something like this would not only be extremely intrusive on the government's part, but also very costly and overall more complicated than at first glance.
Public schools should make an effort to educate children and perhaps even families about obesity and how to avoid it. Education is the key to solving this problem, in my mind; not some bureaucratic agency.
Let's just shoot them. They're probably low income anyway, and not contributing much to society. After we take care of all the fat people, we can select with IQs we want to keep. Definitely put all the low ones in a camp for easy extermination. We don't want people too intelligent, either, so the other side of the Bell Curve needs to be watched. Why would anyone want sick people around? Old people should just die and make room for the rest of us.
This is dangerous thinking! You are not concerned about the real people involved here. You don't know anything about them, just want to condemn them.
Paul_Partisan is on momaroo? what?!
I'm going to have to agree with the author for the most part.
I was stuffed full of hamburger helper and fast food growing up and by the time I was 7 I was in husky sized jeans. I weighed over 100 lbs before I turned 10. I'm actually smaller now (at 24 years old) than I was when I turned 10.
I completely blame my parents for not offering me healthy choices for snacks (we had snack cakes instead of fresh fruits and vegetables) and for feeding me fast food about 5 nights a week. The only drinks that our fridge was ever stocked with were Cokes and Dr. Peppers.
After getting teased and made fun of I developed an eating disorder when I was about 12.
Anyway, point is, I KNOW what caused my weight problems and I refuse to let my children live like that.
We're vegans who also avoid preservatives, artificial flavoring and colors, white sugar, white flour, white rice, and high fructose corn syrup. I believe that almost all diseases and disorders can be controlled by a better diet. My three children will never ever have to worry about being overweight while they live under my roof and eat my food. I'm hoping that I can instill in them good eating habits to last a lifetime.
We eat a wide variety of nutritious and flavorful foods and I don't think we're missing out on anything, other than bad health.
It infuriates me to see an obese child downing a Big Mac or drinking a soft drink. This is something a parent CAN control and yeah, I think that refusing to acknowledge or do anything about an overweight child is very neglectful.
I don't think we are talking about simply overweight kids here - we are talking about morbid (as in their body will kill them prematurely) obesity. And yes I think that is child abuse. We have probably all seen it, at least on television - parents who never tell their kids no, who will eat an entire oreo box at one sitting, and an entire large pizza by themselves. Who drink nothing but soda. Etc etc.
In my opinion if it is actively taking away the years of this child's life, not to mention the social harm is it doing him currently - if a parent's inability to care enough to say "no" in the face of diabetes, high blood pressure, inability to walk or be active the way a child should - the parents don't care about their child. Their actions are harming, even in extreme cases killing them.
The child does not know better. The child is a victim of his parents.
Again, I am not talking about simply overweight kids here. I am talking about the morbidly obese ones - not as defined by a BMI chart (which I also think are foolish foolish foolish) - but as defined by metabolic syndrome symptoms.
Oh and by the way, when my daughter was born she didn't gain weight fast enough according to these same charts. She was only steps away from being deemed "failure to thrive." This is no different. The steps are no different toward resolution. So why is being too thin abusive and being too fat not the same?
@bgibbs11@xanga - While I agree that public schools should take some of this blame here, parenting is not the job of the government. A parent cannot blame his child's lack of activity or healthy eating on a school cafeteria. People need to take responsibility of their child and stop using them as accessories to their lifestyle creating their own little mini-me's.
@New_dog@xanga - Did I say that? Uh, no. I was echoing someone else's comment (who basically said the same thing I did). You are a judgmental bigot, clearly.
I think it definitely warrants being investigated. Maybe they have a specific health problem that contributes to it...and if that's the case? By all means...carry on! But I do think that far more often than not, it is a case of the parents not offering healthy choices/teaching their children to make healthy choices and letting them sit on their butts in the house all day infront of TV and video games. On top of that, it seems like may cases of morbid obesity really stem from emotional issues. Enough so that it should be a perfectly valid red flag for DCF to check out what's going on in that house. I'm of the mind that if you're not doing anything wrong? You have nothing to fear.
@Sirius_Fan_Girl@xanga - Neglect definitely IS abuse, and vice versa.
During my childhood, I had to live a life of morbid obesity, and despite my loving parent, they didn't teach me much about nutrition and had lax rules regarding it as well. However, during adolescence and puberty, my weight fell rapidly to a more healthier amount.
I think it's very important to teach children how to better their own bodies. It is just as important to learn how to take care of yourself likewise to further your education.
The term abuse is thrown around too lightly these days. I consider abuse to be a parent or guardian acting in a maliciously hurtful manner towards their children. I think that our education system (you know, the one most of America's children go through) should be teaching proper health and diet. Child services should be getting involved with real abuse cases, not fat kids.
@sarahsmurfette@xanga - I totally agree I have been threatened cause my kids are to skinny.. WIC even stated that if I did not subject my child to testing to find out why she was thin they would report me to CPS. So why doesn't this apply to morbily obese kids as well. @filtered_sunlight - agreed..
@GiraffesAreNifty@xanga - did you ever think it was a cost thing with your parents? The cost of healthy food is much more then the unhealthy food. Don't blame your parents atleast you did not go to bed hungary.
As for orignal post yes I think that it should be looked into. If I have to be subject to my kids getting poked and proded for being to shinny and not meeting the charts then I think the kids on the other end of the charts should be also. Period.
*shrugs*
Only if they are forcing the food down the kid's throat.
did you ever stop to think that maybe the parents just don't know any better?
Maybe their parents brought them up the same way and now they are repeating the cycle with their kids.
But really, I agree with @fading_roses19@xanga - and @Morningstarrising@xanga -
I am not "thin" nor will I ever be. I have been blessed with a dense bone structure and heavy frame, and according to the "BMI" even at my healthiest weight i will be "morbidly obese".
I think the OP should keep their mouths closed about things they know nothing about.