Buy Walking VideosShould Your Child Be Taken Away From You Because She’s Fat?
A child in Great Britain has been taken away from her parents because she is too fat:
An eight-year-old girl has been taken from her parents and put into care because she is seriously overweight.
The girl, who is 5ft (1.52m) tall, is a size 16 — six sizes bigger than the average for her age. She has suffered several health problems associated with her weight. But her parents, from West Cumbria, say that they are devastated, and that her size is due to a medical problem or genetics, not a poor diet.
Tam Fry, a member of the National Obesity Forum’s board in Great Britain says that all obese children should be removed from their homes:
My point will be that we regard malnourished children as being abused and so with those children who are so overweight, either consciously or by neglect because their parents allow it, there should be a case for them being removed from their parents to a paediatric ward and put under weight management by doctors.
It is drastic but it’s a long-term therapy. For the sake of the children it does need to be done because we have got children who are horrendously fat. In many cases it will mean thinking the unthinkable.
With the “unthinkable” being ordering gastric bypass surgery for children who are overweight, forcing them to subsist on tiny portions of pureed food.
Is an overweight child a symptom of neglect? I don’t know. All I know is that I was one of those children forced into a dieting plan at a very young age. Everything that they did to me made things worse and started a bingeing problem that has lasted with me until this day. I struggle every day to eat wisely and what I was put through as a child made matters FAR worse than if I had been left alone.
Children learn to eat by watching their parents and siblings eat. If you have a child who is overweight and want to help them get healthy, the only way that you can positively affect them is by concentrating on yourself. Make sure you set a good example by eating small portions of healthy food. Never starve your child in an effort to get them slim. In the end, they’ll end up fatter than before. I sure did.
Via: Rudd Sound Bites: “Frisked for Chocolate and Fizzy Drinksâ€
Previous: The Best Hot Cocoa for Two Points
Next: Sheldon Shows You How NOT Following Weight Watchers Works
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:25 am
Obesity that cannot be explained by a valid medical reason is poor parenting. The underlying question here is who, in fact, is ultimately responsible for the childs rehabilitiation. It should be agreed upon that a child suffering due to any other form of bad parenting should be protected from it. Same here, there’s no difference.
As far as the author is concerned, we’re all sorry it turned out badly for you. But what are you saying, exactly? That because YOU had a bad experience nobody should have the possible benefit of a high quality of life from being fit? You should be concerned with resolving your issues, unless you’re stating that no obese children will ever be helped by being retrained in dieting. I find that hard to believe, madam. Better to say that the whole matter stinks, but what’s best for the child should be the course taken.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:51 am
Children learn best by imitation. That’s how they learn to talk, play and even eat. Trying to interfere with that training by any other method than imitation is pretty damn damaging.
When I was in that situation, I learned to hoard food and binge when food was available because I was being starved. I suspect that any child place under foster care and put on a restrictive diet would do the same.
Great Britain would do better to train parents to eat healthy on their own and let the children learn by example.
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:57 am
Amen Laura. I find this practice extremely scary. And where would it stop? Will children be taken away from their parents because they don’t teach them to stop picking their noses?? I mean, here, you would get a whole lot of negative in the child’s psyche by taking them away from their parents, for a possible positive in “training.”
October 24th, 2008 at 7:25 am
No excuse for overweight children if you have weighed out all the medical possibilities the blame should Fall on the parents shoulders and the laziness the parents show for their poor overweight childs negelected health. Its one thing for the parents to hurt themslves by being overweight but do not be so ignorant as to murder your children with your own poor lazy habits of not caring.
October 29th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
This reminds me of a Dr. Phil show I saw a few years ago. An overweight woman had an EXTREMELY obese child. She brought him to several doctors looking for an explanation, and when tests revealed that he was “normal”, just eating the wrong diet & not exercising, she finally ended up on the Dr. Phil show. He said the same thing & she was incensed.
Flash forward 1.5 years later, this woman’s ex-husband saw the show, sued for custody, won & the boy came back on the show as a normal weight boy. It was amazing.
Laura, I don’t know how heavy you were as a child, but children today are heavier than ever. Because of that, their obesity related disease risk goes up because of the length of time that they are obese.
Yes, food is one culprit here, but so are video games, parents giving young children juice instead of water (calories), and stroller manufacturers making stronger strollers (thus allowing children to be inactive for longer into their childhood and not having to walk – for instance from the car into the store).
Children will continue to grow in size as folks who are obese continue to marry others who are their same size; and the pattern continues.
We as a nation need to clean up our act, get more active and stop eating crap.
sorry for the rant.