to ask why would you overfeed your child?

I do not remember any over weight kids from my school days... Leanne (80's name right there!) was a bit chubby but no fat kids.

I work in a petrol station which is hammered school run times - primary one side, high school the other side.

The shop is a small spar. We have one third of the shelving given over to sweets, chocolate, crisps. A third of the fridges are given over to soft drinks

We have a hot food counter - sausages rolls, jambons, chicken nuggets, sausages etc and we have a huge display of cooked on the premises pastries and cakes

Children come in, pick up a boost or monster, grab a bag of crisps, bar of chocolate , packet of sweeties and then add a couple of sausages, sausage rolls or nuggets to the mix

The same kids day in, day out - 5 days a week

Some of these kids are so fat that they walk bowed at the knees

And out they go to the car where the parent is sat waiting to continue with the drive to school

Evening school run and in they come again for ice creams and more sweets whilst mum is picking up the frozen pizza and chips for tea

We do sell fresh meat, fresh fruit, veg and salad - only we end up reducing it all or even writing it off as waste

Because the adult loves food and loves their child so thinks giving the food is an act of love. Because they get pleasure from seeing their child enjoy food. Because the child pesters for food and they believe they are hungry, or they don't like to say no. Because they were raised by parents who restricted them and they believe refusing food causes disordered eating. Because they believe that restricting food is part of 'diet culture' and they disapprove of that. Because they believe their child is genetically disposed to be fatter (like them) or they have 'puppy fat' that will drop off of its own accord. Any or all of those.

Yeah I was thinking this re the buggy judgement.

Re the food, I'm not sure. I guess you can say the same about babies/toddlers in buggies with screens propped up for them or having juice in a baby bottle...

Looks awful and I do sometimes judge but then I try and remember everyone is different, has different struggles, different hills they have the capacity to die on at any given time.

The worst one for me is parents constantly screaming at their kids, swearing/generally talking to them like shite. I'll absolutely judge for that.

When the parents and children are both large I kind of get it but there was a mum near me who was very slim and took great care in her appearance, and from about the age of 8 to 14 her daughter became very overweight. Though to be fair several kids in DDs' classes seemed to get fat around then. I imagine they were becoming less active while being fed larger portions.

My friend’s son is 7 years old (literally just turned 7 in the last few weeks). He weights 10.5 stone and has to wear mens clothes. He has got to a stage he can’t walk long distances and mobilises very slowly. His breathing is terrible at night- she filmed him to show the GP as she believed he had asthma but both the GP and paediatrician have told her it’s weight related.

She is in complete denial about this. She always says that the scales are wrong. He is “just got puppy fat”. He eats constantly- and the school have asked her to send in less snacks, asked her to opt for school lunches to try and ascertain a bit of portion control. He does a developmental delay and autism so I don’t believe he is conscious of this. It only really became an issue when she started living alone with him- he was of average weight and had a normal appetite until they started living alone 2/3 years ago. Prior to this, they lived with her mum. So I don’t know if part of it is that she doesn’t cope well on her own and feeds him to keep him occupied. She has had input from various services to try and support her with this but she takes none of it on board.
She herself is 22 stone and only 5ft 3, so I do think there is a bit of an issue with health literacy.

My mum was/is a total feeder.

It appeals me as an adult that I was allowed to consume a whole pack of choc chip shortbread rounds for breakfast on a Saturday, and my totally disordered eating led to miserable teen years, a continual battle with my weight and hangovers from loose skin now as an adult with a normal BMI - but that's how my mum instinctively shows love.

100% she's got childhood trauma going on, but it's never discussed.

She still gives my boys sweets & chocolate & cake when she has them once a week, but knows I'm much stricter (i.e. normal) and reigns it in.
They actually say 'no thank you' to a lot of the stuff (I know, right?!) and it comes home with them.

So, yeah. It happens.

I think one other issue not already mentioned is also that some people do not have an accurate mental picture of what a healthy weight looks like, whether in children or in adults.

Especially if the peer group around you is also overweight, it's easy to think that what is "normal" around you is also "healthy" - but it may not be.

Poor food literacy in this country.

SEN doesn’t cause obesity. Food does.

What’s an almond mum?

Ignorance of healthy eating. Laziness (it’s easier just to give them something than say no). Personal issues. Could be any number of reasons.

YANBU, and I can’t understand why anyone would feed a child chocolate for breakfast.

Agree with others that YABU about the walking, though! I don’t drive and it’s about 3km for us to walk to my nursery. We take the pram and my almost 2yo does a mix of walking and being pushed. Almost 4yo will happily walk, but it would make me verrrrry late for work some days if the little one was walking the whole way there.

Yes I look back and I grew out of it when I went to uni and lived abroad and taught myself to cook, and started to eat vegetables and salad 🤣🤣 I remember going to my friend’s house and being amazed at the veggie lasagna and cavalo nero her mum served, haha!

Now I pass that on to my kids but I could very easily not have - my brother to this day lives on energy drinks, fried chicken and crisps 😳

And don’t get me wrong I eat way too much sugar still but at least I do eat some vegetables too!

YANBU! It's abuse. I've seen some mums do it as well. One of them, anorectic herself, had her toddler eating M&Ms in her buggy. I did warn her about the choking hasard but she brushed it away saying her child knew how to eat peanuts.🙄
But I also judge the "almond mums" whose children wind up with orthorexia/anorexia. It's another form of abuse but still abuse.

I find it extremely strange as well but there could be some reason ( other than stupidity) I suppose

Nothing you can really do about it though

I think some people just don’t know, they have no concept of what a healthy diet is.

If I think back to what I ate when I was younger, at the time I thought it was fine but now I know it isn’t.

There is a little girl locally who must be morbidly obese She’s a year 1 and age 12 clothes are too small. Said the letter from the reception weight and height was wrong back then as her child was clearly not overweight.

I think overfeeding to the state your child is overweight overweight rather than a little chunky should be considered abuse just as starving your child would be.

There is puppy fat and a little bit overweight then there is obese children.

I think you’re being unfair on the distance and the child not walking. My DH is visually impaired which means he can’t drive. He’ll pick DD2 up from nursery in the pram - it’s a 40ish min walk at adult pace, it would take forever with a 2 year old walking.

YANBU about the food. There was a younger sibling at the school DD1 used to go to, probably 18 months ish. Every morning waiting outside the school in the pram eating a bag of frazzles, every afternoon some sort of chocolate.

Not all kids are overweight due to parents actions, can also be health issues or medications that contribute.

On the other hand, I was recently on holiday and saw an example of it definitely being the parents!! I saw 3 children who were drinking Coca Cola like its water, only eating chips and donuts for dinner, and this was for 7 days straight, they always sat really near us in the buffet so I saw it all and wondered what the parents were thinking. Sadly they were all very overweight and bursting out of their clothes etc.

I came to the conclusion that the parents also ate very badly so maybe it was generational learning, they were eating all the same stuff. Also it gave them an easy life - the kids chose all their own meal and then they just sat on their phones all through the meal, adults and kids alike :(

Not saying I don’t give my kids treats but even on holiday, I’d expect them to have a plate of veggies, some meat/protein, small portion of chips as a side, and then donut, fruit or ice cream for dessert (maybe all 3!) No Coca Cola but maybe one glass or 2 of juice.

Because food=love in the parents eyes. They don't know better.

It doesn't excuse it, but does explain it.

If the mum is responsible for drops off and pick ups and is seen feeding her child chocolate and biscuits at 8am, then for the purpose of the thread the mum is in the wrong. I'm sure if OP saw the dad doing it he'd get a mention too.

YANBU OP at all and I agree with PP at a high level it's abuse. If adults choose to have unhealthy habits and to overfeed themselves to the point of obesity, they don't automatically shove that view on a child.

Because some people think 'puppy fat' is ok, not realising that at that level it is downright dangerous. And some parents just can't see anything wrong with their child because they are so precious

Ds had a very solidly built classmate when he was about 6. We went on a play date over the Easter holidays and the mum confided in me that she was very upset, that the school nurse service had warned her that her ds was obese. She sat there and cried in the kitchen, completely genuine, saying she didn't understand how it could be so, that he only ate healthy home made food, that his portions were small.

In the background her son helped himself, over the course of two hours, to FIVE cream eggs out of a bowl on the coffee table. That's in addition to the huge Easter egg he showed my ds.

I never saw her son walk anywhere. When he came to ours on a play date, he ate the ham, hummus, tomatoes & pitta bread lunch, refused water because he wanted coke (which we don't keep in) and kept asking for sweets.

Obviously you are correct to some extent. But YABU for blaming ‘mums’, kids have 2 parents.