To feel I have just witnessed child abuse?

[mrsrosieb]

Please note I have only used medical terms in this post and nothing I am writing is meant to be insulting towards obese people.

I have just witnessed a morbidly obese woman pushing a pram with 2 older children-one about 9 and one about 14. These children are dangerously obese from a medical point of view.

I felt so sorry for them. If mum wants to eat a diet that makes her obese that is her choice and I have no problem with that. What I have a real issue with is raising children that may go on to suffer heart disease and diabetes-plus getting a ragging from the school bullies.

I know the SS have removed children like this. Am I right in thinking this is child abuse?

Some overweight people are unhappy with the bodies. Some are just fine thanks.

Some overweight parents struggle to ensure their dcs eat well. Some manage fine thanks.

Some overweight people never move. Some exercise regularly.

Some people eat too many cakes. Some adults and children have medical issues which mean maintaining a healthy BMI is very hard.

This is an incredibly complicated picture and frankly you can tell nothing from a few words on a screen or a few minutes seeing a family in the street.

Fantastic posts Kladdkaka,

My ds is autistic & has ADHD he does not feel hunger as i do. He will eat & eat. I control what he eats very carefully, he also does an awful lot of exercise. He is on medication for the ADHD, one of the side effects is he loses his appetite for most of the day but is extreamly hungry once the meds wear off in the evening.

I wont have any junk food in the house as he is so desperate to eat. Ds is allowed all the fruit/veg etc he wants but there is no junk for him to eat.

I meet lots of SN children that have eating issues and as a parent it can be incredibly difficult to manage.

Pull the other one it has bells on...

There's overweight, and there's morbidly obese. People who raise children to be morbidly obese are committing child abuse IMO. It's no different to starving your kids.

For those stating steroids make you put on weight. Surely this is only true if you do not control your eating/calories?

My dd was on high dose steroids for nearly 2 years to suppress her immune system as she had an autoimmune disease. Whilst she was on these she was constantly hungry. But as I couldn't stand the idea of her getting fat I explained to her that whilst on the meds she would be on a restricted diet too. It was hard work, sometimes she hated me when I wouldn't let her eat 'normally'. Her packed lunches were full of fruit and veg, she had carrots as snacks etc.

What I'm getting at here is even with medical factors there is something that can be done at least while you can control what they eat. And yes I too have battled with my weight. This doesn't come from a place of ignorance.

Golly - people are awfully keen to accuse others of bad parenting when i comes to food aren't they? Shows that it isn't only the overweight who have issues with food........

My DS is on the spectrum and when younger was capable of eating his own bodyweight in sugar and sweet things. I'm meaning entire jars of golden syrup and boxes of icing sugar with a spoon.
Best way I found to control what he ate was to only have healthy food in the house, treats happened when we were out. If I bought stuff to bake with, I used them the same day, or the next day.
Even now, with him being 17, we have no crisps, biscuits, sugar, cake, icecream etc in the house. It's become a habit.
We also keep up a level of exercise, walking mostly, with bursts of sport for him.

There is a family at my school, where 2/4 of the DC's are EXTREMELY overweight. What is not known by the many people (even adults FFS) that mock these two DC's is the fact that they have Prader-Willi Syndrome, and lack the enzyme that tells their brain that they have eaten enough.

She has regular appointments at GOSH, she has those two DC's on a very restrictive diet as laid out by their dietician, yet still they are morbidly obese.

It's NOT always down to being over fed by their parents, or fed the wrong foods, or anything like that, sometimes there ARE genuine medical issues that can cause this.

So, SS? No. Maybe some education on healthier eating, cooking lessons, and paid for activities to exercise, but not really in the remit of Social Services.

You DON'T have to overeat when on steroids to put on weight. I have to take steroids as one of my medications, and despite my eating and exercise habits being unchanged, I am ALWAYS 2-3 stone overweight while on them, it drops off within 8 weeks of stopping them, and is back again within 8 weeks of starting them.

I watch my intake, and eat very healthily. But this has happened every time I have to take these tablets. The only difference is, while eating the same amount, I constantly feel hungry, CONSTANTLY, while on them. Which stops when I'm not taking them.

No extra food, no less exercise, yet I put on 2-3 stone within 8 weeks of starting the pills.

Whenever I take my DS to asthma clinic there are a lot of overweight DC as the ones needing to take very strong steroids pile on the weight.

Often these DC are more sedentary as well, to avoid attacks.

Fortunately for DS, his condition requires only moderate steroid and has never prevented his excessive sporting activities. But that's just luck...

wannabedomesticgoddess - Your comment is spot on.

I totally agree with the OP that this is a form of abuse...maybe the parents are in a state of denail or just plain ignorant or don't know how to feed themselves and this passes on to the kids. But if your child's health is affected because of the diet you, as a parent, are feeding them then it's your fault.

As others have pointed out, there could be medical issues involved, however as anyone who looks around them nowadays can see that there are more and more overweight kids, are we to assume that everyone of these has a medical condition and the diet isn't the problem ? I think not.

Obviously, most overweight poeple are overweight because they eat too much.

However, you cannot say who is who when they are complete strangers can you?

So do you want to be the sort of person who gives complete strangers the benefit of the doubt, or the sort of person who decides that a complete stranger is an abuser and must be judged?

Instead of attacking fat people (who are one of the last groups within society that people are allowed to openly bitch about), it might be better to attack the food industry which fills products with addictive chemicals and other crap.

Money may well be an issue - the cheaper foods are the ones filled with shit.

I am currently on a diet and everywhere I look, I am surrounded by high fat, high salt, high sugar crap. It's hard enough for me to resist them, let alone kids. If they weren't everywhere, then society would find it easier to be healthier.

Yes, parents are ultimately responsible for what they feed their kids, but firstly, a lot of people don't actually realise just how unhealthy or high calorie some food actually is. A sandwich from a supermarket can appear healthy, but have 500 calories in. Maybe this mum isn't feeding her kids wall to wall burgers, just normal food which has been processed in a way that isn't made completely obvious at the outset. I was surprised by how many calories some vegetarian products have, as I had always thought of vegetarian food as healthy .and some of it really isn't

Secondly, one of those children is a teenager - they have access to their own money at that age and the freedom to play out with their friends. I think it is impossible to control their diet entirely at that point.

Maybe there are underlying conditions or maybe she has kids who are resisting all attempts to get them exercising (was a serious exercise avoider myself as a child, although I was skinny) and she is trying not to make it a chore but something they actually want to do.

I think this is a horrible OP and it's a cheap shot to attack overweight people when most things in society conspire to keep them that way. I'd like to see free, easily available sports clubs for all kids in all areas and free gym memberships for teenagers and decent canteen food in Secondary schools, instead of garlic bread and chips and chocolate vending machines. If we had better facilities, available to all, then perhaps this woman's kids wouldn't be fat.

smileymam I don't think you can compare, well she eats this, he eats that, she's slim, he's bigger build etc. Putting it simply for HIM, he's consuming too much if he's obese? She clearly has a faster metabolism, maybe naturally moves a little more..who's to say?

If he's obese, he needs to consume less and move more. Without a medical condition, there is no excuse/no need at all to be obese and it is harmful to your child.

Sadly the diet can cause the medical problem as i said upthread about wheat. Also even if you go 'on' a diet or hardly eat at all it can make you fatter when you DO eat normally. Because the body goes into starvation mode and hangs onto the carbs and fat.

shortnm i agree about attacking the huge manufacturers and supermarkets who 'push' crap food at everyone all the time.

Agree. This is why actually quite a lot of bigger ppl that I know don't seem to actually consume that much - but what they do consume, the body is hanging onto, so they just maintain their bigger frame.

But if your child is in that situation (note the word 'child'!) then surely you have a responsibility as a parent to get to the GP and get a proper diet plan sorted out (and by diet, I don't mean restricted food intake, I mean diet in the true sense of the word, a plan of what, when and how much of the right stuff to eat)

By medical condition, I was talking about e.g say being on steroids, which is incredibly upsetting and can cause large weight gain (as seen in the son of one of my friends who was very traumatised by this)

It's not easy - or else we'd all be perfect and slim wouldn't we! :) (hoping to get it right after I give birth, and cut out mostly sugar!!)

ppeat why is it the supermarket's fault? So you only buy crap food because it's on offer and being promoted?!

I don't want to attack docs but many of them know nothing or very little about nutrition. I follow my blood type diet which is very interesting because it shows that we are all different and do better on different foods e.g. O types SHOULD eat meat but no wheat and A' types should eat more grains and fish and veg. but not tomatoes or oranges (i cured my eczema as soon as I stopped eating them!) so there's much more than most medics have the time to know about diet.

If so many overweight people are overweight because of medical conditions/hormones/way that someone is built etc then how come 50 years ago pretty much no one was overweight at all - surely these conditions existed back then as well?

I think it is far more to do with the type of food available now (processed, full of sugar, things marketed as 'healthy' but are in fact the opposite) and the sedentary lifestyle of many people.

Obviously there is a very small minority of people who are overweight because of certain conditions, however, all of the people I know who are very obese are so because they eat shit and do no (and I mean NO) excercise. And I would imagine that if you see an entire family of very obese people, the chances that they are this way because of an inherited medical condition, or genes is absolutely tiny. Possible, but tiny.

I remember 50 years ago (old gimmer emoticom) There was ONE family in the large suburban town where we lived who were ALL obese.

I notice if I'm on here too much the weight starts to go on

bluemoon Even sensible people on here say things like fruit and veg are too expensive. Lets face it suprmrkts DO push cheap nasty food as do advertisers they're in cahoots IMO and yes a lot of people only think 'what's cheapest?' even if they afford tp pay more.

IIWM i'd buy big bags of fruit and veg from markets not supermarkets.

I think also if you live in certain areas, then it is perfectly acceptable and normal to be overweight. So mentally, the idea that you are harming your DC doesn't arise because everyone else is doing the same.

When I'm in the States I notice this. There is little social stigma attached to being fat and people don't feel they are doing anyhting wrong by allowing their DC to be fat. It is completely normalised in te way that smoking around DC was normalised here twenty years ago and still is in many parts of the world.

I agree wordfactory.

Also I think that the idea of 'excercise' has totally changed. Many people have been conditioned to think that to 'excercise' means running on the treadmill in the gym, therefore it is not for them. The same people think that a 20 minute walk is far too long, and will therefore drive to places that are literally round the corner. As humans, we are designed to be very active a lot of the time. If you are not, then it will totally mess up your metabolism etc.

I can understand the reactions of parents whose children have gained weight because of medical reasons. It is possible that this family fall within that category.

However, most people who are overweight are not overweight due to medical reasons but due to poor diet and lack of exercise, myself included. It was a painful process for me to recognise that I am fat, that will probably put my health at risk, lack of fitness does make it harder for me to play football with my sons in the park and that I have done it to myself.

In my case, it wasn't a massively unhealthy diet (for example I am between 5-6 stone overweight and my total cholesterol is 3.8 with a good HDL /LDL ratio) the main issue was the sheer volume of food I ate. My portions were too large and I was a compulsive grazer / nibbler.

It is very hard to tackle the issue of familial obesity (not due to medical problems) until the family are prepared to recognise that there is a problem. And recognising there is a problem can be a very painful thing to do.