Is having overweight kids child abuse?

[Mummyme1987]

A friend posted on Fb that parents with fat kids are child abusers. Except for kids with medical problems. It started with comments on how it's awful that there's a generous fit section in clothes shops. I'm shocked that people think this. I think the majority of parents don't just feed their kids crap, and some kids are bigger than others, and unless it is a very extreme case it's not child abuse. Thoughts?

Yes you can choose not to buy this stuff but it can be difficult to resist when walking around a supermarket facing walls of multi packs of crisps and cheap junk piled high on special offer. There is both the temptation to enjoy a treat and and the added lure of the low price offer everywhere you turn.

We really need to get away from viewing junk food as "a treat"

Sorry, I meant it hasn't helped all the other kids getting fat. We haven't cured the problem generally by simply labelling it abuse in those handful of cases.

It's either abuse (in sever cases) or it not. You can't take that away, because it hasn't helped other people. It's either abuse or it's not. It clearly is. Because people are having their children removed.

What other form of abuse would you remove the label of 'abuse' from because it doesn't appear to be helping others. Labelling something abuse is about helping the person it is happening too.

It's emotional abuse as well. They are condemning their kids to having problems with their own bodies and problems with food, for the rest of their lives.

Personally I think a range of things need to be done which include some parents taking responsibility. I don't believe taxing food will solve the issue. People will complain they can't treat their kids because they are poor and that these 'treats' have become the preserve of the rich.

People (in general not just parents) need to stop seeing food as a reward or as an activity when your bored or something to do when you are stressed, upset etc.

Yes things needs to be done. But also people need to take responsibility for their parenting choices.

Taxation won't work alone.

Aye that sort of logic is just rife now.

When I worked in ortho I could have screamed at the amount of patients who wouldnt accept that their joint problems were weight related and there's very little I could medically.

I suppose I'm not surprised. So many people are just in denial about it.

But that body is amazing, even if you wouldn't chose to be that ripped yourself, you should still be able to appreciate that that woman's body is fucking incredible. It's like an art sculpture, strong, powerful, "curves" (the healthy sort), it's seriously impressive. And obviously the result of grit and determination.

And I don't think there was one pleasant comment on that screenshot. Says a lot.

I think walking or lack of it is a problem for a lot of children and it's impact on weight. My two, 9 and 4, walk at least 2 miles a day home from school, my Ds also plays football every lunch time and DD is the kind of child that spins when she talks to you. Sometimes we walk to school which in total makes it 4 miles in a day. My youngest had the letter home recently just with weight/height statistics and was just under the 25 percentile, my eldest is about 5 percentile and 'is' skinny by any generations' definition - my Dad is 70 and is very blunt so would say if he thought they were fat but thinks DS is 'boney'. My parents are both slim Boomers so when they refer to him as being skinny, they are thinking in terms of olden day sizes not vanity ones.

Recently, Ds was ill and lost weight, he was very underweight and once he fancied food again, I did feed him up with whatever he wanted as I wanted him to gain weight. Although I'm mindful of fatty organs, I 'do' think that my two walking 2 miles at least a day can afford to have a bag of crisps occasionally and I would argue that that is the case more than the child who lives around the corner from the school and is overweight.

I haven't RTFT, but this stuff always disturbs me.

30 years ago kids were rarely fat. These days, lots are.

So: do we think loads of individual parents have suddenly become really abusive, or that the whole culture has changed in ways which individuals can't always be expected to resist?

In very rare cases, yes, it can be "abusive". But I personally don't know a single parent of an obese child who isn't a loving, caring parent who wants the best for their child, as the vast majority of parents are and do.

If it is abuse, it's far more often abuse of large groups of people by industries like the food and entertainment industries than abuse of an individual child by an individual carer.

GraysAnalogy Sat 02-Apr-16 20:10:43
When I worked in ortho I could have screamed at the amount of patients who wouldnt accept that their joint problems were weight related and there's very little I could medically.

I'm sure there are lots of people who have joint problems caused by their weight, but I was so pleased when I finally plucked up the courage to try another physio (out of sheer frustration about not being able to exercise without severe pain) and found one who was willing to work with me on my problems. When she verbalised that I was stuck in a catch 22 - unable to exercise because of joint problems which started before I gained weight but which were exacerbated by the weight gain - and said she could work with me to regain mobility, I cried. After years of medical professionals telling me I needed to exercise to lose weight when I couldn't push a trolley round the supermarket without one of my legs giving way.

I've always been the sort of person who loves to hike and to swim and I'm so pleased that I can enjoy this with my children with usually minimal pain.

I can't think of any other area where people would be so keen to think up excuses rather than admit some personal responsibility.

'School told me teen ds was shouting 'get your tits out' to his female classmates. Of course I don't want to damage his self esteem by bringing it up, nor can I be arsed doing anything about it. Aibu?'

'Yanbu, after all women are objectified all the time, it's not your fault, blame society and our culture'.

'Teen dd is a bit of an alcoholic, but then again so am I. Aibu to do fuck all about it?'

Yanbu, after all it's often glorified in the media, and is available cheaper than fruit juice. And definitely cheaper than healthy teen pastimes. Not your fault op, it's society and culture'.

No way would it go that way, but mention the word fat and people can't wait to pass the buck.

t1mum Yes and that's something I took into consideration when coming up with treatment plans. I'd offer referrals to physio, offer gym memberships so they could try lower impact exercises etc. But unlike you who wanted to exercise these people wanted a quick fix that we just could not offer and wouldn't accept that their weight was the problem. They didn't exercise before they had the pain never mind want to whilst they had it. They'd get on google and find the most outlandish and rare conditions to try and explain away the problem. Then demand knee replacements which weren't medically indicated for them.

I'd try to phrase it that losing weight would relieve their pain rather than the weight has caused the pain, I'd explain that every 10lbs of excess weight puts an extra 40lbs of pressure on the knees but no, their weight couldn't possibly be the problem it's some rare degenerative condition and I must do something about it.

There's quite a few times I was accused of fat shaming.

Junk food on offer? I notice it but am not tempted and it just doesnt bother me anymore.

Ive remembered something ive forgotten. Im not on a high dose of ranitidine anymore I used to have to take 150mg twice a day Now i take 75mg ONCE a day which i can pay for myself they are pence a box so i can knock the repeat prescriptions on the head. There is one that is in process right now so i could make this the last lot.

The docs did tell me i wouldnt need these meds at all once id lost the weight and yet i still need a lower dose. If i dont take a 75mg dose at bedtime i wake up with a burning at the back of my throat......,it has been a few months since last time i tried.

When i lost 10 stone (before the 4 stone regain and subsequent loss) i developed gall bladder disease (now before anyone starts 2 doctors and my surgeon told me it was due to losing weight too fast. In fact they asked me Slimming World or Weight Watchers? The surgeon was very kind to me and when i made a private appointment to see him after being told i would have to live with frequent gallstone pain for another YEAR everytime i ate SOLID food not fatty food because id already lost the weight remember ....but SOLID food....the surgeon did however say to me that he wished he could use me as an example to his other patients who wouldnt believe him that heartburn is affected by weight.
Re. the gallstones he was appalled that i should have to wait a year after making all that effort .....

5 weeks later i was on his operating table under the NHS!

Before that operation i had spent months having intermittent attacks where i was rolling around on the floor or the bed in excrutiating pain every time i ate solid food. I was living on slim a soups and water biscuits and tinned salmon
while trying to hold down a ten hour a night job in a sex chatline office running from room to room answering different phones.

Every time i had a very severe attack i would have the emergency on call GP come out and give me a morphine injection. The neighbours actually said they could hear me screaming. On Xmas Eve 2002 the doc had to come out for the same reason... and on Xmas Day i couldnt stand up My legs kept giving way and i had to be taken to hospital where i was kept under observation until the morphine wore off.

A later attack came at work DH had to come and pick me up help me into the car and take me to a little local hospital where a camp and v. funny doctor who would have made me laugh if i hadnt been in so much pain gave me a box of morphine pills and told me to put one under my tongue when i felt an attack coming on.

Prior to the morphine injections i had been given tramadol which did fuck all to stop the pain and i got so desperate i was taking 2 of them an hour later 2 paracetamol then nurofen anything to stop the pain.

To this day i owe my thanks to the surgeon who did my op and the doc at the local hosp who gave me those pills.

I hope no one ever has to go through what i did.

lurked

If a third of teens and their mums were alcoholics and a third of boys thought it was okay to shout 'get your tits out' at their classmates, damn right I'd be looking for societal/cultural causes.

Sorry forgot to add first gallstone attack was on 3rd July 2002

Operation to remove gall bladder 28th April 2003.

And after going through ALL that shit there is no way i would take steroid medication if i was ill NO WAY IN HELL

Can I ask what worked for you Helena? Was it Sw or ww?

No idea what the figures are off the top of my head but domestic violence and abusive relationships aren't exactly unusual. Would you blame society and culture for that too? Or say regardless of what porn is available, or cultural gender equality etc the perpetrator is responsible for their own actions?

Slimming World worked for me the first time.

The second time i had to tweak it a bit and NOT eat their so called low syn crap because its so high in bloody sugar. In fact i keep my sugar intake as low as possible.......permanently.

Of course the perpetrator is responsible for own actions. But that doesn't mean there isn't room to look for cultural or societal reasons for something being so prevalent, especially if it had been the case that perpetrators of dv used to be few and far between and now suddenly were 1/3 of men. (You know, like with obesity.)

Since dv still happens, should we stop calling it abuse because labelling it isn't helping?

The point is if your child's weight is high and you don't give a shit, won't accept help, won't make and effort and changes. And just feed them crap for an easy life, because your are overweight and trying to prove its genetic etc

It's neglect and therefore abuse.

In those few cases, it is abuse. Although if over 70 kids have already been removed it's not just a few. (Although I don't know how many kids are taken into care each year to compare) pretending those few cases of abuse don't exist or aren't abuse is not helpful to those kids where it's been deemed abuse.

As a victim of neglect how do you think it would feel to be told 'actually we don't class you as a victim anymore, because it's not helping everyone else' .

In Venice, if you go on a gondola ride and you're overweight, the gondolier makes you sit on a different side, so as to balance the weight evenly.

I'm sorry to say you could spot which tourists were Brit couples as they were often sat at opposite ends of the boat to eachother (not very romantic)

Watching them, I couldn't help thinking that if that was in this country we would .merely start building bigger gondolas.

We don't adress problems properly and end up pandering to people, in case we hurt their feelings.

We need to stop making everything bigger. Everything now is extra wide. Ambulances, stretchers, chairs in waiting rooms, clothes go up toxxxxxxxl, plates are bigger, portion sizes are bigger.
We shouldn't be changing everything to accommodate obese people. We should be encouraging them to get back to normal weights.

We also shouldn't be glamourising obesity. Overweight models carrying stones of excess fat, claiming that obesity is the new sexy. I'm sorry but it isn't.

ismell and pearly, yes, those are exactly the kind of societal/cultural things we need to be looking at instead of just shouting 'abuser' at every third parent.

There's lots of talk about not using too thin models in case it causes teens to be anorexic. I've heard much less hand wringing about plus size models.

Katenka, what's your point? There's precedent for some kids to be taken into care because obesity. So either the whole thread is pointless because it's saying we should do what we already do, or the OP (or the OPs friend) thinks we should do it more often/earlier. The abuse doesn't start when the kid gets to 20st. Does it start at 18st? 16? First cupcake?

It (the abuse) starts when the child develops serious health issues that restrict their quality of life, and the parents continue to do the same things that cause harm and exacerbate the problem.

That serious health issue may be obesity. Or having their teeth fall out. Or having breathing difficulties because you're smoking in their faces.

Haven't rtft but roll eyes at posters who tell me to "make" DS get more exercise. "Make" as in "force"? Physically? At nearly six foot and built like a tank, you come and make him!
He's heavy to drag.......