To think it is neglectful to let your child get overweight

[jackson14478]

If you cannot provide your child with basic nutrition, a balanced diet and enough exercise, would you say it's child neglect?

I know for a fact that low income/benefits families can feed their children a healthy diet at a similar cost to an unhealthy one. I've done it and so have friends.

Letting your child become grossly overweight through no fault of their own is not responding to their basic needs

The problem with my eldest is that in addition to being slightly overweight, she self harms in other ways, cutting.

So I try not to exacerbate one by focusing on the other. I try not to give her any more reasons to hate herself.

I am fully aware of the cause of her emotional problems, dv in the family home throughout her childhood. She doesn't want to go to CAHMS, so we talk about the issues here. Not constantly. But when she needs to.

I don't have worries about her long term weight, she will resolve this once she becomes more comfortable and accepting of who she is and finds her place in the world. We are working on the self harm, which over eating can be part of.

One mother at primary used to give kids adult sized Magnums for breakfast. They were all hugely fat. Was sad watching the kids get larger and more pallid as they went up through primary - culminating in visible obesity by year 6. Parents smoked in their car with kids in it too. Guess the parents couldn’t help it or something but was hard to watch such shit parenting and seeing the physical effects of it year on year 🙁

chickenyhead I'm so terribly sorry to hear about your daughters struggles. I hope you all have the support and help you need

Generally it is neglectful, yes.

I think all children have maybe spells of being overweight, but to be constantly overweight, without medical reasons, can be neglectful of the parent.

However there are lots of other factors at play. Education I think plays a part, not having a garden or play areas near by doesn't help, I think money is an issue, it's a lot easier to keep a child active and engaged if you can afford for them to have a choice fun activities and interests.

All these parents that blame Cubs, scouts and groups their children attend are just lying to themselves. If you are not strong enough to tell the group leader not to give your child crap, then alter their diet accordingly throughout the day/week. The class is not the problem.

None of mine have had spells of being overweight

My DS just had his annual checkup with the pediatrician (children don’t usually see GP’s in the US) and she mentioned that children often gain weight before a growth spurt so they can look larger for a few months. This is especially common during puberty. DS (12) isn’t overweight, we were talking generally about puberty.

@IdkickJilliansass

None of mine have had spells of being overweight

Mine hasn't either.

I think it is true for some children. I think their BMI centile can fluctuate, so child who is normally on the 85th centile could gain weight so they are above the 90th centile, but then grow in height so they are a healthy weight again. If a child is on the 35th centile then gaining weight before height is not going to push them into the overweight range though.

I completely agree OP.

When I was growing up my parents never had sweets, biscuits or crisps in our home and were very vocal about how bad they were for us, so we grew up thinking they were naughty treats that we should only buy occasionally (with our pocket money).

I'm still like that as a (slim) adult and it seems to be working fine with my own two DCs.

I think ready access to fizzy drinks has created a huge problem for some kids too.

kowari, yes that's what I meant, fill out then grow into it type it scenario.

My DS puts on a noticable amount before he takes a growth I'm hoping he balances out as a teenager he was born like a block.
DD was born like a rasher and naturally stays slim. I'd say she eats more calories as he doesn't eat sweets or chocolate.

@chickenyhead I'm sorry your DD is having a tough time emotionally. Food is definitely a crutch.
It sounds like you're doing a great job caring for her

In Victoria, childhood obesity is defined as neglect and is one of the criteria for mandatory reporting in schools, i.e. the school has to take action. I've no idea if any such reporting has happened because of privacy laws.

YANBU. People would say it's awful if a child is anorexic so why is it fine for them to be obese.

My daughter is autistic. She tends to eat a handful of foods at any one time until she's sick of them. Shes got to the stage where there's an awful lot of food she won't now eat. She also doesn't seem to know when she's full so will eat on occasion until she feels sick. Similarly with anxiety - she won't know she's anxious until she vomits. Girls with autism very often become anorexic and she's had a spell of restrictive food intake. Right now her weight is going up (I think it's actually linked to a contraceptive implant). She's not overweight yet but she's put on quite a bit of weight recently. Please can you advise me on how to approach this? I'd love your wisdom on how to address our neglect of my daughter? Maybe tell her she's getting fat so that she stops eating again? And then when she becomes underweight tell her to start eating again. Because of course that will work. I'm open to your advise? She's 16 so I can't keep her locked up.

YANBU. The parent/s determine what food is bought and therefore kept within the house until children get to an age where they can gran food on the way to/from school. So for the majority of children up the age of 11, their diet and, therefore, weight is a result of those purchasing decisions and how much food they portion out onto plates.

If you're buying unhealthy food full if saturated fats, allowing children to eat lots of unhealthy snacks and allowed sugar-laden drinks then you will obviously create an issue, be it weight or dental orientated.

Having a good, healthy balanced diet, mainly letting the children drink milk or water and establishing good portion sizes will enable them to grow up with a good, balanced relationship with food.

There will always be a few children who have proper health-related issues, such as genetic and hormonal issues, which can cause obesity and some people just have relatively larger than average body frames.

But, yes, I do think that the majority of the obese children I see within the school environment are that way as a direct result of how they are fed at home and the behaviour modelling they grow up with. You only have to look at what their parents put in their lunch boxes/ bags.

I actually think this is something that needs talking about. There will obviously be some parents that are trying unsuccessfully to help their child but there will also be some
Parents that either don't really
Understand healthy food, or don't care and will Give their kids junk.

Maybe early on, in young primary school
There should be basic nutrition lessons, designed in such a way that they don't give the kids a complex about what they eat but teach them about traffic light labelling system On food, healthy portion sizes and good choices? Get them whilst they're young.

I've alway struggled with my
Weight. As a kid I was bigger than my friends but not big. My parents allowed me to have huge portion sizes of fatty food and like many parents of that era, I wasn't allowed to leave the table until I'd finished my plate. They didn't understand nutrition really. I grew up feeling uncomfortable in my own body and feeling left out and quite shy. I have struggled with my weight through the years and clearing my plate is a habit I psychologically Struggle to break. I have my weight under control now but it's harder to break habits older. I wish I'd had help as a child.

My natural body shape is 'curvy' so with my own daughter we talk about being healthy as opposed to slim. She is allowed to finish her meal as soon as she is full (but no deserts etc if she has left lots of food) and she knows about good choices. She doesn't always make them as she's a kid and likes treats. We're not a family that snack on carrot sticks etc but she knows that it's fine to have chocolate and crisps because she makes healthy choices elsewhere and does a lot of exercise (because she enjoys it). Hopefully she won't have the same struggles I had growing up.

However she has three close friends. One of them has put on a crazy amount of weight. She moans to DD that's she's fat (they're 9/10) her clothes are tight and don't look great, but most importantly when they're running about, she can't keep up. It's frustrating for the friends as they just want to play but I know that high school is going to be tough for this kid. She already dreads PE (fortunately DD and other friends always chose each other first for tram sports) but we all know from being at high school ourselves being overweight can be a pretty miserable experience. They won't all be going to the same high school either to support each other.

Her mum and dad are conscious of it but their excuse is that they were big as kids and it's natural family shape for them. They're not big now and I know they both have worked really hard to lose weight. If you listen to this kid, she'll tell you that she has double cheeseburgers at McDonald's rather than just a normal cheeseburger, is used to adult sized portions. Her pack lunch consists of giant cookies or cakes from bakery and those huge creamy pasta salads you get at supermarkets. She comes to your house and is asking for food all the time (refused a sandwich at mine recently as it wasn't made with real butter). Mum wants to sort her weight out (she's broached subject with me) but allows her to eat utter shite and doesn't encourage exercise. They joke about her having a big appetite and getting into habit of constantly snacking during lockdown. We live in country and have walking/bike routes everywhere. Mum seems to like walking and biking herself when kids are at school but says her kid doesn't like exercise so she won't force her. She's an only child so it's not like they have to consider taking a toddler or anything. I just think that this kind of parent is an issue and t's unfair on the kids. And it bewilders me why they don't help their child now and make her life easier at high school.

Please don't get me wrong, my kid will eat a bit of choc/ crisps daily; we're not a perfect household nutrition wise but it's all done in moderation with daily exercise.

I didn’t think we were talking about kids with health conditions that could lead them to put on weight..

@hillfda

YANBU. People would say it's awful if a child is anorexic so why is it fine for them to be obese.

Because being thin is always seen as more of an advantage. People may say your looking skinny if you have lost weight.

Nobody will go around saying ohhh your looking fat recently

Reading through this thread there’s quite a lot of excuses about being over weight rather than people just admit the facts they would rather speak about conditions and so on as though the everybody who is overweight has a health issue that’s made them fat.

hillfda
YANBU. People would say it's awful if a child is anorexic so why is it fine for them to be obese*?
*
Because anorexia is more dangerous; a lot of teenagers die of anorexia because they starve themselves to death. Obesity leads to health problems, obviously, but more long-term.

I'm not saying that obesity in children isn't a serious problem (I haven't allowed my DDs' to become overweight), but it isn't comparable to anorexia.

@Mittens030869 I wasn’t comparing anorexia and obesity.

I was pointing out that being thin (not anorexic) is seen in a more positive light compared to being overweight.

Maybe that’s the issue

@Charlieeee76

I was addressing the comment from @hillfda not yours. That poster definitely did compare obesity to anorexia, as the quote demonstrates.

I agree with you completely FWIW.

So my DD is overweight and always has been. My DS is skinny. Both brought up the same. I cook dinners from scratch 6 out of 7 nights a week so not living off processed food and she eats all of her vegetables etc. She has a child’s portion. I make her a healthy packed lunch - so much so that she asks how come she doesn’t have biscuits/crisps etc when the other children do. She walks 2 miles a day just to school and back and goes to sports clubs 2 hours a week. I’m doing all I can yet she’s still overweight. I don’t feel I’ve been neglectful at all.
However I have seen examples where I do think the child’s weight is not helped by the parent. A friend of mine when younger was very overweight, probably obese. She used to eat several bags of crisps a day, only drink fizzy drinks and have a burger and chips for lunch every day. And lord knows what else. Her mum used to drive her absolutely everywhere and write letters saying she had an injury to exclude her from PE. Once a year the whole school used to have to walk from the school down to the town - a 25 minute walk which she never did. She’d be off sick that day. In this case, yes the parenting had a lot to do with it. It was almost as if the mum (who was obese herself) wanted her DD to be the same so she wouldn’t leave her.
So IMO, it’s not a black and white, yes or no thing.

I think it is neglectful, I don't think anyone here is including children who are overweight due to health problems.