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

Perfectly illustrates the issue if you get parents who are not over feeding their children criticised. No wonder we are where we are with so many overweight children.

I use smaller plates for the DC and average size plates for the adults.
DP was use to a serving plate for dinner when he lived at home you'd fit 2 dinners on these plates.
He puts the food in layers now whereas I was brought up a portion filled a section of the plate no piling upwards.

There are so many mitigating factors. Yes, some children are overweight due to poor diet but there are also the ones who are overweight because of other reasons. Medication and health conditions, including mental health, are just 2 factors. You also have to consider puberty, especially in girls, as it's common to put weight on during this time.

It's not a black and white issue, unfortunately everyone has an opinion and some are so quick to form poor opinions!

I also think we need to differentiate between children who are overweight/obese and those who are well-covered, but not actually overweight.

I’m slim and before I had children I just assumed that my children would be a similar build if I fed them properly. But one is a well-covered/chunky build and one’s slim/skinny like me. DD has always been a bigger build and now she’s tall with far wider hips and bigger bust than I have. She’s not overweight, but has always been the middle-higher end of her healthy BMI. DS is the lower end like me.

Perfectly illustrates the issue if you get parents who are not over feeding their children criticised. No wonder we are where we are with so many overweight children

Ironic really because the one of the points against bottle feeding is the ease at which they feed amd maybe take in too much compared to breast fed babies ( bottle fed babies here so its not a criticism at all) and that babies aren't meant to go 4 hours between feeds etc and ho baby ked weaning is supposed to encourage them to not eat too much the way they can when the parent spoons it in. The whole point is to not stretch their stomachs so they get used to over eating. But using small plates which essentially we all should probably use anyway cos dinner plates are frickin massive these days, is controlling

foodandarts.blogspot.com/2011/05/history-of-plate-sizes.html?m=1

Here

A breakfast plate is still slightly bigger than a dinner plate used to be and some dinner plates are 12 inches across , which is far ti big really . So Tswift you are probably spot on with your portion size really tbh.

@EarringsandLipstick

I really think it's part of basic parenting to keep your child at a healthy weight

I do agree with this.

But as per PPs there are wider societal issues at play, and OP was about as goady & judgemental as it's possible to be.

Taking another approach. I'm slim. I come from a very slim family. Food was a very straightforward matter. Few treats but no issue around them if they were there, dinners cooked, which were grand, plain cooking & healthy sizes. My busy mother working full-time did not ever think about food as an issue, it was just a household chore.

I have a lot of control issues around food however. When I'm stressed, I don't eat - or I don't eat properly. Massively linked to my emotions & mental health.

I'll often exist on chocolate & cups of tea at this point & exercise intensively.

I've 3 kids & they notice this, ask me if I've eaten etc. I'm a single parent & find mealtimes hard. It's a real effort - but one I work at - to eat regularly & healthily, with my kids, and reduce my sugar intake.

If you saw me, you'd think I was healthy & perhaps OP would categorise me as 'better' than those fat people. But sometimes, my practices are not healthy and potentially damaging to my own children.

Life is complicated. Judging superficially is wrong.

I have been ill this year and my BMI is 19.

This is in the healthy range, however I am not healthy.

I have no energy, my sleep is disturbed and like @EarringsandLipstick when I'm stressed I don't eat. Or food makes me throw up - NB - I don't have an eating disorder, just (!) extreme anxiety.

If you saw me, you might think "she's so thin and healthy".

This is far from the case. I try to meal plan, eat little and often but I literally lost 3.5 stone in a year, without trying. I'm worried about passing these issues onto DD. Some days, when it's really bad, I can just about hold down some soup and a milkshake.

Bottom line - stop judging.

My breakfast plates are the same size as my grandmother’s dinner plates. Our current dinner plates(John Lewis standard) are enormous like the ones in a pub. If my kids ate platefuls that size daily they would have to do an insane amount of exercise not to get fat.

I am off my food if anxious.
I know a few people like this, none of them are fat. They're all including myself on the go fidgety people who rarely sit and eat when hungry. My mam would describe them as living on their nerves

My breakfast plates are the same size as my grandmother’s dinner plates. Our current dinner plates(John Lewis standard) are enormous like the ones in a pub. If my kids ate platefuls that size daily they would have to do an insane amount of exercise not to get fat

A portion of food is the same whether u eat it off the floor , in a bowl, or stuck it on a plate 12/13 inces across. The only thing the plate size does is make it look like its empty every time you dish up a sensible amount so naturally you would fill it...

Why do they think restaurants take the large plates and then stick everything in little dishes , or buckets on it.... because it would look like next to nothing if u put it straight on to a plate. Reality is though many of us still don't finish even the smaller portions.

I think we also eat too much even when we do stop on a big plate because we would say to ourselves...no point leaving that little bit. But on a smaller plate it looks more so you wouldn't thing you were leaving so little and carry on eating .

@EmeraldShamrock

I use smaller plates for the DC and average size plates for the adults. DP was use to a serving plate for dinner when he lived at home you'd fit 2 dinners on these plates. He puts the food in layers now whereas I was brought up a portion filled a section of the plate no piling upwards.

For normal meals I use what most people would class as side plates. They are the same size as the plastic plates my DC's uses when they were younger. Seconds is available for those that want it, but there is no need for any of us, adults or kids, to have a modern day dinner plate size meal every night. We use standard dinner plates when we have our roast on Sundays.

Same bringback. That makes us “controlling” though apparently 🙄 and us and our children have eating disorders ...

@Porcupineinwaiting

Eating healthily can be more expensive than eating healthily but even if you are eating unhealthily you dont have to consume (or feed your child) excess calories.

Excellent point.

It doesn’t matter that much what you eat, it’s the amounts.

You shouldn’t eat much red meat or too much sugar and should aim for 5 a day, but otherwise it doesn’t really matter how you get your calories.

If any of my children were significantly underweight or significantly over weight I would still love and treat them the same and want to get them to a healthy weight for them ,

I do see a child being really underweight or overweight as problem that a family would need to work together ,in getting their child to be a healthy weight so they can have the best possible health and life and childhood they can ,
when a child has a problem with their weight regardless of the cause of it ,they need love care and support to get to a healthy weight again , so yes although it can be neglectful to let your child become really over weight Etc for example: feeding your child too many high calorie foods therefore making them overweight that is neglect because your being negligent with their nutritional diet and you as a parent should know better and do better for your child so they don’t have health problems later in life or in their childhood ,but if for example a child often sneaks sweets away and Is often secretly grazing and the parent is trying to provide their child with a healthy diet than that is not neglect but rather more a behavioural problem which the child will also need support with , so the answer is both , sometimes it’s neglect sometimes it’s not

I don't mean to lower the tone of the debate but for those in two minds 'It' s Your Fault I'm Fat' on MTV is really quite insightful about the psychology behind it all.

I take an interest as my DM suffered neglect through careless overfeeding (basically given treats anytime she wanted attention, or wanted to be listened to, played with ) she made sure I wasn't overly dependent on food in order to feel loved and cared for.

Her death was obesity-related.

www.channel5.com/show/its-your-fault-im-fat

Also Channel 5 and Sky apparently.

Neglect is a harsh word to use unless the child is seriously obese or seriously underweight (with no medical cause) - when it is most certainly neglect and requires professional input.

Hopefully most parents would intervene at an earlier stage and adjust the child’s intake. Sadly, I think lots of people have a false idea of what is healthy and should be normal. Fat children are hugely disadvantaged and can lead to far more mental and physical health problems in childhood and teenage years than addressing the issue but parents do seem reluctant to tell a child to wait until supper time. We’ve lost sight of the normality of being hungry before a meal. Children should experience a degree of hunger.

Puppy fat is a misnomer. Waiting for a growth spurt is a misunderstanding of healthy growth and weight. Children who are fat as they enter teenage years are likely to become more fat. They are likely to develop polycystic ovaries. Fat children are more likely to develop anxiety, OCD and depression. It exacerbates asthma. It can lead to sleep apnoea. Type 2 diabetes is increasing in children due to obesity.
For girls, it’s also resulting in earlier menarche and consequences of increased oestrogen production with potential link to later childbearing problems and female cancers.

Pretty serious consequences of supporting your children to become fat, no?

The sugar and flour industries have somehow persuaded everyone that their products are essential foods. There are entire t.v. series devoted to glorification of lovely new ways to increase diabetes, obesity and strokes. The weird notion has come from U.S.A. that it is o.k. to send children begging strangers for sugar as 'halloween'. No, it isn't o.k..
It isn't o.k to normalise feeding street drugs and alcohol and cigarettes to children. It is bad for them. It is bad for adults, too. The same goes for sugar, fat, flour and junk food.

It isn't essential to even have a cooker and power supply to have a cheap balanced diet. People have lived the odd few centuries without, and still do, particularly when camping. But there are a multitude of online advisers who can feed a family a good healthy diet for pennies, and others who advise on free or nearly free sources of decent food. There's no nutritional difference between a tin of beans at room temperature and one burning hot. The same for any canned food. Fresh fruit and salad don't need to be cooked. Nor do cheese, yoghurt, seeds, nuts and some of the slightly more healthy options of dried fruit and vegetable crisps. House sharers and sofa surfers get used to making do.