To ask if you judge the parents of overweight children

[PaddleBoardingMomma]

At school pick up today I noticed a new girl in my daughters class was in the line waiting to be collected.

She is a very heavy set little girl, they are all in year 1, so still very young but this particular child looked far bigger and sadly really stood out. I found myself feeling so sad, wondering if she will settle in OK and then irrationally annoyed at her parents for putting her in that position.

I was quite a chubby child for some of my school years and recall the taunts vividly, it made my school experience pretty horrible so I think I have quite a skewed view on this in fairness, it hits a nerve.

I had a word with myself for being judgemental and not knowing the situation and I know it's non of my business, but I wondered if I'm just a horrible person or if anyone else feels a pang of sadness for these kids and (rightly or wrongly) finds themselves blaming/ judging the parents.

Yes i do judge and I am very fat myself. I know how it feels to be fat and everything that comes with it and I don't want that for my kids. Both my kids are slim even though myself and their father are fat because I make sure they eat a healthy balanced diet

@Lampshading

No it isn't, it's largely full of people disputing the truth and coming up with a million excuses rather than acknowledging it's an issue society should be helping with

Got it in one!

No I don’t. I don’t know their story.

I was judged for having skinny children because it obviously meant that I didn’t feed them.

@knitnerd90

Medication for mental illness also causes weight gain.

Poverty itself causes obesity. Not just diet--the chronic stress of poverty affects cortisol and glucose levels. Poor children may not have safe places to play and engage in physical activity. Poor sleep habits lead to weight gain.

So yes someone posted a study upthread that demonstrated the correlation between weight as a child and developing type 2 diabetes--but those studies don't control for other factors. If you start with the assumption that obesity causes diabetes, you prove what you are looking for. The research into social determinants of health is fascinating.

I don't believe that weight has zero effect on health, but there is a massive difference between being slightly overweight and having a BMI of over 50. Yet we lump everyone in together!

Well yes, but seen as though lots of people can't accept many people are overweight due to diet and lifestyle, how on earth can society look to address stuff like socioeconomic factors? If it's so offensive to acknowledge this fact and there's always actually another reason, then how do we move forward? It should not be a blame game, but we can't make meaningful change whilst the majority are in denial.

If the OP asked "Would you judge parents of a child who was always dirty and had dirty clothes?" Would these posters say:

No, it's nothing to do with the parents.
Oh well some children get dirty really easily.
I sent both my children out into the garden and one got much dirtier than the other, so how a parent acts obviously makes no difference.
Some children have sensory issues and roll in mud so we can't judge any parents with a dirty child.
I only wash my children every three days and they always look clean so it must be genetics.
A child who is dirty isn't automatically unhealthy therefore being dirty isn't unhealthy.

Because that's what it sounds like.

I think the first place we should look to though as parents is ourselves. Teaching your child healthy eating habits is part and parcel of being a (good) parent. We cannot bury our head in the sand and ignore or excuse away that our child is overweight, or getting that way. We are accountable for our children when they are small. Society should be accountable for the obesity problem as a whole, but surely this is second priority.

@Stumpedasatree

I think the first place we should look to though as parents is ourselves. Teaching your child healthy eating habits is part and parcel of being a (good) parent. We cannot bury our head in the sand and ignore or excuse away that our child is overweight, or getting that way. We are accountable for our children when they are small. Society should be accountable for the obesity problem as a whole, but surely this is second priority.

Yes of course that is right! Parents set the standards.

@azimuth299

If the OP asked "Would you judge parents of a child who was always dirty and had dirty clothes?" Would these posters say:

No, it's nothing to do with the parents.
Oh well some children get dirty really easily.
I sent both my children out into the garden and one got much dirtier than the other, so how a parent acts obviously makes no difference.
Some children have sensory issues and roll in mud so we can't judge any parents with a dirty child.
I only wash my children every three days and they always look clean so it must be genetics.
A child who is dirty isn't automatically unhealthy therefore being dirty isn't unhealthy.

Because that's what it sounds like.

I think everyone would agree it's down to parents to keep their kids clean, but they would recognise there can be wider factors involved.

So I think you would get some answers like the ones you've given. Certainly I think you'd get posters saying their child (or one of their children) appears to be a dirt magnet for example but the other doesn't. I think plenty of parents would recognise that situation. I think you would get people saying that some kids have sensory issues and are more likely to end up grubby.

I also think you'd get people saying they would be worried about what was going on at home for a child to be dirty all the time. I think there would be more compassion.

I’ve just been watching 10 year old DS do his swimming lesson. He’s overweight but he eats a well balanced diet. I honestly don’t know why his weight has shot up. Could I possibly be puppy fat?

Everyone in his class is skinny, so he definitely sticks out like a sore thumb and no doubt everyone is judging me (and him). I’m skinny and all his siblings are skinny, so it’s not a family thing.

Yes I do. There's a family down my road where they are all obese. I don't mean a little bit overweight.

I see the little boy trying to run down our road and I feel sorry for him. I think he's being set up for a lifetime of health problems and issues around food. And probably being pickled on in school as he gets older.

@Chesneyhawkes1

Yes I do. There's a family down my road where they are all obese. I don't mean a little bit overweight.

I see the little boy trying to run down our road and I feel sorry for him. I think he's being set up for a lifetime of health problems and issues around food. And probably being pickled on in school as he gets older.

Its very hard because children love their parents - even if, as you say, the parents are failing him by allowing him to be obese. They could stop it. But they don't.

@funinthesun19, could it be portion size at mealtimes? Has he had a drop in activity recently? I think any small improvements you can make, such as swapping out or dropping snacks and slightly monitoring portion control will be helpful? I hope I haven't sounded patronising.

If he is picked on it won’t be because he is overweight. It’ll be because there are bullies at his school who get a kick out of bullying people. Let’s stop victim blaming children shall we?

This thread is disgusting. One of the most self congratulatory, self righteous I have ever read on here. I can't believe it's been left to run. I've seen threads zapped for far less, but hey it's fatties and porkers getting a bashing but that's ok.

I'm not 'judging' at such. Just happy to state the fact that fat parents of fat children need to address this situation, they should be held to account for the obesity of their children. Health professionals should be openly tackling this issue with these families.

@Arsewangry

This thread is disgusting. One of the most self congratulatory, self righteous I have ever read on here. I can't believe it's been left to run. I've seen threads zapped for far less, but hey it's fatties and porkers getting a bashing but that's ok.

How do you know what weight people posting are?

Also the only people using language like 'fatties' and 'porkers' on this thread are posters like yourself who have come on to say how horrible the thread is.

[quote LexMitior]@Rockhopper81 - I don't know if you are obese, you have said here that you are overweight.

However, if you were obese and had required knee surgery due an accident, the excess weight would have likely contributed to the severity of your injury. Being obese would have contributed to the need you had and the degree of pain you felt.

But what is "physics arguing with your body". If you stood up, and were obese, this could have meant the injury was far worse than if you were a healthy weight. Obesity means your body breaks more readily because of the greater weight being carried.[/quote]
Physics arguing with my body - it wanted to turn one way, physics (gravitational pull) and the limits of human connective/'cushioning' tissue tried to put a stop to it. Needed surgery to repair a buckle tear in my meniscus, surgery being the optimum choice due to locking of the joint, severity of the damage, and my age (34 at the time). A brief medical overview for you there.

No, my weight had no bearing on the cause of the injury, or my recovery from surgery. In fact, my recovery was text book, because I'm actually quite capable of following the standard physio advice given for post-operative care.

As an aside, my athletic, average weight cousin sustained a significantly worse knee injury - requiring ACL reconstruction, a much more involved surgery, with a significantly longer and more in-depth recovery programme - than I did, but I guess that's okay as she's slim and average weight, right?

My point is, for neither injury was the weight of the person who suffered it a contributory factor. It just wasn't. When I had my knee surgery, there were two other people having total knee replacements - both were slim and appeared of average weight, so it's doubtful their weight had contributed to the joint degradation. You have no idea what those people in the waiting room had experienced or why they were there, you've just decided it was self inflicted because they were fat.

How did you sustain your injury, may I ask?

Because if you were severely overweight, or obese, that could have been a significant contributory factor as to how you sustained your injury; how did it happen?

@Lampshading

Also the only people using language like 'fatties' and 'porkers' on this thread are posters like yourself who have come on to say how horrible the thread is.

I made no assumptions on any posters weight.

I contributed further up the thread, but because it doesn't fit the with the overwhelming narrative of the thread it has been largely ignored.

Carry on and fill your boots, you're clearly having a great time.

It reflects worse on you than it ever could on me if that's the kind of person you are.

A good clinical outcome is not one you can claim, is it? That's on your surgeon's skill.

@Arsewangry I'd never refer to people like that even to prove a point, but you do so perhaps not quite as pleasant as you're trying to make out. I just find it frustrating how a lot of people won't acknowledge basic facts which is partly what stops progress being made.

I know that if I crack down on my kids eating and activity for a six to 12 months they'll be fine, because I know how to do that

But you won’t fix it. And it won’t be fine. Because this is exactly the mentality of every dieter ever/and that’s why people are fat. “Yes yes I know I can lose the weight easily and be slim. I’ll do that in a bit”. Never fucking happens.

My mother was a size 24 for YEARS. She was in extreme denial I saw it all and her looking in the mirror and thinking it was fine/absolute body dysmorphia. Eating a salad with an entire baguette. Drinking bottles of wine or eating a trough of spaghetti. Absolute lack of awareness. She only lost weight due to illness - she never, ever would have lost it otherwise.

People saying their children eat fine and don’t understand how they are gaining weight need to actually properly examine what they are eating - it all adds up. It seems like a packet of crisps or two and a couple of biscuits or three but actually it’s probably more than you think.

I am gobsmacked by the denial on here! But then the majority of women in the UK are fat and therefore people are on this thread who don’t want to see it, like my mother didn’t.