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.

What I find most frightening is how people get offended when you state the bleeding obvious link over what people eat and their weight.

The deliberate cognitive dissonance to avoid the truth is telling.

How is feeding your child chicken nuggets, chips and beans not lazy! There is zero nutritional value to any of the meals you stated in your previous post

baked beans count as one of your veg portions so there's plenty of nutrition in them.

You need a long hard look at people's lives, the cost of food, the cost of fuel (which is going to get even worse), the time people get home from work etc. etc. Sometimes a freezer meal is as good as it's going to get. You should perhaps try living other people's lives and see how you feel about setting to and cooking a meal from scratch when you walk in or batch cooking on a weekend when you have a thousand and one other things to do. I do a mix of freezer, from scratch, half jar/half fresh meals because there's just me and I work full time, and part time, and seasonally part of the year as well. You can't describe me as lazy, that would be wholly in appropriate. I am a realist and do my best with the life that life threw at me. Sometimes I just need to throw my shoes off and take the path of least resistance.

How is feeding your child chicken nuggets, chips and beans not lazy! There is zero nutritional value to any of the meals you stated in your previous post

Oh FGS there is not "zero nutritional value" in a meal containing beans chicken and potatoes. Honestly..

"Advice was pretty much to try to eat 5 a day"

We didn't talk of 5 a day 30 years ago, did we? We knew that fruit and vegetables were good and people would say 'eat your greens'.

@RedToothBrush

What I find most frightening is how people get offended when you state the bleeding obvious link over what people eat and their weight.

The deliberate cognitive dissonance to avoid the truth is telling.

I agree, and its not helpful to anyone.

"You then look at the calorie count on any standard ready meal. Again, any woman below average size would have to either skip meals completely or not eat a whole portion."

I used to eat a lot of ready meals and there were loads under about 450 calories. Really not that difficult to find.

What surprised me was reading on MN that people add things to ready meals. That would of course up the calories.

@Gwenhwyfar

"You then look at the calorie count on any standard ready meal. Again, any woman below average size would have to either skip meals completely or not eat a whole portion."

I used to eat a lot of ready meals and there were loads under about 450 calories. Really not that difficult to find.

What surprised me was reading on MN that people add things to ready meals. That would of course up the calories.

You have to actively look though, rather than just pick up a standard pack. Right?

(I know cos I've done this).

You are making a conscious thinking choice in checking. The whole point is lots of people won't do that thinking.

@Sowhatifiam

How is feeding your child chicken nuggets, chips and beans not lazy! There is zero nutritional value to any of the meals you stated in your previous post

baked beans count as one of your veg portions so there's plenty of nutrition in them.

You need a long hard look at people's lives, the cost of food, the cost of fuel (which is going to get even worse), the time people get home from work etc. etc. Sometimes a freezer meal is as good as it's going to get. You should perhaps try living other people's lives and see how you feel about setting to and cooking a meal from scratch when you walk in or batch cooking on a weekend when you have a thousand and one other things to do. I do a mix of freezer, from scratch, half jar/half fresh meals because there's just me and I work full time, and part time, and seasonally part of the year as well. You can't describe me as lazy, that would be wholly in appropriate. I am a realist and do my best with the life that life threw at me. Sometimes I just need to throw my shoes off and take the path of least resistance.

It doesn't matter what experiences you share, as some posters appear to be on this thread with the sole purpose of shaming and feeling superior to other women. You will merely be told how you could do better, because that is what they appear to enjoy about this discussion. It's all given a veneer of acceptability as its in the jnterests of children, but the post you have quoted was directed at something I did decades ago and the children concerned are now as old as the poster herself. I can hardly pop back to 1992 and put a lentil stew on, so the comment was clearly intended to do nothing more than belittle. It was obvious to me before posting that it would prompt the odd reaction like that from a certain type of person, but I felt I wanted to make the underlying point anyway . And yes, it is hard work.

Here's a good example:

Asda, bog standard pizza
groceries.asda.com/product/boxed-pizza/asda-cheese-tomato-pizza/1000225889789

1/2 a pizza = 331kcal.

Who eats just half a pizza?

If you eat the whole thing, then if you are small, that realistically can be half your daily food allowance.

Something has to give.

The funny thing is that 'slim people who can eat anything' share one magic common thing - overall they aren't eating too much. So they are 'giving' somewhere else if they do have an occasional binge.

5128gapyou make some excellent points.

Its not about being superior. Fuck knows, Macdonalds has its place and I'll happily eat one. Ditto supermarket pizza.

I don't think you have to cook from scratch daily.

You just can't eat the equivalent of supermarket pizza daily AND have a school dinner AND breakfast AND two snacks in between AND a snack when you get home and expect to be a healthy weight if you are 8.

The maths don't work.

This isn't moralising. This is being blunt about reality and people's perceptions of whats normal being utterly warped over the last generation.

Yah portion size is a big thing. I'm starting to calorie count for my kids because my boy is very athletic and slim and I want him to eat a little more and my girl is a bit chubby but still active.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a balanced moderately healthy diet, I certainly feel my guilt over what I feed my kids. it sounds like a stealth boast but it's not as I never intended it to be this way or did anything IMO to make it come about, but my kids just don't like oven/ready food very much. They'll smash a McDonald's, KFC or Chinese takeway but it's not in my budget to offer these more than a few times a month.

So mine eat for dinner a mix of home cooked from scratch meals, as close as I can get to an oven meal once or twice a week (they will have certain oven pizzas and sweetcorn for example) and then when I cba to cook they have a healthy picnic style meal - fruit, veg, dairy, meat, a sweet and savoury treat. Have no guilt or shame over this whatsoever and feel like all their food groups are met without too much rubbish.

Need to cut down on the post school snacks, but it's difficult as he was a very deprived/neglected child so he absolutely loves buying them something after school. Interestingly though, I was a spoilt child from a family with a comfortable income and he was an orphan who ended up in an abusive home, but he is slim and athletic whereas I am chubby. I thought childhood deprivation could lead to overeating but I guess there are a whole host of bad habits one can pick up around food.

no guilt*!

So I am very overweight and I have 2 daughters. One is comfortably in normal weight range and always has been. One is overweight and has been getting there since she started school. She grew without gaining weight through lockdown 1 and was getting to a healthier weight but has reverted since. With both children I was very careful about what they ate when smaller. I ensure we always have 3-4 veg in dinner they can help themselves to with a portion of potato/rice/pasta and a portion of stew or chicken or fishfingers or whatever we are having as the protein element. We generally have snacks of fruit, oatcakes, veg sticks & baby bell. A couple of times a week we will have a puddding or sweets/crisps as a snack and a couple of times a month we get takeaway pizza or go out for a meal. Differences I notice between my kids are that one will sometimes eat dinner, sometimes not and if there is pudding will leave her main so she can eat all the pudding. Overweight one pretty much always eats all her dinner and often says she is hungry and asks for more. This is fine at home as we just direct her to the vegetables and tell her she can have as many as she likes. It’s not fine in other situations (asking for more food at school, at friends house if invited for tea, at her grandparents who won’t accept they are hurting her by giving her whatever she asks for, at birthday parties with a buffet etc). I really don’t know how to fix it. God knows we have tried as I was also an overweight child and it’s not something I want for her but short of banning her from doing anything with her friends, making a huge fuss at school, falling out with my parents horribly what else can we do? I can’t make her not ask for food and if I try and explain people should say no it’s all gone now &/or only offer more greens etc then they think I’m being mean and in some cases make a point of offering her crap because she’s so deprived by me. It’s not like she is sedentary either. We always walk to/from school, swim twice a week, she does sports session as after school care once a week, goes out on long bike rides with her dad and we are regularly out for long walks and go to play park or play out in the street. I know people judge me but honestly suspect they assume she eats nothing but junk or is constantly being offered snacks/allowed to do nothing but watch tv. I really sympathise with her as I always used to feel hungry when I was a child as well. I’ll be reading back through to look for any helpful suggestions someone has left but suspect it will be the usual pile of comments about how people can’t help not knowing how to feed their kids as they are poor/ill educated (I’m neither) and accusations of abuse (always nice to read)

"You have to actively look though, rather than just pick up a standard pack. Right?

(I know cos I've done this).

You are making a conscious thinking choice in checking. The whole point is lots of people won't do that thinking."

Depends. Some of them have the calories on the front, others you have to look at the ingredients and check they're not for just 100g or half a pack or something. It's at least much easier than eating out, work canteen or food cooked by someone else in that you can at least find out if you want to.

@Sowhatifiam

How is feeding your child chicken nuggets, chips and beans not lazy! There is zero nutritional value to any of the meals you stated in your previous post

baked beans count as one of your veg portions so there's plenty of nutrition in them.

You need a long hard look at people's lives, the cost of food, the cost of fuel (which is going to get even worse), the time people get home from work etc. etc. Sometimes a freezer meal is as good as it's going to get. You should perhaps try living other people's lives and see how you feel about setting to and cooking a meal from scratch when you walk in or batch cooking on a weekend when you have a thousand and one other things to do. I do a mix of freezer, from scratch, half jar/half fresh meals because there's just me and I work full time, and part time, and seasonally part of the year as well. You can't describe me as lazy, that would be wholly in appropriate. I am a realist and do my best with the life that life threw at me. Sometimes I just need to throw my shoes off and take the path of least resistance.

Well said, I dont do quite as much work as you, but I'm very busy. The other thing to consider is that kids might not necessarily eat what you serve them. Its totally soul destroying cooking a lovely healthy meal and have them refuse to eat it. Its time and money down the drain and you still need to give them something else. Its all very well to say if they're hungry enough they'll eat, but it doesn't always work like that.

For what its worth, my boys are not overweight and both walk a lot and play football. I dont drive so unless my DH gives them lifts, they make their own way to places (they are 12 and 14). Because I dont drive I normally do a lot of walking. I'll admit that I've put on a bit of weight recently, about four pounds, combination of Christmas and not moving enough. I'm 5ft5 and just over 9st, so not skinny but not overweight recently. I grew up with a Mum who struggled with her weight, food was associated with guilt and tbh I ended up with a borderline eating disorder in my teens/20s. I'm not saying that my relationship with food is perfect now, but its better and I never wanted my boys to think in terms of food being banned etc. My Mum kept cake downstairs (we lived in a townhouse) so she couldn't eat it as easily herself), I grew up with the food guilt association. I remember visiting my bestie's house when we were in our teens.They always had a huge tine of chocolate biscuits and I used to ask her how she stayed so skinny cause I knew I wouldn't be able to control myself. She probably weighed between 6 and 7 stone whereas I was up and down between 8st and 9st. To some extent I think if you get used to having food around, it isn't so much of a novelty

Also, I think life's too short for constant guilt about food and healthy eating etc. My Mum still died when she was 58.

If parents are overweight/obese, I do judge. Sorry.

The majority of people know that there are medical reasons for being fat but they also know these days majority of fat people are fat because of their diet.

Brutally honestly this is my thought process:

Could be medical, but probably isn't. Especially if the parent/s are fat as well.

Is this ''judging''? I don't know. What would make it ''judging''?

@Laiste

The majority of people know that there are medical reasons for being fat but they also know these days majority of fat people are fat because of their diet.

Brutally honestly this is my thought process:

Could be medical, but probably isn't. Especially if the parent/s are fat as well.

Is this ''judging''? I don't know. What would make it ''judging''?

I agree.

Of course it’s sad - it’s child abuse. I have seen some morbidly obese children too, it’s shocking. Their lifelong health will be affected by their start in life; childhood health is important. I’ve heard parents say, ‘it’s just puppy fat’, when their child is clearly obese!

@RedToothBrush

What I find most frightening is how people get offended when you state the bleeding obvious link over what people eat and their weight.

The deliberate cognitive dissonance to avoid the truth is telling.

Amen.

Anything, literally anything is trotted out, rather than admit "yes, I give my child too much food, usually within their snacks, because it's easier than saying no."

Like PP said, suddenly there's all these "magic fat kids" who eat small portions of healthy food and exercise plenty.

Yes, your DC might walk to school every day. But what good is that when they've got a chocolate bar on the walk home.

"She only has a bowl of cereal for breakfast" well I'm sorry, either you're lying and it's a bowl the size of a bucket, or you need to get your kid to the doctors, because with what you claim you feed them, they shouldn't be obese, so there must be an underlying medical reason.

Funnily enough, these parents don't take their kids to the doctors. Because they know they're making their kids fat. They can't pretend they're not accountable if a doctor tells them they're entirely to blame with the kid's diet and lifestyle.

@whatkatydid2013

You are worried about being “mean” etc so just enabling. When your daughter says she is hungry and wants more she can have an apple or that’s it! More greens aren’t “mean” and surely you would rather she eat out with her friends etc and therefore she needs to cut down at home. It’s “mean” to allow her to eat seconds or more after dinner and continue gaining weight. You need to need to have a realistic discussion with her about calories and weight gain.

@Giraffesandbottoms. I don’t think it’s mean to say no to seconds and say she can have extra veg if still hungry and as I said in my post that’s exactly what we do at home. The issue is if you ask others to do the same they think it’s mean. She is at school 5 days a week for breakfast club and lunch. She is at a friends house for tea or a party once most weeks. She’s with her grandparents one evening a week when they pick up. That’s not the odd time she’s not eating with us it’s probably at least half her meals over the course of a year. We have talked about balanced eating and stopping when full. We have talked about having a glass of water before eating and slowing down. It frustrates the hell out of me but people (including school) just assume it’s fine for her to have (for example) another half jacket potato with beans because if she wasn’t hungry she wouldn’t ask and it isn’t unhealthy and it would be awful to refuse her food when she’s hungry. I’m debating switching to packed lunch and just sending her with a sandwich, some fruit and a bottle of water every day but I worry if I do she will just eat part of one of her friends meals and the packed lunch. That aside short of giving up my job and losing the house we couldn’t afford to live in without two salaries or having a massive falling out with my parents and another likely unproductive discussion with school who both assume it’s nothing to do with what they give her and must be us feeding her junk I’m out of ideas. The last time I tried talking with school was when they’d checked her BMI and it came back overweight and they were totally dismissive of our concerns and said how active she was (she is).

@whatkatydid2013

Apologies, I totally understand. Very, very tricky situation in that case!!!

It frustrates the hell out of me but people (including school) just assume it’s fine for her to have (for example) another half jacket potato with beans because if she wasn’t hungry she wouldn’t ask and it isn’t unhealthy and it would be awful to refuse her food when she’s hungry.

I assume you’ve told the school, her friends’ parents, Grandparents etc not to give her seconds?