to ask why would you overfeed your child?

[ineedtoknowwhy]

I'm sure this question has been asked before but, please, can someone explain to me why would a parent overfeed an already obese child?

Every day when I drop my daughter off at nursery I see the same little girl being dropped off too. She is always on her buggy which suggest they live nearby so could potentially walk but never ever do. At pick ups is the same, straight from nursery into buggy. Her face is always covered in chocolate (at 8 in the morning!) and she is always holding some sort of biscuit or chocolate belly so big her shirts don't come below her belly button. I am not talking about a bit chubby, or with a bit of a belly.

I cannot help to think poor child whose mum is happy to keep feeding her biscuits, chocolates, etc. when the child is clearly not in a healthy weight.

I can't help but silently judge her in my head so please can someone explain reasons for this. If you are a mum with an overweight child, why would you do this?

My friend’s son is 7 years old (literally just turned 7 in the last few weeks). He weights 10.5 stone and has to wear mens clothes. He has got to a stage he can’t walk long distances and mobilises very slowly. His breathing is terrible at night- she filmed him to show the GP as she believed he had asthma but both the GP and paediatrician have told her it’s weight related.

She is in complete denial about this. She always says that the scales are wrong. He is “just got puppy fat”. He eats constantly- and the school have asked her to send in less snacks, asked her to opt for school lunches to try and ascertain a bit of portion control. He does a developmental delay and autism so I don’t believe he is conscious of this. It only really became an issue when she started living alone with him- he was of average weight and had a normal appetite until they started living alone 2/3 years ago. Prior to this, they lived with her mum. So I don’t know if part of it is that she doesn’t cope well on her own and feeds him to keep him occupied. She has had input from various services to try and support her with this but she takes none of it on board.
She herself is 22 stone and only 5ft 3, so I do think there is a bit of an issue with health literacy.

When the parents and children are both large I kind of get it but there was a mum near me who was very slim and took great care in her appearance, and from about the age of 8 to 14 her daughter became very overweight. Though to be fair several kids in DDs' classes seemed to get fat around then. I imagine they were becoming less active while being fed larger portions.

Yeah I was thinking this re the buggy judgement.

Re the food, I'm not sure. I guess you can say the same about babies/toddlers in buggies with screens propped up for them or having juice in a baby bottle...

Looks awful and I do sometimes judge but then I try and remember everyone is different, has different struggles, different hills they have the capacity to die on at any given time.

The worst one for me is parents constantly screaming at their kids, swearing/generally talking to them like shite. I'll absolutely judge for that.

Because the adult loves food and loves their child so thinks giving the food is an act of love. Because they get pleasure from seeing their child enjoy food. Because the child pesters for food and they believe they are hungry, or they don't like to say no. Because they were raised by parents who restricted them and they believe refusing food causes disordered eating. Because they believe that restricting food is part of 'diet culture' and they disapprove of that. Because they believe their child is genetically disposed to be fatter (like them) or they have 'puppy fat' that will drop off of its own accord. Any or all of those.

I work in a petrol station which is hammered school run times - primary one side, high school the other side.

The shop is a small spar. We have one third of the shelving given over to sweets, chocolate, crisps. A third of the fridges are given over to soft drinks

We have a hot food counter - sausages rolls, jambons, chicken nuggets, sausages etc and we have a huge display of cooked on the premises pastries and cakes

Children come in, pick up a boost or monster, grab a bag of crisps, bar of chocolate , packet of sweeties and then add a couple of sausages, sausage rolls or nuggets to the mix

The same kids day in, day out - 5 days a week

Some of these kids are so fat that they walk bowed at the knees

And out they go to the car where the parent is sat waiting to continue with the drive to school

Evening school run and in they come again for ice creams and more sweets whilst mum is picking up the frozen pizza and chips for tea

We do sell fresh meat, fresh fruit, veg and salad - only we end up reducing it all or even writing it off as waste

I do not remember any over weight kids from my school days... Leanne (80's name right there!) was a bit chubby but no fat kids.

I think its very unreasonable to judge a parent on a small snapshot of their life you see. You see them for 10 mins probably out of 24 hours 5 days a week.

You had no idea of the child's life and that their weight may not be to do with their unhealthy eating every day. That may be their only treat of the day or the only way they can get their child to nursery.

To me, a buggy wouldn't suggest they live close enough for the child to walk but more that its too far for the child to walk and the parent does not have access to a car. Or the parent is trying to improve their own lifestyle by walking instead of driving a longer distance.

Same reason sometimes people scream at their dc and hit them every time they're being a bit awkward or whatever - they have poor parenting skills and this is the method they've landed on for getting the child to do as it's told. Only, unlike being hit, the kids like this response, and learn to never do anything until they've been bribed with food. Like, they won't put on their shoes and get out the door for school unless they get the chocolate.

Blame the tories for slashing education funding so that kids don’t learn home economics/ food tech any more. How are people supposed to learn how to cook if there is no opportunity at school? There is no way to break a cycle of poor food education this way.

We have close family friends whose children are morbidly obese. Their 8 year old won't be far off my weight at a BMI of 24. They are the same ages as my children but they must be double their weight.

If we go for a day out, our children have homemade sandwiches with fruits, veggies with a small pack of crisps and maybe they would share a brownie in the cafe.

Their children will have 2 pre packed sandwiches, a sharing packet of crisps, 2 breakfast bars, can of coke, they will each have a brownie, and then a whole punnet of strawberries each.

It is so noticeable how much more food they eat, that I just do not understand how their parents continue doing so.

My SEN child is hugely underweight as I just can’t get enough calories down him. He’s probably as unhealthy as an overweight child. I wonder if I’n judged as harshly at the parents of overweight SEN kids?

Agreed. We travelled to nursery via a train and then a bus. We used a buggy, not everyone has a car and those that don't will no doubt walk far more than those that do.

Lazy parenting, everything comes out of a packet, biscuits, chocolate, etc. Poor education of the parents, not understanding about food, thinking fat is good because maybe they were poor and underfed as children. You could befriend the mum and try to help.

I didn’t learn to cook at school… we made a pineapple upside down cake once, and that was as far as our practical food tech lessons went. I am a competent cook now. It’s really easy to follow recipes from books/online.

But if you are from a background with low food and health literacy and little access to cook books etc and ingredients you can see why people turn to convenience food and junk. I’m not condoning it, just offering reasons why people in their 20s and early 39s might struggle more than those in their 40s.

It's disgusting. If you let a child get skinny, that would be child abuse. Let them get fat, and it's something that gets brushed under the carpet.
Parents giving in to faddy diets, requests for junk, convenience food, not enough exercise. And in a nursery age child, that is unforgivable - YOU and YOU alone are responsible for what goes into their mouths. When they are teens it is different.

Fair comments about my buggy comment. I guess I was trying to say that I never see them making an effort for her being a bit more mobile, but yes, I take the comments that maybe she does live a bit further away or whatever her situation might be.

I take that back.

My nephew wad massively overweight. When my sister was alive, she was extremely morbidly obsese.

When we were kids, my sister was extremely skinny (we all were). We were very poor, food was extremely basic just enough to keep us alive and functioning. We didn't have money for treats.

When she moved out with her ex-husband at 16yo (married at 17yo) I think the freedom to eat whatever she now wanted was too appealing and the weight gain began..

Once she had kids, she lost her way in what was a good diet and meal size. As she got bigger, she got more tired and less inclined to cook. So then began takeaways every single meal.

She has two sons. Eldest has SEN so ate very very little, he was and still is very skinny. Her second son ate like mum did and ended up very obese. He started to lose weight once he lived on his own and couldn't afford takeaways all the time.

So, I do think parents are to blame for the bad decision making but often there is more to it than just laziness..

Well it can be exhausting fighting your child, clearly the parents aren't just doing it as a practical joke!
We have 2 kids one you have to drag to the table and wouldn't eat for a couple of days if you didn't twist his arm, and the other literally eats sand and sometimes soil, and searches through the cupboards to get any food that's available.
Luckily both are still healthy weights (somehow!) but they are still small ages.
Once you've had a couple of kids you judge what you see in others relative to your own experiences, but actually if you look around you'll definitely find a family with lots of challenges!

There are a whole lot of socio-economic reasons, and it is very sad for the child who will likely repeat the parental cycle.

Judge all you want if it makes you feel superior to other, more likely than not, disadvantaged parents.

But a child isn't obese just because the mum feeds it mindlessly.

I thought as a highly educated parent, you might have fathomed this.

My DH was overweight as a child, but lost a lot of weight as a teenager when he started to take more of an interest in how he looked and health/fitness. My MIL appears to genuinely not believe that he was ever a fat child. Even when we are looking at photos of DH as an overweight child she claims that it was in fact just a 'little bit of puppy fat' and wearing clothes that were too tight because 'that was he fashion'.

He was a very much doted on only child who enjoyed food so I think she just wanted to give him what she thought made him happy. She herself is very slim, but does not eat healthily, just in very small amounts and never if she is not hungry so I don't think it occurred to her that anyone would eat if they were not hungry or that other types of food would be better. She's still the same with us and our DC. If we visit she offers food almost constantly and if we say no to something she'll offer other things even if we say we're not hungry. When we leave we will be given a bag with 'a few things for the journey' (usually crisps, biscuit bars, sweets and cans of pop), which is only just over an hour.

What if the mother has issues? We don't know these things.

Don’t buy the ‘cheap’ thing remotely, such a cop out.

Give her a fucking carrot - it’s ignorance and laziness. Also, skinny kids eat biscuits, you can be underweight eating only biscuits. This is OVERFEEDING not even just what she is being fed.

Sometimes people just don't realise.

I worked with a woman who was overweight by quite a degree. She ate constantly and most of it was junk - chicken shop lunch, big slushy drink an hour later, cake after that etc. Her 15 month old was also overweight.

She came in very upset one morning as her daughter had been sick and her partner had said it was because she was feeding her too much food. She listed everything she'd given her daughter that morning and it was eye watering. She just couldn't see it or understand why her partner had said it.

She was an intelligent woman but just seemed to have a real blind spot to food and weight.

Culture? I know couple of families who believe fat/overweight child is a sign of rich family....