fathausen by proxy?

[Jugjug]

I’ll preface by saying I don’t judge people with overweight children in the street because I don’t know their story or if the child has health conditions or has to take medication which causes weight gain.
I also don’t judge people who give their kids the occasional treat obviously.
I also don’t judge people with overweight older children/teenagers because I remember being that age and inhaling sweets my friends brought to school.

Now thats been said I know a few parents with visibly morbidly obese toddlers and the parents make no effort to sort it out and hand them family size bags of sweets as a snack!
Surely there must be something psychologically deeper going on here munchausens maybe? I just don’t get it

You mean deliberately making their children overweight for attention?
I think it's more likely a lack of education and knowledge with regard to healthy eating.

Who doesn’t know that eating excessive amounts of sweets and cakes will make anyone fat especially when you can see with your own eyes how big your kid is? I mean I was only 16 when I had my first child I can’t believe these parents in their 20s 30s or even 40s are that ignorant.

I genuinely wonder if there’s a deeper psychological problem going on

Surely there must be something psychologically deeper going on here munchausens maybe?

I'd say neglect is more probable.

Too much food, not enough exercise is often the main cause if there's no medical reason for being overweight.

The majority of kids would run around from morning till night if encouraged by their parents.

Part of the reason there was very little childhood obesity in the past, is because most kids played out in the street after school and at weekends, they weren't constantly snacking and portion sizes were much smaller.

And of course overweight kids and overweight adults stood out from the majority.

Lack of education is an old worn out excuse that's no longer applicable today, considering we have a sea of information at our fingertips.

There was a time you'd have to walk to your local library and get books on nutrition and exercise etc.

But obviously not now.

I take neglect to be just not bothering to do the basic requirements of raising a child for whatever reason drug use or laziness.

But it seems like some of these people are ACTIVELY putting effort into making their kids big, I’m not talking a little puppy fat here I’m talking obese at age 3 or even 2. To the point the kid can’t run around with other kids I do wonder if they subconsciously want their kid completely dependent on them

Everyone knows lots of treats = obesity. But some people are genuinely confused by portion sizes. Our idea of what a healthy weight child looks like is also skewed.

Then lifestyle. If you eat a huge amount yourself then it's unlikely you are going to feed your toddler the pigeon portions they actually need. And if your own exercise level is low is likely your children will have limited opportunities to exercise too.

Also many people struggle to say no to their children. Mine constantly ask for diluting juice because they once had it at a party. It would be easy to give in to their big puppy eyes.

I don't think parents actually want their children to be overweight and unhealthy in cases like this, more that they are unwilling to put in the effort to parent well. We all know it's much easier to hand a whining child a bag of sweets than to put up with the whining! Most of us understand that that's not the way to handle it.

I know of a parent with a hugely obese 11 year old (year 7). They have tried to refuse his PE lessons saying he struggles- school have said no but the kid gets so knackered he can barely join in. He eats 2 lunches in school- one at break time. He has huge mobility issues. I don’t think they have munchaussens (can’t spell it) but they definitely seem to be actively not wanting to improve his quality of life. They never take him to play out and he spends all day on his screens at home which he enjoys. Unfortunately, school are not able to do anything about it despite it seeming like a terrible case of neglect to me.

DD had a friend in primary school, she was tiny until she started piling on weight in about year 4. By year 6 she was obese.
Her mum was also overweight, she went to Slimming World etc.
Childs dad made a comment about her weight, mums response was ‘if she has a problem, she can sort it out when she was older, I was an overweight kid’ thing was, I’ve seen pictures of her when she was young and she was more chubby than obese.
Her weight was 100% food related. She was eating full adult portions from being small and was allowed to eat sweets/crisps anytime.
They moved away and she’s 16 now and still obese and mum is even larger. She has a younger sister who wasn’t that fussed on food who is very slim. I feel sorry for her, it must be hard on her, I know there’s been issues finding her school uniform that fits.
I could never decide if the mum just didn’t care or wanted her to be overweight just like her.

Morbidly obese TODDLERS? And you know a few? And they eat family size bags of sweets as a snack at aged 2?

I don’t think I’ve ever known a morbidly obese toddler. I’ve known kids who are a bit chubby as toddlers but they were usually normal weight by 5 ish. Then I’ve known kids who have continued to put on too much weight and are probably obese by 7 ish.

I think it's probably more the fact that giving a child a packet of sweets and an iPad is the easiest way to get them to stop whining/screaming/demanding attention.

I think you’re reading too much into it. There doesn’t need to be some devious medical condition involved.

if parents are fat, it could be simple as they see fat as being normal and don’t have an issue with their kids following suit. It’s likely not a conscious decision to cause harm to kids. But rather them mirroring their own upbringing and lifestyle with their kids.

ultimately someone who grew up obese and is still obese as an adult has clearly never experienced healthy lifestyle to be able to impart a healthy lifestyle on their children. It’s not shocking if their offspring end up obese either.

I think in most cases it's just ignorance/lack of care. But I think there are very occasionally cases where a parent is overfeeding a child because of their own psychological issues around food. Sometimes I do think they're doing it for attention, but more often I definitely think that sometimes a parent associates constant feeding with showing affection/love, and sometimes it's actually a means of controlling/infantilising the child.

I saw a documentary years ago where a boy of about 10 was extremely overweight, and it was very obvious that the mother was basically just obsessed with stuffing her son with food. She didn't necessarily give him sweets all the time, she just literally offered him substantial things to eat about every hour or so and then lied to the paediatrician about what he was eating - eg he'd come from school and she'd give him some cheese and crackers and a smoothie, then an hour later she'd offer him a big bowl of Weetabix topped with bananas and strawberries, then an hour later he'd have a normal dinner, followed by a yogurt, a piece of fruit and some biscuits, and then before bed she'd give him a plate of toast. The things she was giving him weren't actually particularly unhealthy, but she just gave him food constantly, basically. She also bought him a wheelchair that he didn't need because he was 'getting out of breath' and didn't tell the paediatrician about that, either.

He didn't ask for any of the food she gave him - she was constantly offering and he'd just say yes every time.

There are really complex reasons why so many kids are fat today. A big one that doesn't get discussed as much as it should is overweight pregnant mums and the effect their weight and crap diets have on babies in the womb.

There's a lot of science-y stuff behind it around insulin resistance and how very insulin resistant expectant mothers are giving birth to insulin resistant babies who have a much, much higher biological chance of being obese before we even factor in the poverty, lack of education and healthy attitudes they're being exposed to after birth.

People forget what normal is when they are surrounded by people that are all overweight.. I think this is a societal problem.

We are body positive and 'inclusive' when it includes fat people but not skinny people. why? so big companies can sell shit food and big Pharma can sell weight loss jabs.

Thread title made me LOL.
I've noticed it runs in families, so not only a genetic element but also learned bad eating habits. Unless there is an underlying medical condition an obese child is almost always down to the parents.
I know of someone who is morbidly obese and her daughter has been seriously overweight from around 3. Believe it or not her dd was eating a large donner kebab with chips aged 5.

Some people think always giving children what they want is showing them love. On some level they know it's not good for children but they keep putting it off until another day or they hope the child will realise themselves.

I remember this case too.
I think she was in some kind of denial because in her mind she was giving him healthy foods, but wouldn’t or couldn’t accept that the frequency and portion sizes had anything to do with him being obese.

I have a friend like this, not a very happy home life and I think she just wants to make the kids happy tbh.

Children having sweets or crisps every day seems to be the norm. When I was a kid, we had sweets once a week. Not because my parents were poor but because they cared about our health. In the same way that an adult wouldn't/shouldn't normalise having alcohol every day. It should be a treat, not an every day thing.

Yup I wish I was lying, the parents behaviour around it I find weird because you can SEE with your eyes how huge the kids are and they continue to feed them large quantities of sweets and chocolate.

I just don’t get it. I don’t buy ignorance because the parents are all slim or at least only a little overweight I’ve never actually met someone who didn’t know eating too much fast food was the cause of obesity? Some of these parents are twice the age I was when I had my children. No way anyone has existed on this planet 30+ years and doesn’t know that. No way

I think it's a mix of lots of things.

Parents wanting to be kind but also being lazy. It's much easier to fill a packed lunch with crap than to cut fruit and vegetables up especially when the child moans when you give them the healthy alternative because they're so used to eating rubbish.

I don’t judge people with overweight children

You don't judge them SO much that you made up a word to describe them...
Sure...

Yes! I can remember now that she got really aggressive with the documentary makers when they suggested he was eating too much because as far as she was concerned, they were healthy foods. She kept claiming that it was OK for him to eat about 15 meals a day because she wasn't giving him fried stuff, takeaways and sweets. She just kept insisting that he must have some sort of health condition that was making him overweight and breathless. Rather than eating enough food for a large adult and being pushed in a wheelchair instead of walking despite him being able-bodied.

You only quote the first part and not the bit where I went on to say “in the street” ie people I don’t know and have seen once.

The people I went on to describe I know well (even lived with one once) and see their behaviour all the time