to be angry with those parents who have let down their overweight dc

[frumplump]

Overweight parents who allow their own issues to destroy their own dc's good health, what are they thinking?

I overheard a heartbreaking conversation in a shop where an awkwardly fat teenage shop assistant was dispairing at how she was wasting the best years of her life because she had not learned to eat healthily from her parents.

She was saying she had low self esteem and wanted to lose weight desperately. Teenage girls have a difficult time at the best of times, it's just plain cruelty for her parents to have allowed her to become so unhealthily big. She found walking difficult ffs! They say parents will outlive their children. What's going on? How can parents be so cruel?

Not again!
Why is it the school's responsibility, we make them have two hours of exercise a week as it is, and infants get the fruit and vegetables. We also bombard them with healthy eating messages, ban fizzy drinks and chocolate in lunchboxes and do the occasional bit of food preparation. And walk to school week, and travel plans
BUT IT"S A PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY!
I'm fed up with 20 years of members of society thinking schools should fix everything.
By all means, let's have the parents of children who have been identified as obese by the medical profession press-ganged onto healthy lifestyle courses and monitored to ensure they carry it out in practice.
My children are fit and active and healthy and it wasn't easy to achieve. That's my responsibility. I'm their parent.

I think all you can do is advise. Again when smokers, who are parents, attend the Doctors they should be reminded of the implications of smoking in their homes, perhaps told before release from hospital, HVs could hand out a leaflet. Perhaps add it as another warning on a packet?

I knew a woman who would check on her asthmatic child, at night, whilst smoking a cigarette. It makes me very .

I told a woman, only yesterday, to stop smoking in her car with her small child in the front seat. Hadn't she heard of cancer affecting those tiny lungs??? She took it very well until we got to the traffic lights upon which she got out of her car and started effing at me. Damn PMT !!!

PP- I agree, but it's often an excuse as well.

I am amazed at the outrage of some posters who disagreee withthe OP- are you all feeling guilty, or assuming a live-and-let-live attitude that makes you feel better?

Of course it's bloody wrong- no brainer.

People just don't want to take responsibility for their health. It might be to do with money, but if you can shop at markets for fruit and veg, you can save a lot.

And has been pointed out plenty here, eating well does not mean spending lots of £££s.

I live in what would be called a very "nice" English village where most families are realtively affluent. Two families next door to me have adults who are obese- they earn huge amounts of money and are well educated- but they simply don't care enough to make lifestyle changes. They do no exercise, they live on delivered takeaways, and their kids are being brought up the same way. Criminal.

'Creating good tasting food out of a small budget is very skilled. Perhaps we should being back 'cookery' in schools, children cooking wholesome foods using pulses, fruit and vegetables.'

Give them all a copy of a student cookbook, I still have several on my shelves with hundreds of cheap meals. But they involve a bit of time and effort, you have to actually cook rather than unwrap and reheat.

I agree it is the parents responsibility and it is NOT expensive to eat a good varied home cooked diet!That is always churned out as an excuse.

We're too used to instant everything, we don;t sit down and eat together. WE're too busy, as a nation, to put our dcs to bed and watch TV.

I think the issue is very complicated. I've seen close up some real weirdness around food. In MIL's case food equates with love so dh does a lot of comfort eating. When she comes over he is always offering her sweet treats which she can't refuse and then feels ill afterwards. She is always encouraging him to eat more when she sees him and then chides him for being overweight.

She is now over-feeding BIL and SIL's ds, as she looks after him and he is not fitting into his age-group clothes. She is actually highly educated in a science field so ought to know better.

And I agree with the OP, it does make me angry to see her doing the same thing again. She is a good cook and partly this over-feeding is to do with feeling good about herself - ie my cooking is so good that people can't stop eating it. On some level she must be aware of what she is doing.

I also have a friend who is a GP. She is overweight and so are her children, even the tiny two year old and again I think food equates with love.

Blimey goblinchild, don't shout at me. I only mention PE in one tiny sentance and it exercise in school is important. I do agree it is a parental responsibility though, but I don't know how the change should happen. I didn't like to tv and chocolate comment thats all.

Goblin.

I think schools have created, no inspired, perhaps, a form of passive aggression among some parents - seeing as schools demand rights to our children in almost every way, some will say (or think) right, well you want my children to be there all day wearing certain clothes and behaving in a certain manner. You send them home with more stuff to do. You can bloody well teach them how to eat then, because it seems i no longer have any rights over them as a parent - or time with them as a parent.'

I think that needs looking at tbh.

I worry if DS2 will grow up with issues around food, he was extremely ill as a baby and toddler, had to have high calorie baby milk, extra calories and fat added to all of his meals. After every operation in an attempt to get him eating he was offered chocolate buttons etc, and he does have a very sweet tooth. I am strict with him now and his still slightly underweight but I do have concerns about how this will affect him in his longer term relationships with food.

I know of a family where they do all eat together every evening, the children certainly have their five a day etc, but one of the children is definitely rounder than he should be, it can only be portion control I guess.

Jumete- are you talking about your own attitude or one which you perceive to exist?

You mean the parents have arrested development and are stuck in adolescence? They take umbrage at anyone "telling them" what to do?
well, that's one take on it I suppose.

Apologies SC, but I realised after I posted that you have no idea how many hundreds of thousands of times I've heard 'Oh, school should...' as a way of abdicating parental responsibilities and societies responsibilities towards our children.
And Jumente, it's not the schools, it's government initiatives imposed upon schools that have made us have to become more and more over-involved with children. Many of the changes were driven by parents.
In the first school I taught in there was a white line painted on the playground. That was where parents and children parted and met in school.
Parents literally didn't cross the line unless they had an appointment or a pressing reason to speak to an adult.
I do not want those days back again, but I'd like a lot more balance between what the responsibility of the school and educational system, and what is a parent or other professional body's responsibility.

One i perceive to exist. Oh yes there are parents like that, I think. They might not be aware of it though.

Sorry Goblin yes you're right - I oversimplified what I was trying to say. Do you agree that there are parents who find themselves resenting the amount of control already there and thus rebelling by abdicating a little on the parenting front themselves?

Jumente- been in ed for years before...don't think parents are as sophisticated as that ...

gob agree 100%

I think they really just can't be arsed.

unfortunally many parents , through no fault of their own havent learnt about healthy eating and how to cook a simple, cheap, but well balanced meal

sometimes it is due to their own parents not knowing so havent taught them, sometimes down to cant be bothered/easier to buy pizza

a takeaway would possibly cost £8/10 and you can easily buy a chicken for that - roast it, add potatoes and lots of veg for less money but obv more time and effort

i do think there are a lot more over weight children now as too many are cooped indoors playing their ds/ps2 etc instead of being outside running about/on bikes/swimming etc

it is heart breaking when you see a fat child, as they have no control over what they eat, so whoever is looking after them is probably to blame - though of course you do get children with medical issues

Alright mrsMW it's probably just me then...

Yes well it must get extremely irritating goblinchild, I can understand that.

It's such a complex minefield, as the issues around food will not be the same from family to family. I quite like the new change4life adverts and hopefully they will have some good affects. My mothers side of the family nearly all have issues with food at both ends of the spectrum and it does carry through the generations. Sometimes it's more of an emotional issue rather than an educational one.

ditto shithappens
We eat really really healthy - just far too much of it!

No, I find parents who parent very well. Some who come and ask for advice or help as one adult to another, some who need to be told what a wonderful job they are doing.

And the idle, uninformed and lazy who can't be bothered to send their children in clean clothes, hear them read, remember what they are doing in class, or feed them appropriately.
Not lack of empowerment, they know that there is sod all I or the school can do about it, so they have no reason to become better parents.
The children can plead all they want, the parent is in charge and can do what they like within the law.

The worst category are the actual abusers, either emotionally, sexually or physically. Those that wilfully neglect their child to the point of endangerment. But they have to go a long way before there are any consequences to their actions, because that's the way that the rules work.

I agree blondes and the time taken cooking and preparing food can be done together and enjoyed plus its educational.A can of beans and wholemeal toast is cheap and healthy as is jacket potato soup fish fingers etc.I don't think it takes a lot more time and effort really.Maybe schools do need to re introduce a form of home economics as kids seem to know nothing about finances either!

I haven't read all the replies so apologies if I'm repeating anything!

I am fat! My mother is fat, my grandmother was fat (died aged 57 due to an undiagnosed cancer which was written off as her having a bad back due to her obesity). I was never educated by my mum how to eat healthily, was this because she was cruel? NO, she was never educated herself so how could she educate me? Her mother didn't educate her, was she cruel? NO, my nan was one of the loveliest, most caring people you could ever meet, she was just not taught by her mum how to eat healthily. So there is a definite cycle.

I have recently joined a gym and so far lost 1.5 stone is 6 weeks. Why? Because I have 2 beautiful daughters and I don't want the cycle to continue for them/their children and also I don't want to be fat anymore! My chidren see me eat chocolate, they see me eat vegetables, they see me eat a varied diet and they see me go off to the gym, all of it is seen as normal in our house and I hope it educates them to live a healthy life.

You can't (OP) refer to all obese parents as cruel, I doubt any overweight person would want the same for their children BUT many people have learnt there way of life from generations of poor eating habits, hardly cruel are they?

A large number of the children in my school are delivered by car, and they all live within the catchment area. Walking distance.
Exercise doesn't have to be jogging or the gym. When I couldn't drive, I could look at my shopping trolley and judge when I'd got my maximum backpack carrying weight. Then I'd pack it and walk home, with my daughter.
Makes you think about the amount you buy as well.

blondes- agree 100%..it's something that is learned at home.

But even if it wasn't, it's never too late to change.

Generally, the more overweight people in society are the poorly educated. If you see a map of the most obese regions in the UK the hot spots are all the working class areas.

I don't think it is anything to do with money most of the time. It's more about WHAT people eat and how much of it- and adding in cakes, sweets, biscuits, high cal drinks etc etc on top of 3 good meals a day.

Plus it's lack of exercise. That is a HUGE factor. Only a tiny percentage of the population exercises for 30 mins 5 x a week. Yet my parents' generation often walked 3-4 miles to school, and no one had cars.

Well I do totally agree with the car culure thing. I do (I confess ) judge the amount of parents who live near us and take their cars to school to drop off the children. I try not to but you know.....