Why isn't child obesity classed as neglect?

[dinklu]

(Setting aside medical conditions that may contribute to weight gain.)

If a child is severely underweight due to a lack of proper nutrition, it is often seen as neglect. But when a child is significantly overweight due to consistently poor diet and lack of exercise, it is not typically viewed in the same way. Why is that?

Is it because there aren't enough resources or support for parents? Or is it simply not recognised as a form of neglect in the same way malnutrition is? Curious to hear other perspectives.

I agree with this. It's not the ideal by any means, but it's not 'neglect' as such. The children are still being fed and growing etc and in most cases are still generally loved and cared for. That isn't the case for many children who don't get enough food.

People are saying UPF are cheaper etc but McDonald's, fish and chips and all the easy take out foods are so expensive! Lots of families seem to eat a lot of take aways these days. I don't understand how people afford it.

We feed a family of 4 for £80 a week and that is cooking from scratch with fruit and veg and whatever else we need.

SKINNY DOES NOT EQUAL HEALTHY.

WHY IS SOMEONE'S SIZE YOUR BUSINESS? THEY HAVE NO IMPACT ON YOU EITHER WAY.

If you want parents to do better than enable it - at the moment we are doing the opposite - less good food is cheaper and easier and tastier and heavily promoted so required less thinking about

Just to be clear, do you think it's acceptable for a primary school child to be obese? What life do you think that sets them up for? What kind of relationship with food and their body?

A meta-analysis found that 55% of children who were living with obesity remained so into adolescence. 80% of adolescents who were living with obesity, also experienced obesity as adults.

That's quite something.

Yep this.

There are only very few medical conditions that lead to obesity.
I was at soft play with DD recently and saw a family of 4. The child who was about 8 or 9, was quite frankly, gigantic. Really morbidly obese. The younger brother was following suit. The morbidly obese parents ordered adult sized meals for the kids. (They were next to us) the 8 year old finished her large chicken nuggets and chips meal and then went on to finish the dads meal. The dad then got up and ordered another. The plates were finished within 5 minutes. They were hoovering up this food.

I am afraid that I did judge them. What lazy, permissive parenting. I would've guessed this 8 or 9 year old was 11 stone at least. She could barely fit through the soft play gaps. I felt so incredibly sorry for her as she stuck out like a sore thumb.

Before anyone comes at me, I was judging the parents getting their children adult sized meals, and then getting them more fried food after that as they were still hungry.

Way to go! To shorten their life span, make them a target for bullies and clog up their arteries before they're secondary school.

I agree with PP, 200% on sugar tax or ban the lot.
Kids should be running around. They're on the go so much. It would take a lot of food to make the average child obese (not including medical conditions of course.)

Worded it better than I did.

Some parents need to take accountability and responsibility.

In part of south east London there are no overweight children in the whole (state) school as far as I've noticed - that's 200 kids. People cycle, walk, scoot their journeys and the school meals are simple, no desserts. Vast majority of both parents working full time. I think it's attitude, education, culture. And weekends not in front of screens.

She already has one by the sounds of it.

When I was a kid my family of four would swim together at our local pool on Wednesday evening and Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning most weeks. Twice a week! My parents weren’t rich at all, both teachers in state schools.

Now it costs £27 for a family of 4 to go swimming and you get exactly an hour. The times when you can go are so few and far between (because of lessons or clubs) that it’s hard to schedule and it’s mega busy.

I think making this sort of leisure activity more accessible would be a start - especially as playing at the park alone isn’t really an option. My kids are 10 & 12 and are far more aware than I’d like of drug related activity happening at our local park. It’s great on summer evenings when whole families are down there but most of the time the shady loiterers are a significant presence.

I think you're just enjoying finding another way to judge your OH's ex, and her child.

You haven't engaged with ANY of the actual discussion on this thread. You are judging parents. Claiming its' lazty.

I bet you think that the correlation between fat kids and kids with poor teeth is very high? Well, my new children that have been overweight... have perfect teeth. Have never had a filling or a cavity. Becuase no, they're NOT drinking endless cokes and eating large packets of haribo.

The problem is that weight IS an issue, and then people like OP and others come along and say it's "lazy parenting" and all those parents who really do want to fix the problem feel they can't even talk about it.

@Sunat45degrees god forbid the op have an opinion on the poor parenting choices made by her step child’s mother.

Jamie olivering the senior school menu is not the answer. Way to suck the life out of everything i remember looking forward to my meatball sub all morning in senior school. Ive never been overweight in my life.

Like I said in a previous comment I know a woman who's toddler is obese somehow she must not be able to see this with her own eyes or something because she is constantly giving him family size bags of haribos. I don't get it. Do these people have some kind of mental health condition? Like Munchausen or something?

Anyway sugar taxes and Jamie olivering school menus (IE inconveniencing the majority of people to try and help a minority) is not going to stop people like that from doing what they do, I agree with your original post that in extreme cases child obesity is a social services concern.

Obesity would have to be pretty extreme to warrant SS involvement as the only concern.
Mainly because, as bad as it sounds, its effects aren't "someone's " problem until later on. There isn't the money or the work force to deal with appropriately when we have kids being abused, neglected, at risk of dying NOW rather than 10/20/30 years later. That's what it comes down to.

Do you offer intervention to Jimmy who is so malnourished(for whatever reason, but malnutrition tends to come with other issues in need of intervention as well)he's fainting at school or Tommy who is loved and cared for (even if badly in most people's eyes) but gets out of breath during PE?

This might be in response to me? I said only extreme cases the case I mentioned the mother seems blind to the fact in front of her eyes that her toddler is morbidly obese and is regularly giving him family share bags of haribos honestly it's fucked up. Some kind of mental illness surely.

Anyway it often gets said on here that social services are too busy to concern themselves with anything except kids about to get murdered but in my experience that's not true I've seen them involve themselves over things a lot more minor than a toddler who can barely run he's so big. In my opinion that's a pretty big deal.

All the stuff online about ozempic has taught me that food noise exists. Not everyone forgets to eat, I always assumed they did. Some people think about food constantly. Perhaps these children have food noise. Judging doesn't help does it.

I work in a nursery and we have a child who has just turned 3 that weighs more than my 9 year old! She is so big she can't sit cross legged on the floor or go to the toilet alone. She isn't the first but thankfully we have only had a handful over the years.
In her case it is eating adult portions of junk food and constant snacking. She is also still pushed around in a pushchair.
Thankfully the HV and social care are involved but there are more issues at play here also. They didn't just get involved due to weight. They absolutely should though.

I would say it often will be seen as neglect, but generally even neglected children are only removed if they are in extreme danger, or there is deliberate abuse. An very underweight child may well be in extreme danger, an overweight child less so. It is easier to show that a very underweight child is being dangerously treated, not just being a product of other issues.

There have been cases where parents have been charged with neglect in this country where obese children have died. I think it was down to the parents over feeding.

Any source for that?

No offence, but who allowed her to have portions that were too big in the first place?

www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-64538142

@Nellsbell

However, failing to manage Kaylea's weight was only one of several prosecutable failures in their parental duty of care. The others listed by the court were: ensuring that Kaylea did not stay immobile for periods detrimental to her health and wellbeing, ensuring that she was living in a safe and hygienic environment, ensuring that her person was maintained to a hygienic physical standard, ensuring that her physical health needs were met, and ensuring that needed medical assistance was sought.

The poor , disabled and immobile kid was left to fester for months in her own filth and was being eaten alive by maggots. While her obesity and what she was fed was a factor, she was severely neglected in many other horrible ways. Her parents lied about why she wasn't attending school. Don’t make it sound like kids are routinely dying just from being overweight/obese and that their parents are prosecuted for it.