Parents of obese child arrested

[WildThong]

I'm not sure what I think of this. It seems they are 'known' to social services and have had previous contact about this. It must be awful for the child. For the school and doctors to have contacted social services again they must have been very concerned.
here

[MrsWinnibago]

So if it's bad to intervene because of SN or because the Care System is bad...what SHOULD be done?

I agree that SN can really make things very hard for parents...especially given the immense lack of funding for respite etc....and I agree that the children of families who are struggling are sometimes better OUT of the care system than in it...which is inherently wrong as the care system is supposed to protect...but it puts kids at risk.

So what CAN be done to change things? I think that advertising needs to be cracked down on...I think that the sizes of confectionery need to be monitored....there's no need for MASSIVE bags of everything.

I dug up a vintage maltesers packet the other day....probably from the 80s and the thing that struck me was how small it was. I know you can still buy a small packet of them but you mostly see these "Grab bags" or "Sharing bags" which are enormous.

Same with bottles of fizzy drink etc and crisps. Shops like Iceland sell huge bags and boxes of shite at low prices and they should be selling huge bags of veg and fruit at low prices....it's all upside down...confectionery and fatty snacks and meals should be MORE expensive than healthy stuff. Not cheaper.

Equally as was said above, schools need to overhaul their cooking lessons.

[Spero]

This is an excellent post from suesspicious minds - this isn't a one off case.

suesspiciousminds.com/2014/02/28/taken-into-care-for-being-too-fat/

[Spero]

But it's not just SW is it? It's the police too. This could tip over into criminal behaviour. Something needs to change for this child and if parents can't or won't see it, don't we have an obligation to help him?

[JaneParker]

Social services should back out of it. They interfere too much. I bet he'll do much worse in care than at home.

[Bluebelljumpsoverthemoon]

The parents insistence that his weight isn't a problem,
has nothing to do with his diet and lack of exercise and is purely genetic proves that they absolutely are to blame for his being so fat that he's becoming disabled and that they're too stupid to accept outside help to do anything about it.

Parents aren't entitled to overfed their children into a short life of ill health and limited mobility. I've no doubt that their behaviour is down to lack of intelligence rather than cruelty, they probably don't have the ability to understand what they're doing. The police are required to investigate how much these parents understand and whether they should be held accountable for their abusive actions.

No child be forced to suffer the consequences of incompetent adults, social services don't just exist to protect them from 'evil' carers, they're there to protect children from anyone who endangers or abuses them, including the incredibly dim 'loving' ones. They can't help parents who refuse help or are incapable of understanding what they need to do and they can't abandon children who need help.

I feel very sorry for children of parents like this, they're doomed from birth, every child should have the right to be cared for by somebody capable of loving them, protecting them, who knows what good health is and understands it's importance. If people aren't able to provide that, they can't expect to keep custody of their child. Especially when they're actively causing him serious harm, if he was increasingly physically disabled as a result of his parents 'lovingly' using corporal punishment, everybody would support his removal. There's no difference. Harm is harm.

[GoshAnneGorilla]

I have in RL encountered a child who was hospitalised as a child protection issue for being morbidly obese. During the hospital stay, tests were carried out to see if there was any underlying medical reason for the obesity. There wasn't.

The child was then discharged with support from the dietitians. Not sure what the long term outcome was.

[lljkk]

We don't get lots of stories about parents of kids with Praeder-Willi being arrested. Problem here has to be evidence of these specific parents undermining the weight loss regime.

This has even hit international news (Murdoch media).

[ashtrayheart]

My eldest dd (17) has asd, emerging bpd and a chromosome disorder. Since aged 4 she has been plump but we managed to keep it relatively under control. Since aged 14 when she has been one hospital after another she has gained over ten stone partly medication partly because she eats too much and they let her. If she had gained that at home with me no doubt it would be a different story.
I have 3 other slim children. It's not always the parents fault.

[fanjoforthemammaries7850]

Not saying nothing should have been done.

I just hate the sleazy parent blaming articles the DM prints.

[Sirzy]

Fanjo although I can see where you are coming from to a point you must be able to see the parents have played a role in allowing things to get so out of control? Support has already been offered which seemingly they didn't follow.

Something had to be done for the sake of the child

[Deverethemuzzler]

I don't know how I am going to stop my DS getting the food he wants when he is 6 ft and 15.
I don't know how I will get him out of his bedroom if he doesn't want to come out.

All I can do is hope the stuff we are doing now will help us mange his behaviour when he is bigger and stronger than both of us.

Its only hope though.

[Deverethemuzzler]

I agree that the parents have to be the lead players in sorting this issue out.
There would have already been considerable efforts made to help them if they got to the voluntary plan stage.

I think what we are trying to make clear is that this case is not as the DM would have us see it.

The DM must be near exploding with trying to work out how to report this. They hate SS and are accusing them of taking children because the parent is a working mother, they parent has mild LDs, the parent is too rich etc
but the also hate fat people and marginalised people and they think most childhood disabilities are made up.

[fanjoforthemammaries7850]

We dont know anything about his SN either.

He could have Prader Willi or anything.

Parent blaming is not great ever IMO.

Parent helping is good.

[Sirzy]

Whichever angle you look at it from though the parents have to take some of the blame (assuming no medical reason for the weight gain). We aren't talking about a child a few stone overweight, but a child who is 3 times the weight they should be. That doesn't happen overnight and some of that responsibility has to fall to the parents as at that age they are the ones who have primary control over the diet and exercise of the child.

[fanjoforthemammaries7850]

Yes. Support is good.

Blaming the parents and saying they are just fat so they must be stuffing child full of fat and should be arrested etc is not.

Which is the spin the DM is putting on it.

[Sirzy]

The things is though the parents on this thread who have children with issues with food have identified their is an issue and are doing everything within their capability to cope with the issue and to ensure their children still get a healthy balanced diet (as much as possible) and don't develop weight problems at a young age. From the media quotes as to what the parents have supposedly said it seems they may be unwilling to accept their is an issue, or for whatever reason don't see their is an issue. It also appears (again based only upon the media reports) they have been offered support but haven't stuck to what was put in place. The reasons for that we will never know, but that does to an extent separate the issue because whatever the additional needs are it seems they are unwilling/unable to care for him adequately in a nutrition/exercise POV so unfortunately there does come a point where others need to step in and take control of the situation, as hard as that may be, in order to protect this young boy and his future.

Hopefully the police involvement will be the wake up call needed for the whole family to accept that changes need to be made and to work with support agencies to begin to make changes to improve the future for this young boy.

[LadyIsabellaWrotham]

The fact that the underlying problem may (or may not) be autism doesn't make weight a red herring though - this child is becoming physically disabled and his health is being wrecked. It's as if my child was a bolter, and kept dashing across a dual carriageway but I just said "oh he's so highsprited, and I don't approve of reins on children". Regardless of the underlying cause, this is a life or death issue.

[fanjoforthemammaries7850]

Parents may well have mentioned it but it has been left out in interests of skewing story to cause most outrage.

[Deverethemuzzler]

I doubt it.
My son is autistic and obsessed with food.
We have to lock it up.
The school doesn't believe us because 'he doesn't do it at school'.
Ignoring the fact that food is locked in the kitchen at school anyway.
They have also commented on how helpful he is. He likes to assist the less mobile children at lunch time, carrying their food to the table for them

They have ignored this huge issue to such an extent that someone gave him the money to buy a raffle ticket even though I had purposely not given him money for it because the prize was HUGE chocolate cake.
Which he won.
Which he ate in one go before we had time to get rid of the fucking thing.

My son is not obese yet. This is probably down to his hyperactivity.
He has a decent diet otherwise.

If we didn't stay on the ball and he was less mobile he would be enormous.

It is likely that this family are not managing this child's diet as well as they should but don't underestimate the impact that his ASD would have on this situation.

[WildThong]

I'm not sure though that the child being autistic is causing him to be obese, the parents have been saying different excuses/reasons for his weight and haven't even mentioned this. Given his special school reported it, surely they would be in a position to see if the fatness is caused by issues relating to SN or just poor parenting?
Also in the article it's obvious the mum and dad are also fat so I would tend to think it is a eating problem rather than a SN problem.

[Deverethemuzzler]

Didn't know he had SN.
That makes it even more complex.

SS have zero knowledge of SN.

One of the things they get very het up about is lack of food in the house and the sight of a locked kitchen would cause a full scale attack of the vapours.

Which is why so many parents of children with SN are very wary of SS.

[fanjoforthemammaries7850]

Excuse typos. Said 7 year old is raiding for food

[fanjoforthemammaries7850]

Id imagine they are struggling with more than just his diet tbh.

I find a 4 stone compulsive eating relatively rasy going 7.5 year old very hard going so a 15 atone 11 year old would be very challenging if he had behavioural issues. The weight is a red herring

[fanjoforthemammaries7850]

And I am not surmising he has SN..an article says it.

[fanjoforthemammaries7850]

There is obviously much more to it and the media have twisted it to be about weight.

For a start the boy has SN.

My DD has SN and compulsively eats. Have just had to buy a fridge lock and cupboard locks as she will wrestle me to get food.

I am fortunate she is very slim. I do give her lots of fruit and low fat stuff but I can imagine some people may struggle with the concept of freding less. It must be hard dealing with a 15 stone 11 year old.

Yes..get healthy food in..although some people need educating on what is healthy..but this is by no means a simple issue.