Junk Food Kids

[BMO]

So frustrating watching this - surely some of this parenting falls into the neglect category?

I think the treat cupboard was to try and make the mother feel less guilty when she worked night shift. We have sweeties in the house, but they are eaten slowly we still havesome left from Halloween!!
But how school custard came be blamed for obesity and not the dreadful diet at home was beyond belief!!

We always have sweets in the house, it's impossible now to once they start school. They get given sweets on almost a daily basis for birthdays etc. Often the sweets and crisps will go off before my dcs remember to eat them.
And on the issue of temptation, I have struggled with resisting sweets in the cupboard and have tried to eliminate them from the house for my sake - the dcs don't eat them that often but it didn't work and i started binging on sugar. In a sense I was rebelling against the lack of sugar so I turned things around and I now have a sweet cupboard full of stuff I love, my sugar binges have reduced in frequency and I am developing self control and now have a more normal controlled approach to eating sugar which feels great. There's more than one way to tackle a problem.

I am very shocked at the parents who would rather put their daughter through a life threatening operation than change the family's eating habits.

Just catching up now.

Feel sad for the lovely 13 yr old girl, so unfair on her

It's very sad for the 13 year old girl. Her parents unfortunately seem to think it's the easy solution, I think. I don't think they are prepared to put in the hard work to help their daughter.

It is a good programme actually, in that it explains very well the complexities of obesity. It is not just "eat less, exercise more", is it? Life is not that simple.

The 10 year old girl, bright lovely and articulate, who gets bullied made me cry. mainly as she was so matter-of-fact about it, accepting it as part of life. Horribly sad.

The thing is though, what is the solution?

I am beginning to think sugar should be way more expensive than it is.

I think those parents should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. How will they feel if their daughter doesn't survive the operation, or suffers from serious complications?
I know retraining eating habits is easier said than done, but if the alternative was your child having an operation that she might not survive surely that would be the best motivation you could have.

yes, I don't get that either.

Is it just too hard?

People just lead such inactive lifestyles, don't they?

should schools do an hour of sports every day? That would help. All that sitting round in the classroom all day! Get young kids into forest school, and keep all kids active. An hour a day is noting, yet would make a huge difference.

For every patient with "weak teeth" I will see 500 who just eat too much sugar and don't brush properly.

Even with "weak teeth" decay is preventable. Stop using "weak enamel" as an excuse. It's like saying your genes make you fat. Your parents may be fat but it's calories that make you fat. Not genes. Just like it's sugar that decays teeth. Trufact.

For these children I think they need far more than an hour a day of sport at school. The parents need to be educated in how to feed a family healthy food. I did understand that coming from another country which has very different shopping and eating habits, it must be very easy to adopt ready meals in Britain.
I think sadly in Britain a lot of parents do not know what a child portion size is. We over feed our children and give them far too many snacks!
I did feel very sorry for the girl from Morocco, and really hopes the family gets help.

My son has weak enamel, I've been told by the dentist to take extra care with his teeth. I haven't taken extra care apart from using high fluorine toothpaste. I've just made him brush his teeth twice a day as normal and he has the same amount of sweets as his sisters, about once a week. He also eats cakes and biscuits at a normal level, about two/tree times a week, which is maybe too much. He is eight and (as yet) has never had a filling and the only intervention he's had from the dentist is that fluorine paint stuff.

I agree with Mrsmorton weak teeth is just an excuse (in many cases) to cover up neglect of your child's teeth. And I speak as somebody who had six teeth removed aged about five/six and then went on to have every back tooth filled before the age of 14. I didn't own a toothbrush until I left home at 15 and bought one myself.

I watched both episodes today. I really hardly ever cry at TV but I just burst into tears when that first little boy Marcus came round from his operation and was crying with pain. Utterly heartbreaking.

I actually showed DD (7) the clip of Marcus. She was quite shocked that this can happen and I told her that's why we make her brush her teeth and keep sugary stuff to a minimum - because we wouldn't be looking after her properly if we didn't.

Incidentally she has had 3 teeth come through with no proper enamel on, unfortunately two are her adult incisors :( but the dentist said it should be ok with the paint stuff. The rest of her teeth are great but I felt awful when I first noticed it as I really thought it was decay.

I'm watching it on catch up now. It's all well and good fucking crying when they get put under GA, FFS. Be an adult. It makes me so angry.

Can't wait til OOH on Sunday "oh I told you not to eat sugar on your cereal"

Get a fucking grip.

100% preventable. One hundred percent.

fuzz everything is treatable. If they don't look ace at the moment, it can be fixed. Good oral hygiene and diet makes fixing things a hundred times easier.

Trying to fix children's teeth when they're covered in plaque and the gums are bleeding... Not easy.

I used to have child patients whose mouths were like the forth bridge. We would start at one end and by the time we got to the other end, we had to start again.

It's all well and good fucking crying when they get put under GA, FFS.

That's exactly what I said to DH when I was describing the programme. Apparently it's easier to cry on telly than to prevent the situation getting so horrific in the first place, who knew?

Thank you for your reassurance mrsmorton

I was not brought up with good dental hygiene (or any other kind in fact) and to this day I struggle to look after myself in that way. But I HAVE to do it for my DCs. They eat a pretty good diet which seems to show in their teeth (dentist was impressed anyway) although probably get too much sugar from fruit.

I've still not caught up with the thread so sorry if I'm repeating, but the end bits where they do a little update just pissed me off. All they could say about Tallulah for example was "no longer in pain"... So fuck all else has changed then I guess?

The family of the girl who was contemplating surgery did not seem aware that there would be strict dietary requirements both before and after surgery

I'm really starting to think that if a child shows up at the dentist with teeth like that as a result of neglect, a as referral should be made. I think the only argument against this is the fact that ss are so overworked already and the prospect of this is more likely to make crap parents not take children in agony to the dentist that look after their teeth.

The parents of the girl having surgery puzzled me. They tried to change their diets, but found it too hard. Do they think her diet won't have to change after the surgery?
fuzzpig I have a molar which has improperly formed enamel. It's never been painted with anything; no dentists touched it until I was in my late twenties, when it was filled without anaesthetic (didn't need it, I'm not a psycho )

Thanks Norah :) I think it's some kind of synthetic enamel they painted on? The baby molar was done over a year ago and at the latest check up the dentist said it was now perfect, so hopefully will be the same with the adult incisors, although sadly they are a little discoloured.

Are there going to be more episodes of this?

Also I just wanted to add that not all obese parents have obese children (I know, anecdote does not equal data, so I'm not saying it's not true generally!) - I'm obese (morbidly so in fact, BMI is about 40 and I'm size 20) but my DCs absolutely are not. As a PP said I specifically try very hard not to continue the cycle - to me that is a very important part of parenting; to undo any mistakes your own parents made! And so feeding them a healthy diet and keeping them active is important to me as I didn't really get this as a child.

Anyway most of our shopping is fruit and veg (frozen as well as fresh since we are on a budget) and hardly any convenience food or snacks, only water to drink at home plus a small cup of milk sometimes, screen time is limited so they don't veg out all day, they walk a lot as we have no car... not saying I'm perfect obviously because I'm really not! But I just mean that not every obese parent is resigned to having obese unhealthy children with rubbish teeth, I really don't want that fate for them and it's my job to prevent it because nobody else will.

Thaf is the thing fuzzpig, isn't it? Nobody else cares as much as the parents.

Sad these parents seemed so clueless!

the more i watch this, the more i think its neglect and totally the parents fault

the surgeon stating that people dont buy toothbrushes as cant afford/have to buy other stuff is silly - parents cant be arsed!!!

for children to have such rotten teeth that are in pain/cant be repaired/need pulling out means they havnt been to the dentist for prob years

how long does it take for a tooth/teeth to get into that state

all kids should go to the dentist from year or so,so they get used to going and so teeth can be checked-its free for fucks sake, so why dont parents go :(

and parents crying annoys me, its their fault their children are under ga and having teeth yanked out