Panorama: spoilt rotten

[Meglet]

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Theres got to be more to it than just going to bed with a bottle in their mouths. My friend's middle child would only sleep with a bottle of orange squash to suck on - they used to put a second bottle full in his cot in case he woke in the night. He was fully off it when he toilet trained (made him pee for britain understandably) but you're talking in excess of 5 bottles of squash every day for over a year.

However at 6 his teeth are perfect. She brushed them religiously, and other aspects of their diet are good.

These parents must never show their child a toothbrush or paste. My 2 DSs both have sweets and/or chocolate every day. But they also brush their teeth every morning and every night, and have perfect teeth. I am anal about teeth brushing. They are also not allowed fizzy drinks, as I think they are far worse than a lot of sweets and chocolate because of the acid.

These kids must have been drinking coke all day, and never brushing their teeth to be this bad surely?

I agree SA.

aitch - agreed. Either you do it my way or you are lazy Everyone can agree on serious neglect but 'laziness' is in the eye of beholder.

Breastfeeding is lazy parenting. It's for people who can't be bothered with sterilising and all that.

and as for BLW....

har har.

SA = or have a definiciency with their teeth already.

As I said before, some of my DD's milk teeth have pretty much no enamel on them and they came through like that from the start - only teeth 4 and 5 are affected, both sides, top and bottom. No amount of dental hygiene and food restriction is going to prevent damage to them sadly. We have at least managed to get to 7 befor eone needed a filling to build one tooth up a bit, and now 8y before one has become infected. It may yet need to come out But it isn't linked to poor diet, too much sugar or not brushing teeth.

I've only just watched this.

Holy crap.

How can anyone let their childrens teeth get like that?

And that woman essentially force feeding that boy.

Grotesque. In every way.

As for breastfeeding causing decay, no it doesn't. Drinking lots of fizzy drinks/juice etc from bottles does, it pools differently in the mouth. Apparently drinking through a straw is better as it delivers the fluids to the back of the mouth and away from the teeth.

But. Some dental stuff is down to genes etc. Of my two DD's, DD1 has very soft teeth, they are tiny and worn down a long way, she can't wait for them to fall out so she can get "proper big teeth". Her front 4 teeth had brown sides from the second they emerged from her gums. We have brushed them twice a day and even flossed them regularly.

DD2 has good sized teeth which show no signs of wearing away. But, she has a hole in the centre of her very back molar on the right hand side of her mouth. Food gets stuck in it, and every night I clean it with a tooth pick before brushing her teeth. This is not the side she sleeps on when she's nursing to sleep, so it's not from pooled milk at night.

Both mine were exclusively breastfed for 6 months, weaned onto fresh fruit & veg and didn't even know what sweets were until they were about 2. DD1 actually doesn't like fizzy pop!! We drink well diluted High Juice squash, not No Added Sugar stuff as the artificial sweeteners not only rot your brain but are highly acidic and dissolve teeth too.

When it comes to minor dental issues sometimes it's just the way of things, but for those little kids of 2 or 3 to have rotten stumps for teeth is in excusable. One mum said she didn't think she was doing anything wrong as no one ever told her it was bad to give juice in bottles etc. Um excuse me, the Hv will tell you to stop bottles at 12 months and not to put juice in bottles. She has just not been listening and living in denial because it's easier than saying no.

But not once was artificial feeding quoted as being a contributing factor in obesity or dental problems.

I was listening to the radio today and there was a story about the Mum of the overweight boy. She was complaining about the BBC. She said that at no time were they told what the prog was called. That they told her to pick her son up from school in a wheel chair and that they made it look like she had given him 2 meals in a short space of time but she actually hadn't. She gave him weetabix etc which he ate and then she was told to cook something else so they could re-film. But they edited it to make it look like she was giving him 2 meals or something like that. She also said he only had a couple of tastes of the other meal because he was full from the weetabix. Anyway, she sounded pretty angry and was saying her family was edited to look much worse.

But even if the editing was a bit dodgy, she still has a grossly overweight child and blindly refuses to accept any responsibility for that.

A 5 year old who weighs as much as a teenager is being fed too much.

I feel sorry for that poor child.

The mother shouldn't be angry at the BBC or the hospital, she should be angry with herself for being cruel to her own son.

Sorry that sounds like rubbish- the presenter asked her about the food, pointing out exactly what he had eaten and she said she didn't think it was overfeeding. He challenged her about the not letting him walk home from school and she said he couldn't manage it because he was only 5! She was either told to say those things by the BBC and was stupid enough to do it, or she has been slagged off so much that she's now backtracking!

Backtracking I would imagine by the sounds of it!

Damn iPlayer only works in the UK...how rude!

Really want to watch this now...

Knowing the kid often had a wheelchair, they'll have made sure it was there for the filming, so they will have asked her to use it on that occasion. That's not especially manipulative.

The feeding sequence was shown in the space of a few minutes, but it was made clear that this was not real time....he did not have his cake and then immediately afterwards his weetabix (2) and then immediately afterwards his massive adult-sized plate of food, but it was in the space of a couple of hours. The reporter put this to the mother and she did not do anything to deny it and just kept saying it was good quality food.

There may be deep-seated psychological and emotional stuff going on, that makes a) this little boy crave food beyond any normal level b) the mother and the grandmother continue to offer it and unable to refuse him when he cries for it

A monthly hospital appointment when the doctor nods and repeats advice about exercise is not going to address any of this, sadly.

I agree, the presenter clearly pointed out to her that she fed him these things within a short space of time, and she agred with him.

She also seemed blind to the fact that it was ossible to eat too much food, even if that food is healthy and thats where the problem lies.