“Go away! ‘Batin’!”
So, I have a daughter (7 1/2) who is on the borderline of overweight according to the calculators. She is quite muscular and the doctor is happy with her weight right now. She’s a very solid kid.
Obviously, since she is that muscular, she is quite an active child and they do get some treats (they are allowed a small piece of their Valentine’s candy after supper) but we make our own meals and they like to eat healthily (their favourite food is salad. Preferably with no or little dressing.) But I am always aware of her weight and I try to keep it in check.
In order for her to have a BMI of 31, she would have to weigh 45 pounds more than she does right now. Holy toledo! How does that happen without someone doing something.
I don’t really have the time or the inclination to turn this into a debate, but I do want to point out some resources for the other side of the argument - that if a child’s growth curve is stable, focusing on Eating Competence rather than losing weight is ultimately healthier. Eating Competence is a term coined by Ellyn Satter: there are several books and research articles out there on it.
There is no way I would put a healthy, functional 8 year old on appetite suppressants. Or a low carb diet. Or send her to bed hungry instead of allowing a second serving of fish/chicken/beans/etc. She eats a healthy diet, but has a big appetite.
I work in retail in a thrift store where I see either the moderately poor, the frugal, the rich and cheap and the FUBAR in all catagories of life. The last one’s are ALWAYS poor, ALWAYS FAT, and I am not talking twenty -thirty pounds to drop, I’m talking 40-100 pounds over. Their kids are all porkpots. Their parental unitls ( because they all travel in clusters) are pork pots.
One lady I had a lovely talk with was wider than she was tall. Her 20+ year out of date flowery dress was stretched to its limits over her bottom that could fill up three kitchen chairs. When she walked, she looked like Mobile Jello.
Alot of people at my work are poverty level income. Living on minimum wage. Their diets are vile. Just vile. It is all junk food from the vending machines, soda ( Mtn. Dew is the favorite.) and the majority of the smoke. I am one of the three people there that don’t smoke. (Three who have spouses who bring in better money at their own jobs.) I bring my lunch most days ( other days, I get Jimmy John’s.) the shit they eat and cram into their mouths hasn’t one redeeming nutrional value to them. I take my meals and breaks seperately because seeing them fill their pie holes with this fetid crap is nauseating.
Now, saying that, I have a fair idea of what it is like to feed a family on crap pay. We’ve never missed a bill and tightened our belts, but it sucks when all you want is an apple or maybe a banana once in awhle. I’ve done it for quite some time on $50 every two weeks ( no gov’t assistance) and fruits and veggies would eat up the entire bill if we went that route. It was alot of the shelf stable stuff: PB&J (which I will possibly never tire of and my MIL has always supplied the J. I buy whole grain bread.) rice, whole fryer chicken,oatmeal and canned tomatoes. for a family of four. One of which is a football player.
We diverted food money towards the kids afterschool activies like football, cheerleading and taekwon do.
I have dietary restrictions. Meaning, some foods I eat cause migraines and other foods if they make it into the house will give me migraines. I freakin’ hate pasta like you cannot imagine and like rice so much better. I don’t allow most junk food, I bake my own cookies and before I found this job, grew a huge garden.
When I see these porkpots in school or at my work, I know times are tough, and people are hurting finacially. I get that. But walking around in public with a hamburger or a Big Gulp in your hand from McDonald’s doesn’t help at all.
Childhood (pre-teen years and under) really is the time to nip in the bud. When a kid–especially a girl–hits the teenage years, it’s kind of too late to lay the major, “Sorry, honey, but you’re overweight” bit on them without generating a complex.
My oldest sister has two daughters who are “big”. One is tall and has the same bone structure as her father–big. But she’s also got some extra poundage on her. However, I’m not so worried about her because she carries it throughout her body in a shapely way. I am kinda worried about her little sister, though. She doesn’t have a large bone structure, so you can’t say she’s “big-boned”. She has a big belly that laps over her pants and won’t stay under a shirt. My sister was squeezing the poor child into girdles when she was nine years old. She’s now 12, and just seems to be getting bigger. I hope she isn’t being teased about it.
I try to put myself in my sister’s shoes. I do hear her telling her kids, “Just take one (cookie/piece of cake/whatever)”, but maybe she would do better not having those “whatevers” in the house in the first place? Because chances are those hands are snatching when her back is turned. I don’t know. Her husband likes to cook and he does a good job of it. Is it fair to rob him of his hobby just because his kids like to eat? Again, I don’t know.
I can hear my father calling my twin and me “couch potatoes” when he would come home from work when we were kids. The truth was that we were couch potatoes; we didn’t have exactly energetic personalities. And he sure wasn’t a model of good behavior. Yet we didn’t turn out overweight. So I don’t know what to think.
Please understand that, barring growth spurt times of a month or so, appetite is usually constant. Your stomach is an organ with a lot of stretch, and can hold far more than is healthy/needed for nutrition.
Have your daughter make a fist. The size of her fist is basically the size of her empty stomach. Now, have her hold her hand open. The size of her palm is about the size of a healthy portion.
If a portion is bigger than her palm, and her meals are bigger than her fist, you are allowing her to pack and stretch her stomach, and causing her to gain weight. If this has been going on for some time, her stomach is already stretched. Feeding her less will leave her hungry - but it will only be for a little while, while her stomach goes back down to normal size.
The metrics above are a recommended way to assess and plan a child’s meals without impacting their normal growth. Please start looking at this - waiting for her to be an adult will be too late. Many people on this board can attest to that.
I feel horrible that their parents are setting them up for a lifetime of unnecessary struggle and difficulty.
Is it “abuse?” I don’t know. I think I agree with the part of your post where you said “borderline child abuse.” It’s at least some form of neglect.
What are the current legal consequences for supplying alcohol or tobacco to a five year old? That would probably be a good guideline to use as a starting point.
Or, for another way of thinking, what would the legal system do if a parent gave a child insufficient food and excessive excersise that would make it impossible to maintain a healthy weight? They’d sure be in a lot of trouble, wouldn’t they?
I’d like to agree with this comment, except for the implication that some of my money should be used to help said parents correct their failings.
I could see it if there were some sort of a non-profit organization providing these services, and perhaps the involved fees would be more attractive to the parents than facing other consequences.
Why not?
Most people would agree that children generally don’t make responsible choices when left to their own devices, and therefore we make many decisions for them until they reach the correct age.
An eight year old is going to be sad for not being allowed to overeat. He or she will also be sad for not being allowed to play on the train tracks or stay home from school all week.
Chris Luongo:
I understand not wanting to use your money to help others fix their problems.
You do understand that your money could pay for a little education now, or food stamps, health problems, etc, etc a few years down the road, right? I’d rather pay a little of my money on the front end for education to fix a problem before it literally multiplies.
Penny wise & pound foolish
Except that seconds and thirds contribute to weight gain and overall unhealthy eating habits, and it’s teaching your daughter that she should never delay gratification; that what she wants here and now is more important than waiting for something better.
And please consider her emotional needs. She may not be teased now (that you know about), but I can all but guarantee that she will be teased later, and it will hurt. I searched my university’s library for references to “obesity children teasing” and found many scholarly articles and books about the problem, and there is a problem. There are direct links between obesity and bullying, and the research shows that these contribute to poor school performance, poor self-image, reduced self-esteem, and depression and possibly eating disorders. By feeding your daughter what she wants when she wants it, you are setting her up for these problems. Yes, I said it. You need to take responsibility for your daughter’s weight problem. You can rationalize it any way you want, but ultimately, you are her primary teacher, and you are responsible for the lessons she learns.
No one is suggesting meds or a low-carb diet. Just more appropriate portion sizes and saying “no” once in a while.
Avoiding seconds is sensible for anyone anyway. At the end of a meal I often want more, but if I wait a few minutes the hunger goes away. No kid’s going to be starving after a full meal, so it’s not exactly cruel to make them wait 20 minutes then let them have a second really small serving if they ask again.
But if your daughter’s able to do all the things you mention, Sam I Am, then I doubt her BMI’s close to 31. For kids, a BMI of 31 is disabling.
FTR, my daughter was briefly considered overweight because the BMI charts for 9-year-olds didn’t account for puberty. This was annoyingly stupid; she had a flat tummy and skinny arms and you really really would not have said she was overweight, but she did have breasts and boobs and full hips, so of course she was heavier than a child who doesn’t have those features yet.
The doctor looked at her and laughed at the results, but it still went down on the official record that she was overweight.
Young children who are that extremely heavy usually suffer from Prader-Willi Syndrome. It has nothing to do with failed parenting. These kids really have bottomless hunger and will do anything, anything to get more food. The hormones that regulate hunger and satiety are completely out of whack in Prader-Willi Syndrome.
Another sad symptom of how a medical problem is moralized.
That’s already been mentioned. The children in question do not have Prader-Willi syndrome.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to teach children how to manage hunger. Slim dopers report that they, in fact, feel hunger fairly often. The difference is that they are able to manage that hunger, and live with the discomfort until they find an appropriate way to address it. It’s not to early to learn to say “I’m hungry, good thing lunch is in an hour.”
It’s like sleep. We get tired, and getting tired sucks. But you have to wake up for school and you can’t just take a nap whenever you get sleepy. Eventually you learn to work through it, and hopefully to manage your sleep schedule (or your diet) to avoid the extreme or poorly timed lows.
I’m not going to give you recommendations on what to do about your daughter’s weight. However, is there any possibility your daughter could be eating more for lunch than you’re aware of? Does she take her food or buy it? And if she takes it, does she have any change for, say, the vending machine? And do you know anything about her friends’ eating habits? It’s possible that she could be having some of theirs as well.
And kids are notorious for poor impulse control. I’ve caught my son filching sugar cubes before when I left them out. Basically, if I’m not looking and something sweet is available, he’ll eat it, hungry or not. I found him behind the couch last week with a mini candy bar he got in a goodie bag from a birthday party. We normally dump any candy into his Halloween bucket, which we keep on top of the fridge, but forgot about the one in question, and he was on it like nobody’s business. We also don’t permit juice much - he has a choice of milk or water, as does his baby sister. Juice is a rare treat, usually had on the weekends if we go out to lunch.
Anyway, with respect to the OP - I don’t think that can be classified as actual child abuse, but definite neglect, probably with some denial and ignorance thrown in. No one likes to think they’re not doing the right thing for their kids, and most people don’t know a whole lot about nutrition. When you combine that with lots of cheap fast food available, a BMI like that on a kid is sad, yet becoming more and more common.
It’s at least on the level of criminal neglect. If CPS (rightfully) gets involved if someone feeds their kid so little as to cause serious health problems, why shouldn’t they get involved when someone feeds so MUCH as to cause serious health problems?
And even if “intent” is your yardstick to measure abuse, it’s not like anyone in America can avoid hearing about the obesity epidemic and how bad it is for you, healthwise. Someone knows this, and over-feeds their kid anyway – yeah, there’s at least some intent there. A kid’s health trumps the parent’s convenience. If that’s not something said parent can live with, then they need not to be a parent.
“Overweight” may be a call for making a few lifestyle adjustments. But no one gets all the way to “obese” overnight or underneath the radar. If a parent doesn’t step in before that point (change their diet, sign them up for soccer, talk to a pediatrician if none of that works), there’s an act of will going on there. Looking at the chart on this page (halfway down), 5 years old, BMI of 31, that is NOT a little overweight.
Young bodies are more resilient than older ones. Address the problem early – whether that means a change of diet, more exercise, therapy for emotional eating, or treatment for an endocrine problem – and it will be easier for the child’s body to revert to a healthier weight. Wait until they’re 12, or 16, or adult and out of the house, you’ve set them up with patterns that their body (and mind) have been adjusted to for a loooong time, and it’s going to take a LOT more effort and time to correct it. I recall reading somewhere that obesity permanently alters a person’s metabolism, even after weight loss – once you get there, the damage is done.
Could you define “intent” here? I know you’re not saying that parents are maliciously making their children fat, but the term intent concerns me nonetheless.
And while I agree that news about the obesity epidemic is all over, the articles are sound bites. They don’t indicate what constitutes healthy eating or provide much in the way of guidelines, as opposed to fruits & vegetables = good; fast food = bad. Yes, more fruits & vegetables should be eaten, but many people (many smart, educated people) don’t realize that a healthy vegetable does not equal collard greens cooked in bacon fat. Or that not all vegetables or fruits are created equal.
Also, I read an interesting article recently about weight perception. It was on CNN, which isn’t exactly the best news source, but it referenced a study on how overweight parents see their children. Apparently most don’t feel their kids are overweight, which absolutely compounds the problem. Plus, many doctors are fearful of broaching the subject of weight with their patients. I think a LOT of things have to happen to overcome the obesity problem in this country.
Yes, the parents in the OP have likely been neglectful of their kid’s eating habits, but that doesn’t imply that they’ve done it intentionally or because they simply couldn’t be bothered. Where does the kid come from? What part of town? What is the kid’s access to fresh food like? Does he/she have access to a safe place to play? What about television - is it on constantly? What do the kid’s parents do? Are they home to supervise their kid’s intake/activity, and can they afford healthy food? What is their cultural background? Many countries prize heavier children as “healthy,” even though they may be clinically overweight, even obese. All of those are important factors.
I think that equating starvation and overweight in children is an apples to oranges comparison. Kids need food to live - that’s simple. But it’s easy for anyone to overeat, and because the affects are usually less dramatically apparent, it’s probably easier for it to go unchecked for a long time.
The point is, a child can’t get to obese without having gone through a little overweight, moderately overweight, and really overweight first. A parent has ample time and opportunity to head off obesity before it arrives and settles in. If they don’t, that’s a choice they’re making, and it’s a choice that affects the health and quality of life of their kid.
You’re right, it’s rarely simple. Raising kids requires a huge investment of time, money, and energy. It sometimes means being the “bad guy.” It often means making an effort to learn things you don’t know. I’m not saying parenting is easy – but if someone isn’t up to the task, they can always choose not to have kids. If they do choose to have kids, it’s no longer about what the parents want, it’s about what the kids need. That is a parent’s responsibility. Yes, it’s harsh and requires sacrifice – that’s what parenting is.
Regarding starvation vs. over-feeding – in both cases it’s using the control of food to harm the child. Kids need to not have obesity-related diseases to live, too.
I could see it being a tight jam for parents of overweight children. We often hear stories from adults who were fat kids about how they were constantly scolded for eating the “wrong” things or for eating more than other kids. Or how humilated they were to be the one kid in the family who had to be on a diet. How do you strike the right balance between teaching proper nutrition and eating habits while not making the problem worse by throwing in emotional issues?
I will never forget the time when I was a kid at a school banquet, and the chubby girl sitting at my table kept getting nagged by her mother about eating more than the other kids. The mother would say things like, “You don’t see monstro going up there getting seconds, do you?” I felt really embarrassed for her. But on the other hand, if your chubby bundle of joy is reaching for seconds and thirds, how do you tell them to stop without embarrassing them?
I guess you could do like what my parents used to do, and make your kids ask for every. single. thing. There was always some type of dessert in the house, but it was never served after dinner. It was something you had to ask for. My parents always said “yes” and never supervised us as we cut our own slices of cake or whatever, but I guess by asking, we were being taught (intentionally or not) that we couldn’t just eat all that we wanted.
This is the problem I was thinking about while reading this thread. My parents were very strict about food - healthy meals, smallish portions, few treats, and absolutely no pop in the house. My mom would also make comments, both about my body and about what I was eating and how much when we were in restaurants or wherever, which did embarrass me greatly. For me, this turned food and eating into a focal point of my life, and I would sneak food, buy stuff from the vending machine at school, and go completely crazy whenever food was around and my parents weren’t (say, other kids birthday parties). It became a very adversarial thing between my mother and I, and it took me years to really learn that I should want to eat well for myself rather than want to eat badly just to prove to my mom that I could.
I was a chunky but not especially large kid, but I became an overweight teenager and have struggled with my weight and body image since. It’s not a huge issue now - currently I have about 20-25 pounds I should lose, but in the past it’s been higher. I don’t know if my parents did the right thing or not - they were doing what they thought was best. It’s hard to know what’s right.
Having said that, a BMI of 31 seems terribly high for a five year old.
She had breasts *and *boobs?