The Pit thread and the MPSIMS thread about the parents who are suing McDonalds for the gross obesity of their children leads me to ask this question.
No-one becomes grossly obese overnight, and when cases like this come up I always wonder why the parent didn’t intervene when the child was moderately overweight. Did they believe that it was “just a stage” which would resolve itself? Did they not even notice that their child was overweight? Did they believe it was a metabolic problem (and if so, did they take their child for medical investigations - at which point a doctor would surely have pointed out that in the absence of a medical explanation, diet was the chief suspect).?
IMHO, there must have been some red flag which these parents repeatedly ignored in order for the situation to become so extreme. It’s also difficult to imagine any child going so long between health care visits of one kind or another that they could go from average weight to grossly obese without having been seen by a health care worker in the intervening period, and I find it difficult to believe a health care worker wouldn’t at least mention the problem to the parents and suggests ways of dealing with it.
While my children have all gone through stages of gaining weight prior to growth spurts, I know that if they were rapidly increasing in clothing size and starting to look out of proportion for their age and height, it would be off to the doctor.
I’d have to say about the time my left testicle started weighing more than a few ounces, I’d go see a doc about it. (Tuckerfan, who’s also childless, and in no danger of spawning any time soon, damnit! )
to test the quality of the meat??? Apparently, actually you need muscle not blubber… so we should all make our children run 10 miles every morning, and lift weights.
I think it would be very subjective… but for me, My decision of my child’s obesity would be determined by their physical activity. If they couldn’t run X yards nonstop in X time, time to force them to do more aerobic exercises (forcing = doing with ). IMHO, there is no excuse for obesity…
Parents who are concerned should check with a pediatrician and a bariatric specialist.
Although weight loss in children, as in adults, is not always a matter of just dieting, I am reallly put off by parents who allow their children to gorge themselves just because they don’t want to say “no” to the child.
Kids learn their dietary habits from their parents, for the most part. I’m guessing that acknowleding that the child is dangerously overweight reflects back on the parents’ own dietary and exercise habits, or lack thereof. Also, it’s not going to be feasible, as far as I can see, to change only your child’s diet, and not your own, so the parent would have to have made a commitment to change and serve as a positive example. Good luck feeding your kid on salads while you hog the cookies.
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