In various threads including the obese Boy Scout thread in IMHO, many people have expressed opinions that parents are squarely to blame for obesity in their kids. Using a sample set of one (myself) I don’t really think this is entirely fair. While critics of very young kids who are obese have a point in that parents are more or less entirely in control of their access to food, a lot of overweight kids did not start packing on the pounds until they were around 8-10+ years or so. At this age (and younger in many cases) kids can, and do, make their own decisions re access to food.
I was born in 1958 and was a large, strong kid. My parents were professionals and did not pile on our plates or force us to finish our meals or serve us grotesquely huge meals. I started packing on the lbs after age 9 and it was mainly because I ate voraciously as an adolescent and a teenager. I had plenty of outdoor activity, but I simply ate too much, and I also discovered over the years my metabolism is a few ticks slow which only exacerbated the issue.
My mother was more than happy to help me lose weight and we tried Weight Watchers. It wasn’t like there was some big mystery involved in why I was overweight. Unless my parents put a lock on the refrigerator and the pantry I was going to graze.
The upshot is this. I f you look at a fat 8 + year old it’s easy to blame the mom and dad for “making them fat” or serving horrific meals etc., but in many cases I would venture to say the kid is simply going after food like I did, and unless your parents lock your household access down you will find ways to get the food you want. Multiple bowls of Wheaties was my favorite. Adolescent kids are not little robots or locked down slaves. If you see a fat kid don’t automatically assume the parents are entirely in control of their consumption habits. The only way that’s going to happen is if the kid is treated like a prisoner and the parents are willing to live an authoritarian lock down existence for the sake of controlling their food consumption. Must people simply can’t live that way.
I agree with you that people are way too quick to lay blame.
But surely there is a happy medium between lock-down prison and “let’s go to Golden Corral for the third time this week!” If the parents are fat and the children are fat, then it’s likely the kids are making bad eating choices simply because those are the only ones they can avail themselves of. And the responsibility of this lies with the parents.
That’s exactly the point. In many cases I don’t think the parents of fat kids are necessarily going to Golden Corral for dinner on a regular basis. If you are a hungry kid who likes to eat you will often find plenty of ways to get the calories you want out of the home fridge and cabinets. This notion that the parents of overweight kids are living some Honey Boo Boo type existence is incorrect. Fat kids are creative grazers and volitional eaters.
How much work do you think it would be to keep a hungry 9 year old from getting access to food? I guarantee you as a hungry 9 year old I would give you a run for your money. And eventually you would get tired and I would still be hungry. You would lose.
If you know you have “creative grazers and volitional eaters”, then you as a parent have the responsibility to help them graze healthily. So this means not stocking the refrigerator and cabinets with calorie-dense foods. A kid who grows up being handed a cup of vegetables whenever they’re in the snacking mood is far more less likely to be overweight than a kid who’s handed a bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos.
I absolutely do agree that some kids have bigger appetites than others. My personal opinion is that there are genetic variations in satiety that probably are a significant factor in why some people constantly struggle with losing weight and others can stay thin seemingly without any effort.
I do think that parents have control over the kid’s environment though.
Every parent has a choice about keeping healthy snacks around vs. processed foods like cookies and, yes, cereals like Wheaties (just because Wheaties markets itself as healthy doesn’t mean it’s really good for you) It’s expensive to keep fresh fruit and veggies around, but if that’s all that your kid has available to snack on between meals, they’re not going to become obese.
Until a child is old enough to go out on their own and buy food, then the parent does have control over the kid’s weight. It’s a lot harder to lose weight than it is to maintain your weight, and being teased for being the fat kid can really harm a child’s self image, so I think that parents do need to pay attention to their kid’s weight.
Which means everyone one in the family will suffer for the sake of the hungry kid re not having their favorite snack type food accessible. In many cases the siblings, especially the older ones, simply aren’t to put up with this. Plus overweight kids are not necessarily vegetable phobic. I loved veggies and salads. But I also loved sandwiches. Feeding me a salad was not going to solve the problem. I could make a sandwich at age 9, and I was taller than my mother. Where are you going to put the bread and lunch meat and condiments so that I can’t get at them? Good luck with that.
I’m a little skeptical of these people who like to wag their finger at the parents of obese children. It’s easy to judge when your own child, (or probably you as a child) can, in fact, eat whatever they want and as much as they want and not get fat.
I can only imaging how hard it must be for a parent who actually has a child with a abnormally slow metabolism. Then factor in if they are low income parents. Healthy eating doesn’t come cheap.
i think parents have much to do with setting food attitudes.
parents that grew up in the Great Depression might have learned food restriction out of necessity and developed non-wasteful habits and limits on self indulgence. they might have passed some of this to their kids. not only would snacks have been restricted but any eating between meals. candy and soda might be very restricted.
to my recollection Baby Boomers weren’t excessively fat as kids.
Boomers, and later, that grew up in more prosperous or busier times might have a different attitude to kids and food.
My parents were depression era kids (dad born 1918, mom born 1924) and I did not see any of this type of food restriction attitude from them or their same age peers in dealing with their kids (my peers) . If anything it was sort of the opposite.
It’s worth mentioning that there is a genetic disorder called Prader-Willi Syndrome. One of the features of this syndrome is an insatiable hunger. If left to their own devices, these kids actually will just eat and eat to the point of severe obesity.
A lot of times parents of Prader-Willi kids actually do end up buying locks for their fridge and cabinets.
So, yes, even though it would be a pain in the butt to do it for most people, if you considered controlling your child’s obesity important enough and nothing else seemed to work, then you could lock your cabinets.
you do get people who developed restrictions as a habit and stick with it. you also find others who as soon as the restrictions are removed go wild in celebration. don’t know the proportion of each. people while being better off than depression times still may have tighter monetary limits depends on number-of-kids/jobs/location/whatever.
i do recall the disciplined lifestyle being a frequent element of mass media (like tv) of the 50s and 60s.
not remembering kid fatness as a huge thing (ha punny) for those decades then somethings must be different. food attitude, food quality, food availability or physical activity are all factors of difference.
Granted but Prader-Willi which also often involves significant mental retardation, is vanishingly rare compared to the number of otherwise normal overweight kids who like to eat too much.
My larger point on why it’s not really feasible to lock up food is that in normal families with more than one kid and working parents. Kids are often going to have reign of the house for a few hours after school before the parents get home and access to the kitchen is pretty critical for everyone. Turning the kitchen into Stalag 17 for one kid who eats too much is not going to happen in most cases. Keeping access to food on lock down would be an incredible inconvenience for everyone.
This sounds like titty-baby whining of the First World kind to me, sorry.
Nowadays people have cavernous pantries, multiple freezers, storage closets, garage jammed-packed with pre-packaged foods. Like they’re hunkering down for Armegedon or something. Maybe it’s a side-effect of larger homes and the big-boxiness of consumerism. So it’s no wonder to me that Americans are fat. Anyone would be fat if they lived in a fucking grocery store.
Would it make a family suffer to scale this largess back some? Instead of allowing Junior to make himself four Hot Pockets for an afternoon snack, why not leave him some whole wheat bread and basic sandwich fixings? Lots of fruits, lots of vegetables, little of the other stuff. If the whole family does this from early-on, it will seem normal…no “suffering” involved.
Over-hungry children have always existed, and yet we’re seeing way more fat children than we used to. I don’t think it’s all parents’ faults, but what this suggests to me is that environment matters.
There’s misperception here that this is all about “healthy eating” and salads and healthy sandwiches etc. are the solution. I could easily eat 2-3 sandwiches and a glass of milk and some Wheaties and a banana or two after school and still have room for dinner. Giving me healthy sandwiches was not going to control my calorie intake. Fat kids don’t hate healthy food. They like all kinds of food and lots of it. Subbing sandwiches for Hot Pockets is not a solution. The only solution is to restrict access to food period which is different problem.
I think you are much too confident you will be able to control the eating behavior of hungry adolescents when you aren’t watching them 24/7.
I certainly wasn’t referring to fat kids, or merely obese kids. But the caregivers are squarely to blame for kids without severe metabolic disease reaching a BMI of 40+. These aren’t “fat”, “heavy”, or merely obese kids. These kids are sick or very likely to suffer a lifetime of obesity related illnesses if they aren’t already. Barring rare and serious hormonal or metabolic issues, there is only one way for a kid to reach this level of obesity, and that’s either by enabling or complacency on the part of the parents.
This, exactly. I hope we do find something to ease cravings and help chronic overeaters feel full. It sounds like a miserable, limiting existence, eating oneself into illness. If the kid is struggling and miserable, seek help. Don’t leave him to flounder in misery. Have a doctor check him out, consider CBT, find another outlet or hobby to help distract or occupy his time; do exactly what you would do for yourself as an adult in order to stay healthy and happy. Seek help. There are already a couple of generations of miserable, aging obese adults who blame their own parents for allowing them to get to that state.
No one can do this. No one. People who claim to eat whatever they want are doing exactly that: eating what they want, and stopping when they’ve had enough. I’m a healthy weight. I eat a couple cookies when they are available. But that’s all I want. I can eat half a pizza after a hike, but that’s all I need to feel full. And I’m very, very active, so I can consume a few more calories than a sedentary person, but make no mistake: people like me aren’t consuming entire boxes of cookies, ice cream, or two super sized anythings. If I ate what a person who is maintaining a BMI of 40 eats: I’d get fat too. You can exaggerate for effect all you like, but you cannot change the laws of energy to defend bad eating habits.
I imagine parents with a child suffering from a metabolic issue needs to stay in touch with a doctor. The average overweight kid or adult doesn’t have a “slow metabolism” barring metabolic or hormone issues. They just aren’t burning the calories they are consuming. Sedentary people with weight problems are always laying claim to a slow metabolism.
You just don’t keep crap in the house, it’s simple. You save crap for special occasions. Growing kids are always hungry and need a lot of high energy, high protein, and often high fat foods. There is no reason why you can’t leave an overweight teen in the house filled with whole foods from each of the food groups. If that same child is actually consuming entire loaves of bread, sticks of butter, and wheels of cheese, it’s time to seek help. The rest of the family isn’t being deprived by limiting the number of processed foods in the house. They, too, can eat those on special occasions, or eat them in moderation. A snack sized bag of Doritos isn’t going to tip the scales. A hungry child will scarf an entire family sized bag of Doritos when he should have been offered or taught to prepare a meal.
Do you think there are more or less fat children today than when you were a kid?
Do you think fat kids are even fatter than they used to be? Or was the average overweight kid of the 60s and 70s comparable to the average overweight kid of today?
Perhaps if you had grown up in today’s environment, you wouldn’t have been just overweight. Maybe you would have been severely obese. If I had an overweight kid (20 lbs overweight, let’s say) and I knew I was doing everything “right”, then it wouldn’t keep me up at night. But if I had a morbidly obese kid, then hell yeah I should take responsibility some for the problem. If not for causing it, at least fixing it.
Having a kid means doing shit you don’t want to do. If your kid was deathly allergic to dogs, then it would be irresponsible for you to keep dogs in the house, even if getting rid of them caused you to “suffer”. If your kid has uncontrollable eating, it may suck for you not to be able to keep your favorite snacks in the house. But it would be a responsible thing for you to do.
I’m certainly not going to say that this isn’t how you got overweight- but it is uncommon for a child to put on weight by eating sandwiches and salads and avoiding chips and soda and sweets.
About everyone suffering and what the older siblings will put up with- I hate to tell you, but that's got something to do with the parents. A child who has never had snack food easily accessible doesn't expect it , isn't suffering and doesn't even see something not to put up with. It's the child who has always had chips or cookies available who sees a problem when that access is lost.
If I’m doing the math right , you’re five years older than me (1963) but your parents are around 20 years older than mine (1939 and 1940) which I’m guessing means you are one of the youngest of your siblings or you were a “premium baby” either of which might have influenced your parent’s food behavior. Because I remember my childhood and until my friends and I had money of our own , popcorn , chips,cookies,cake and sweetened cereals were rare treats, not something for daily consumption.They were not just kept around the house to be eaten whenever we felt like it. Neither was soda. Some families ( not all ) permitted soda with dinner each night, but there wasn’t such a supply of soda kept in the house that you drank soda when you were thirsty. Tap water was what you drank when you were thirsty. For that matter , we usually couldn’t make a sandwich for a snack either (except PB&J) - cold cuts were bought in quantities sufficient for the number of lunches they were to make.
That isn’t the point. Healthier fare is better for growing muscles. Even fast food beats processed crap like chips and cookies. A BK cheeseburger meal has 1360 calories, 46 grams of protein, and 157 carbs. A family sized bag of Doritos has 1500 calories, 18 grams of protein, and 162 carbs. If a kid has an entire meal composed of a healthy portion of protein, veggies or fruits, and a reasonable portion of fat he will feel full longer than an equal sized portion of shitty overprocessed food.
One important issue, I think, is that parents want to encourage healthy eating in their children and a healthy weight without turning eating into a power struggle and a life long emotional minefield. I, like most overweight women, was raised by a mom that was very concerned about my weight, and what that mostly left me with was a chronic inability to think about food and eating rationally. Every time I eat a cookie it’s a fucking melodrama, with rising temptation, internal struggle, dark, pleasurable decent, and then the receding tide of shame and guilt and despair. It took me twenty years to not get past, but to manage that, and it was only when I learned to look at weight and food unemotionally that I was able to control my weight, and in fact lost well over 100 pounds and have kept it off for years.
So yeah, you can put locks on the cabinets and weigh out portions, but it’s going to have long term impacts on how a kid sees food and it will absolutely define your entire relationship with your kid, replacing every other connection, association, or interest. I’m not saying that every parent with an overweight kid has to go to that extreme, or do nothing: there is a middle ground. But if the middle ground isn’t working, there is good reason not to push it past a point.
It’s also, I want to point out, very hard to tell how much a kid should be eating now. Current weight tells you how much they should have been eating 3 or 6 months ago. But kids’ metabolic needs are in constant flux: they go through growth spurts. Boys, especially, tend to pudge out and then shoot up in a pretty predictable cycle. Put a boy at the start of a major growth spurt on a diet that would have been right when he wasn’t growing and you are pretty much sentencing him to painful starvation and real lethargy. This teaches him that any diet is horribly painful and encourages sedentary habits, since he won’t have energy to play.
Remember that 100 extra calories a day will lead to serious weight gain over a couple years. Kids don’t get fat because they are pigging out. One extra bowl of cereal three times a week will do it. Figuring out what is too many is really tricky.
My sister and I were both fat kids, and are still overweight. Our mom was always super skinny, and also a chain smoker. She fed us the way her mom fed her. When we were very young and she was home after school she would oversee an after school snack. Ones that I remember were and apple sliced up with either cinnamon sugar or peanut butter, celery with peanut butter, a bowl of applesauce, a stack of graham crackers and milk, a banana. Not low fat, but not butter blasted bacon bombs.
When she started to work and we were on our own the groceries didn’t change, but we were old enough to walk down the hill to a deli and buy ourselves chips and soda, or an ice cream bar. (Those were in addition to the snacks she bought.)
Dinners she made were all pretty straightforward meat, starch, vegetable. Things were fried or made with butter, but she was a single mom on a tight budget and there often weren’t seconds.
We are both also emotional eaters. I can’t identify why we never moved on from food to alcohol or drugs, but we do both use it that way. It’s a wonder to me that neither of us took up smoking. That’s how our mom dealt with stress, not with cheese.