A ten year old boy should not have two heart attacks and multiple bypasses in his medical history…
Quite aside from the health aspects, it’s unfair to a child to let them become that large.
I can pretty much guarantee that this boy has no friends at school - heck, we all remember how mean kids are to other children who are slightly plump… can you imagine what they’re like to someone who’s enormous? He’s guaranteed to be a social pariah. Even if the school is strict on anti-bullying, they can’t do anything to make the kids be friends with him.
Knowingly inflicting that kind of thing on a kid is wrong. Not ‘take them from their parents’ wrong, but morally wrong all the same.
And while I think that they shouldn’t take kids from their parents for the health aspect right off the bat, I do think they should be monitoring it at say, 3-monthly intervals - and if the weight isn’t significantly dropping, and the kid isn’t healthier, then I think the option should be there for removal. Because at that point it’s gone beyond parental ignorance and into the realm of wilful negilgence, IMO.
Note: IANALawyer or Child Services Worker. I don’t have kids, and I’m pretty much anti-maternal. However, this still strikes me as being wrong on multiple levels, and there should be some sort of protection available to *any *kid who’s not being looked after properly.
My problem remains that I don’t think the state has any right to decide what the maximum weight should be for a child. Nor am I willing to concede any authority to remove the child for violation of the maximum weight they had no right to decide in the first place. I see this an an unwarranted intrusion into the privacy of the home.
I can’t see this in the story that was linked by the OP…can you please provide a link to the page where this information appears?
Maximum weight, no. Maximum fat % … well, I don’t know. Maybe that might work. Even if it just opened up opportunities for parents to for dietician care or something, so that they can at least be given a plan to follow?
All a bit too tricky, really.
Or Type II diabetes.
I was extrapolating two years into his future…
Oi, please don’t argue that socialized healthcare would give the U.S. government a mandate to erode the American public’s constitutionally protected right to be staggeringly fat-arsed.
Socialized health-care doesn’t really enter into it. The motivation isn’t saving the tax-payer an avoidable burden, it’s protecting vulnerable children from underparenting. Neglect.
If you’re of the age of majority, you can live on suet for all anybody cares. Smoke your brains out. Take no fluids without at least 60% ethanol. So long as you’re paying your share, it’s all good, even if you may strain the system a bit with your irresponsible behaviour. The granola people make up for it. Whatever.
But if you similarly endanger the health of a child, someone’s going to step in.
Don’t even think of it in terms of “maximum weight.” The concern is that the boy has a diet that isn’t going to kill him.
Nobody wants to take a kid out of the home except as a matter of last resort. It’d be the same if the boy was anorexic. The kid was already unable to wash and dress himself, for christ’s sake – and he would surely develop diabetes or heart disease within a few short years. It’s not like the state is getting involved because the boy is “a bit fat.”
An eight-year-old can’t be expected to look after their own health – that’s a parent’s job. A parent has to be take the responsibility to minimally look after their child’s interests, health-wise. If your kid can’t exert himself for ten minutes without collapsing and vomiting, something is seriously wrong.
They sat down and got mum to agree to put a little effort into making sure that the kid doesn’t die before he does his O levels. How Orwellian. :dubious:
This is in my neck of the woods, so I feel I should comment: it seems to me that the press reports on this story (and the one in the OP is typical) are focusing (as this thread is) almost exclusively on the kid’s weight. This is partly because childhood obesity is currently topical, and partly because North Tyneside Council very properly don’t discuss individual cases, so all we know about their concerns are what the mother is saying.
Reading between the lines, however, it’s clear that there is more going on here than busy-body nanny-state social workers taking children into care for failing a fitness test.
Not mentioned in the linked BBC article is that Connor has missed a significant amount of school. According to his mother, this is because the five-minute walk makes him out of breath or nauseated (and yet on local TV we see footage of him bouncing with vigour and enthusiasm on a trampoline).
It’s hard to tell whether it’s because of poor reporting or her own cluelessness, but some of the things Connor’s mother is reported as claiming about her son’s diet and problems with food don’t quite add up. One that caught my eye was her statement that even if she restricted Connor’s food at home, people would feed him on the street. They would? What exactly are the circumstances under which apparent strangers are handing out snacks to a kid who’s clearly had too many pies already?
This seems to be more about a mother who is intent on abdicating all responsibility for her child or her own actions as a parent, and in fact seems to need some form of parenting herself, since she’s claimed on more than one occasion that she’d be able to keep her son healthy and at school if she had someone available 24-hours a day to tell her what to do.
That’s it. It’s not that he’s over some Government-mandated ideal weight, it’s that she’s well on the way to feeding him into a really early grave.
BTW, five feet tall would be very large indeed for an eight-year-old - I was in the medium range for my age group at rising 12, which was when I hit that mark. And now, as a 5’ 11" 46yo, I’d be inadvisably heavy if I weighed what this kid does (would that I did, though).
This is what I had suspected. It’s a bit more tipped towards clueless enabling though, IMO. She didn’t care to know what overfeeding him is doing, all she cared about is “showing she loves him”. (I don’t think it’s really sunk in with her yet either. It’s going to take a solid oak clue-by-four to get through to her I suspect.) She needs counseling to break out of the “feeder” mindset. She’s a co-dependent/enabler and they really ought to focus on ending the cycle. That will help immensely. Maybe I am mistaken, and the woman really isn’t very bright though. If that is the case then, they need have a strict nutritionist as daily consultant to their home, and send a fitness trainer over regularly as well.
Thanks for the further insights, WotNot. It helps confirm that this may not be an “abuse” case where the parent is totally unfit and helpless and irredeemable - she is in fact *asking *for this help. And she’s getting it. Is she abdicating part of her personal responsibility by getting outsiders to help her feed and exercise her kid? Well, I think that takes us to a whole new area of debate: what’s “responsible” as a parent? For me, it’s not being able to do everything all by yourself. It’s being able to utilize outside support to shore you up in those areas where you suck and you know you suck. Whether that outside support is Grandpa and the Aunties in some idealized “it takes a village” scenario of Ye Olden Dayes, or social services today (see…it’s there in the name: social services), it’s important to be able to get help and not have that help tear a family apart.
I mean, does anyone seriously doubt that she loves this kid? Of course not. She loves him like Petunia Dursley loves Dudley. She may be clueless, and she may even be mentally ill in some sort of Munchausen’s by Proxy way, but as long as she’s willing to cop to it and cut it out, what’s the problem?
WhyNot, so long as she sincerely works to break out of the mindset she currently has, and Connor continues to lose weight and get as fit as he can, I agree with you. However, she’s very much still in denial atm. and might just be “conning” people so they will let her be. That is the nature of the kind of mental illness I suspect she suffers from. She NEEDS to be needed, and NEEDS to spoil her child so he will know she loves him. It isn’t that simple of course, there are more dynamics to it than that. Other mothers have done things like help clean up murder scenes and dispose of bodies because “they loved their son” and “couldn’t turn him in” and “had to do what he wanted, they had no choice”. Yeah, it’s a different manifestation, but the same (or very close) kind of illness. Food for thought, eh? YMMV on this, but I don’t see how else to explain such blind enabling. Yes, at least she’s “only” overfeeding her son, and permitting him to be delinquent via truancy. ** I doubt it would take that particular direction with this mother and son**, but it is interesting to look at how else this sickness can manifest. It gives contrast and explains how sick the mind of these mothers is. That was my aim at least in bringing the Canadian case into this.
Zabali_Clawbane - got it. Yep, I absolutely agree that the family should be monitored for progress. I think that monitoring should last a while. I hope she continues to help him for real. I even hope she gets some counseling and behavioral therapy herself - although, frankly, if she doesn’t and the boy continues to get better, that’s her choice as an adult.
It’s just these repeated claims about how he should be taken from his home and his mother that are breaking my heart. I guess, as a mother, it just feeds into my own fears about my weak points as a parent. Should someone take away my boy because I haven’t been able to teach him how to keep his room clean? Eek! Yes, I know I should give him that skill. Yes, I know he’s going to suffer socially and perhaps even physically if he never learns to see his mess (how do I know? Because I suffer the same condition!). But it’s just not something I know how to do naturally. So what do I do? I turn to outside help. I’m learning how to keep things clean myself through websites and our own support thread, so I can be a better role model for him. Am I still enabling his messy ways? Yep, quite often - every time I let him wander off to bed without noticing he’s left his glass out in the living room instead of putting it in the dishwasher and I just put it away for him. Am I working on it? Yep. Are we both improving? Yep, slowly. Would I love it if someone from the state could come in here three times a day and make sure I haven’t missed anything and he’s not slacking off? Hell, yeah! But only if I felt secure that they wouldn’t take him away instead.
Yeah, it’s not on the same scale as this case, but it’s on the continuum, for sure. If people are afraid to ask for help because they’re afraid the kid will be taken away, then the problem is only going to get worse, 9 times out of 10. I feel like we need to reassure people that admitting you have shortcomings and asking for help is safe to do.
Not hardly. I think you’re too hard on yourself, given that neat freaks can beget slobs, or at least clutter fiends despite all thier aversion to messiness and cleaning throughout their child’s formative years. I doubt you lived in what could have been termed squalor, and I think you are so focused on retraining yourself that you are veiwing untidyness with more negativity than the rest of the world does. It “might” be on a far away tangent to what I’ve brought up, but I don’t see it as in the same ballpark. 
He is in fact five feet tall, which gives him a BMI of 38.
Frankly, I think it is shameful that this case has garnered this kind of media attention. It can’t possibly be good for the boy. This editorial states it clearly:
I don’t think he should be taken away from his home and his mother, but the family needs continued coaching to get him down to a healthier weight and for the mother to be a little more assertive about making sure that he’s getting better nutrition. I’m not talking about turning him into a health food nut, but at least to get him some balanced homecooked meals at least 5 times per week and a good brisk walk every day. Now, I wouldn’t expect it all at once, but working up to these goals would be a good thing indeed. In the scope of child/social service issues, this is pretty low on the mark in comparison to what’s out there. But, at the same time, because social services has stepped in, they need to provide the resources available to make sure that he can survive to adulthood without major health issues related to his weight. There’s got to be a nutritionist available who can work with the family on improving their diets a bit so that they can make an easier and longer-lasting transition to foods that are healthier than fast food and takeout.
Are you out off your mind? Will you see reason if the kid gets a heart attack from clogged arteries at age 10? Willfully fattening a kid into obesity is just as neglectful as not taking a sick kid to a doctor. She couldn’t be doing him more of a disservice if she let the kid smoke cigarettes. You have to be whooshing us.
Actually, my understanding is that parents who let their kids smoke aren’t usually in danger of having them removed from the home. The courts are busy with the parents who use their kids for stubbing out their own cigarettes.
They must be doing something. The boy has lost over 20 pounds in the last nine weeks. Continuing support is probably appropriate, but I don’t understand why people are so hot to have him removed from the home when he is making safe and reasonable progress, and clearly wants to stay with his mother.