In this case it’s so extreme that some intervention is called for.
The hypocrisy of State and Federal government agencies that subsidize junk food production is true too. In this child’s case though, if his mother is incapable of taking care of him, he should be removed from her care (I think it’s a boy).
Me too.
I’m not. Too many social workers are right out of school with no life experience to speak of, and no children of their own. The real world is a much harsher place than they’ve ever envisioned, and their over-zealousness sometimes does more harm than good. Low pay, enormous caseloads, and incredible stress leads to burnout and relatively high turnover. CPS is a high stakes game. Foster care is no picnic, and sometimes takes kids out of the frying pan and into the fire.
There’s a difference between and obese teenager and a 3rd-grader who weighs more than adults should.
To be honest, I have very little stake in this debate because I don’t know too much about what exactly CPS is supposed to deal with. But I ask: would CPS take away a child who is addicted to nicotine beyond repair, or a child who is a complete alcohol addict due to either parental encouragement or neglect?
Well, I’m thinking about that case recently of the boy who was kept in a cage for the last year of his life while being repeatedly starved and beaten. Turns out CPS had been by lots of times over the years. Dozen or more? They even supposedly stopped by and checked things while the kid was in captivity. People filed complaints telling CPS about what was happening to this kid. Nothing happened. Nada.
So on the one hand you’ve got your over-zealous newbie case workers who yank children from their loving parents’ arms, and on the other hand you’ve got your burned out case workers signing off they checked out a complaint when they never did and the kid ends up dead.
Between the two, I’d rather the fat kid spent time in foster care than we did nothing and the kid ends up dead and we sit here and bitch about how CPS should have done something.
This kid isn’t likely to die anytime soon from his weight. He’s not being abused or neglected, and unlike many others, at least he is getting fed.
I think this is an interesting comment because it indicates that, clearly, most people feel that at some point a young child’s weight is a problem that needs to be dealt with (though, perhaps, not in the manner CPS is in this case). What’s the line? 400lbs? 350? 300? We recognize that something about a child’s living situation is seriously wrong once they reach a certain point, but we feel it’s inappropriate to step in sometime before it gets to that point, even if it (seems) inevitable.
Should we really be content to wait until serious health issues occur before doing anything, or should we want to prevent them in the first place (ideally…I recognize the lack resources makes this much harder to actually do).
Again, recognizing the limited resources that are available to deal with all kinds of situations of abuse, this isn’t an acceptable minimum to me. I know (through a teacher) a kid who at least was fed and clothed…because he cooked all his own food, washed all his own clothes, cleaned the house, did the groceries, fed his drunken parents, put them to bed every night or covered them with a blanket when they were passed out, etc. He was 6 years old. He cut his hand pretty severely using a kitchen knife; he walked alone at night to the hospital to get stitches (I’m not sure where he lived exactly, but based on that town I’d say it was probably a good kilometer or more). It, unfortunately, took another 6-7 years to get him out of that living situation, because “at least he’s getting fed”. He was severely behind in his education and has severe emotional/anger issues now as a teenager (I think he’s about 18 now).
Ideally, of course; reality means some sort of triage but I don’t like the idea of saying “we shouldn’t help this kid, because his situation is less bad than another’s”. Abuse is abuse, and help should be given to anyone who needs it. The child can’t find his own help/resources and if the parent/guardians can’t or won’t do it, society should.
The kid in the OP is at a point where help won’t really cost all that much - some time, some retraining, some new habits. Way better than waiting until he’s very ill.
You don’t consider a parent letting their kid blow up to 300 lbs abuse and neglect?!
:eek:
I think I linked some other reports in an earlier thread about childhood obesity. I think this stuff is a case by case basis, but, really? 300 lbs?!
edit:
iirc, this was very thing was recommend by someone at Harvard…ah yes. here.
In case you wanted some perspective, this sort of thing happens in the UK as well. Here’s a vid of a 200+ lb boy.
I think CPS should’ve intervened earlier, but apparently the hospital noticed a bit late.
Bad parenting is not equal to abuse. If people think this is abuse they need to open their eyes to what kids who are in foster care have actually experienced.
Why is the foster parent being offered services that the bio mom was not? Why was kinship care not considered? There may be other factors, but based on what’s presented in the article, bad decision and horrible precedent.
Just because other kids have it ‘worse’ doesn’t mean this isn’t abuse.
This is the same board that flipped over the belt-whipping by the judge, remember? And some of us said, ‘yeah, that happens a lot to kids everywhere, everyday’ and Dopers responded, “BUT IT IS STILL ABUSE!!”
True. And so is this. It’s neglect.
How do you know that? Are you his doctor? Do you live in the house with them? Honestly, you are doing a whole lot of speculation about the circumstances of this case, and about case workers in general with no real basis beyond an article you read on the internet, and your own personal biases. An average 8-year-old weighs 57lbs. Do you really not see a HUGE problem with a kid being more than 3x a healthy wight for his age? More importantly, just because other kids are being abused (perhaps ever more) doesn’t mean we should ignore this abuse. I get that their are finite resources, but if you truly believe there are loads of kids being abused that are not getting the proper attention, perhaps you should work to ensure that they do. It would certainly be far more productive than defending some lady who allows her 8-year-old to eat himself to death.
No kidding. My kid is 7 and weighs 46 lbs. He’s taller and skinny, sure, but I’m trying to imagine an extra 150+ pounds on him (more than what I weigh) and I immediately want to put my arms around my kid and give him a kiss on the nose.
Let’s calm down. I did not mean to imply that because there are worse cases of abuse, that this is necessarily not a case of abuse. I don’t think that this should be considered abuse, but obviously people think differently about this subject- hence debate. Everyone agrees this is an absolutely miserable situation for the child, and his mother, at minimum, is a poor parent.
But, is foster care going to fix this problem? Removing a child from their only parent is an incredibly harmful decision, only outweighed when the parent is mistreating the child so poorly, that it’s clearly in the best interest of the child to be elsewhere.
Being in foster care is generally really, really shitty. Many kids in foster care end up drugged on two or three types of psychotropic meds without a second though, leading to even more serious health problems then the ones we’re discussing.
Just because the mother completely fails as a parent in this area does not mean that she and the child are not closely bonded or that she is a bad parent in other aspects.
If she decided not to cooperate with CPS, then it probably is not unreasonable that the child is removed. However, we don’t know what happened- we don’t know how the decision was made to remove or what really preceded that decision.
The other thing that strikes me as odd about this case is the attorney’s claim that CPS is going to provide a personal trainer to the child, now that he is in foster care. That raises the question of why that service wasn’t initially offered to the Mom, if it’s available to the foster parent. Also, it says that the foster parent has been missing meetings for the child. That strikes me as odd/part of the story is missing.
Maybe it’s a wake up call?
Can be.
If it is re: child’s health, what should CPS do? There’s a lot of ‘Well, it’s isn’t that bad/foster care sucks/I’m very busy right now’ shit going on enough as is. Why have laws if we don’t enforce them?
Can be. Agreed.
Cite? I don’t disbelieve you, but this is an overweight 8 year old here.
You can be closely bonded with your child and doing other things, like letting them drink in middle school or do drugs or _________.
No, we don’t. And all I was saying is ‘case by case’ and ‘WTF, MOM?!’ I think most of us here who are horrified are wondering how the hell that’s not neglect.
I think the atty said (heresay, of course) that the child ‘may’ be moved to a house where a trainer was present. As in, perhaps a foster parent who is already a trainer?
Bullshit. I’m applying the experience gained through 16 years of practicing law and dealing with real abuse on an almost daily basis for the last decade. As posted above, I have seen and heard things I’ll never forget. I know what abuse and neglect are. This ain’t it.
Oakminster, are you saying that ‘compared to other things I’ve seen, this isn’t abuse’ or are you saying that per Ohio law, this isn’t abuse/neglect? Because it’s not a good idea for judges to do the “Compared to what I saw yesterday, this guy wasn’t really hitting his wife that badly” thing.
I have no idea if this kid needed to be removed. The whole thing sucks. I wish the woman had gotten better services in the beginning, but I guess she gets whatever Medicaid or the county can pay for.
No…I’m not licensed in Ohio, and I’m not opining on their law. I’m saying this is not abuse/neglect by any sane standards. It’s a gross overreaction by weight nazis who apparently have nothing better to do than look for reasons to snatch children from their homes for no damn reason.
We need pictures! I can’t even imagine a kid that size that young
Uh not sure if anyone has ever seen the inside of social services and how bad things need to get for kids to be taken away but it is not a pretty picture. You nearly have to have murdered one of your children or turned one into a vegetable for them to consider permanent removal of any of your children and temporary removal is not far off. You can bet this woman is not fit to raise a child if her kid was taken away. This society is so hell-bent on never blaming parents in any meaningful way it’s absurd.