As others have said, it’s not necessarily illegal.
What do you consider imminent risk? If I slap my child across the face a couple times a day, he’s not going to die, so by your logic he’s not being abused?
A serious question: imminent danger of what exactly?
I was a fat kid, not as bad as this boy, at his age, but still fat. I got there not because my parents knowingly fed me too much, but because I ate every time I could get my hands on some food. Over time the calories added up and up.
The stigma of being overweight led me to hide at home, sedentary, and it gave me more time to eat. My parents tried every diet and fitness program around. The problem was that putting a kid on a diet takes time and it’s nearly impossible to keep that regimen going as long as is necessary to lose that amount of weight.
The misery it causes for everyone usually leads to failure and a return to bad eating and a sedentary lifestyle. It also didn’t help that my entire family had weight problems and no real idea of what was healthy eating. Diets sure, lifestyle, no.
In this case, the whole family needs education and a close eye kept on their progress or lack thereof. There’s decades (if he’s lucky) of emotional and physical pain ahead of him. Taking him out of his home isn’t the answer, making the home hospitable for good health, is.
To all of you that blame the parents and claim kids don’t overeat on their own (tommymann, Naxos, zoid) - you are wrong. My son is severely overweight. Many of you would blame me for that or say I “let him” get overweight (CitizenPained) but here are the facts:
My son has an unnatural obsession with food. He will ask what is for dinner when he is eating lunch. Food is a major focus in his life.
He grazes. If strict controls are not put on him he eats all of the time. I don’t care how healthy your diet is (poultry, fish, vegetables, fruit for snacks, making his own school lunch), if you eat too much you get fat. We have gotten to the point where we buy one day’s worth of food everyday because if he is unsupervised and there is food in the house, he will eat it. And yes, he does sneak food when I’m in the other room (Chronos) and I do homecooking every night (Naxos). Before he got counseling, I took him to a physician to have him evaluated for Prader-Willi Syndrome.
He refuses to exercize. How do you physically force a tweener to do something he doesn’t want to in a way that is not abusive? Grab his arm and drag him on a walk? Punish him other ways? Great answer except he will take the punishment over physical exercize every time.
Counseling? Doing that (incidently out of pocket). The problem lies in his executive function capabilities so I guess he has a learning disability. The outcome is that it is extremely difficulty for him to analyze a situtation and act appropriately on it. The counseling has helped (he now focuses [most of the time] on portion control]) but it involves a lot of oversight by both me and the counselor. Now let me ask you this: is every parent in a financial position to take their child to ongoing counseling multiple time per month?
I have seen cases where kids lead an unhealthy lifestyle and the parents are failing in their duties to keep their child healthy. I have seen the videos where parents give the kid a meal that would easily feed a family of four with leftovers. However, not every case boils down to being the parents fault. Sometime there are real issues that are outside the parents control.
Again, the longer article said he had no other health problems aside from sleep apnea, which was being treated.
“Imminent medical danger” appears to be the standard in Ohio that governs whether a child can be removed from his parents for reasons of medical neglect. So its not just Oakminster’s opinion that thats where the line should be, its the legal standard CPS has to show exists.
There will apparently be a hearing for the parents next month, and I can’t imagine CPS will be able to prove that the kids obesity meets the standard, so I expect the parents will get the kid back.
How can you say he’s not? How much medical evidence is there that an 8-year-old heart can support a 300-lb body indefinitely? If he has a heart attack or strokes out from hypertension tomorrow, would you then say he’s in imminent danger? If he develops full-blown Type 2 diabetes within 30 days would you then say he’s in imminent danger?
The fact is that just because the boy is morbidly obese doesn’t mean he isn’t malnourished. Malnourishment is not synonymous with undernourishment. He may be eating so many empty calories that he’s deficient in a number of quite necessary minerals and nutrients. I trust his physician that ordered the medical intervention is better informed on that than any of us are. And as a result of his health problems, he ordered medical intervention, which appeared to be followed at least at some point when the boy began to lose weight. Once the weight loss was reversed, it appears that CPS determined that the boy’s medical needs have been neglected by the parent. Without any further details, it shouldn’t be difficult to see how that could be the case. The child was left in the parent’s care under medical supervision until the child displayed signs of failure to thrive, at which point the child was removed from that environment. I don’t see how this would be any different than the neglect of a parent failing to provide necessary medication or health care.
I do hope the mother is getting assistance and education with regard to how to properly feed her child.
However, what is more concerning is that those kids are being treated with drugs that are not approved for or tested on kids. Also, they are being treated with multiple drugs in many cases, without oversight.
Kids in foster care are being prescribed multiple, unapproved drugs at a steadily rising rate.
What exactly is medical danger though. We already know that morbid obesity is an indicator of a number of chronic conditions that directly impact mortality: heart disease, hypertension, Type II diabetes at the top of the list. If the child is at significant risk of developing any of those potentially fatal, but certainly dangerous medical conditions, shouldn’t that be deemed “imminent medical danger”? Or do we wait until he has developed one or more of those conditions before we deem “imminent medical danger”? And if we wait until his heart gives out or he strokes out or loses a leg, who is then responsible? The mother for creating the problem, CPS for ignoring the problem, or the doctor for failing to treat the problem? Or society for not seeing something terribly wrong with a situation in which an eight year old can become 300 lbs.?
Beyond playing the blame game, why would anyone want to see a child suffer any of those preventable things?
And yet, a lawyer is not a doctor. More importantly, there are a number of people who are involved, and had to approve this decision, that collectively have far more experience than you, and far more relevant information and facts wrt this particular case. The fact that you automatically distrust government (and CPS) is your own personal bias; not something supported by the facts. Just because you’ve seen “real abuse” doesn’t mean you are more qualified to judge this case based on a newspaper article.
No one wants to see a child suffer any of those things. How will foster care solve the problem? How do you know it won’t make it worse?
Padlock your fridge and pantry. I’m serious. Your kid sounds like a FOAF’s kid I knew. They put a key lock on the pantry and kept the fridge near empty. The kid screamed, you better believe it, but he did drop to a more reasonable weight.
Presumably, CPS has placed him in foster care to ensure he gets the medical intervention prescribed by his doctor. If he doesn’t, then there is a problem with the foster care situation. However, it doesn’t indicate that the removal from a household in which the child wasn’t receiving prescribed medical intervention either was incorrect.
I don’t disagree that there are some terrible CPS programs and abuses within CPS programs out there, but that’s another debate, whether they should exist or not. Surely, you can see that even though some children have been abused or killed in foster programs doesn’t mean that you should leave abused children in their home environment. It does mean that CPS programs should have strict scrutiny in place. Considering this boy is under a doctor’s care and the media attention surrounding the case, we can ensure that strict scrutiny exists in this case.
Sounds like a classic eating disorder (only without the purging). Ask yourself what you would do if the child was binging and purging, or refusing to eat and starving himself to death. Medical and psychological intervention is key. The psychological condition needs to be addressed and treated while the child is provided appropriate, health sustaining nutrition.
If you were a single parent with no time or genuine motivation to do any of the things you’ve done, wouldn’t you want and accept help? Or are you going to let your kid eat himself to death and you’ll be damned if you’ll accept help?
Well, there’s the increasing risk his personal gravity field will attract passing comets.
Out of interest is any weight acceptable for a child in your opinion? What if the kid was 500lbs? 600? 900? Do you have a limit and, if so, how do you define that limit?
On the flip side, what if the kid was 30 lbs while being fed a limited diet that put the child at risk of developing chronic illnesses associated with malnutrition?
I see a dangerous slippery slope here.
We’ve seen it in all kinds of health/safety issues from smoking bans and drunk driving to seat belt laws. We start out with the most outrageous aspects: kids standing in the front seat unbelted, driving while absolutely shitfaced, or smoking in a hospital next to an emphysema patient.
Then fast forward a few years and there is no smoking in any public space, .08 DUI laws enforced on bicycles, and seat belts required for all adults.
I can’t see this being different. If we allow this, I see some future where a doctor tells a parent, “Sorry, the kid’s BMI is 26.1. Off to foster care, and you had better call a lawyer!”
No.
The slippery slope argument is meaningless. We have to look at the situation as it is - at what’s happening to this child who is being neglected. Now, you can argue that what the mother is doing is not neglect (I think it is) and that he shouldn’t be removed from the home for that reason, but don’t tell me that helping children in need will set a precedent for CPS to go crazy and start snatching up healthy, nurtured kids. The idea that suddenly every chubby kid is going to be rounded up and put into foster care is ludicrous.
Or, to use your own examples, would you rather not set any limits on drunk driving, seat belts, or smoking because you fear one day that little billy might tuck a seat belt under his arm for comfort, and Big Brother will swoop in and take him away?