I’m sure the mother is a nice lady. Of course, nobody is going to say “You’re right, I really screwed up this parenting thing.” She seems, in this article, to be seriously deluded.
Genetics, of course, certainly does play a role in how your body puts on weight, and some people are certainly big boned with slow metabolism. Genetics can make you husky, or chubby, or big. But genetics does not make an eight year old weigh 200 lbs. That child is, with absolute certainty, that fat because he is eating waaaaaaay too much, not because of genetics. Even if he had the worst genes in the world, the genetic contribution was passed a hundred pounds ago at least.
So many people just have so much baggage here. They have family or are themselves overweight, their kids ect and don’t want to ever allow anything to reflect on them that maybe they contributed to their child having struggled so much in life with something they didn’t have to. Or they are so self conscious about their weight and just don’t want to be singled out as abnormal. It sucks that people are so mean about it and that we have such a vicious society in general but we can’t let kids suffer just to protect the raw nerves of adults.
Except in this case, the abuse is medical neglect. The child was under a doctor’s care with a medical intervention plan that CPS felt the parent was not carrying out.
I don’t know how many of those children are under a medically supervised plan to reduce whatever, if any, negative health affects of their obesity and how many have parents who are failing to adhere to that plan. But if medical neglect of children is that widespread, don’t you think society needs to figure out a means of providing proper medical care to these children, whether it’s working with parents and schools, and removing children from environments in which parents refuse to provide a healthy and safe situation despite such intervention? Or should we just throw our hands up in defeat because we’ve let the problem get too big for traditional resources?
Yes, I saw that. That’s why I don’t believe you are the type of person that deserves to have their son taken away for medical neglect. You clearly understand what you need to do to get him help.
And I don’t know why you would say that bulimia is simple. I used that as an example because it’s a psychological problem that manifests itself as an eating disorder, just like food addiction does. But, IMHO, bulimia seems to be more accepted generally as a psychological problem, whereas food addiction is still largely still defended as a “right” insofar as food addicts having the right to eat whatever and whenever they want.
Anyway, I applaud your efforts in helping him overcome his health issues. I’m guessing by her statement about the role genetics may play, the woman in the story didn’t take it quite so seriously as you do.
The usual and normal choices for dealing with health issues are not between “throwing up our hands in defeat” and “removing the child from the home and handing him over to foster parents”, are they?
What your “side” is missing is that removing a child from the home is intended to be a last-ditch remedy, used only when there is no other option. There are lots of good reasons for this - not least, the fact that the move is often very traumatic for the child, particularly in a case like this where the “abuse” appears to be based on laxity, rather than severity, and the child is unlikely to welcome being seperated from his family and sent to live with strangers. This is likely to lead to all sorts of unintended complications for the child, even though it is intended to be in the child’s best interests with all the goodwill in the world.
It is different where a child is being beaten, starved or sexually abused - which is, in reality, the sorts of acute distress this remedy is designed for: a child is far more likely to welcome being free from fear and pain.
Which is not to say that a mom ignoring a child’s weight and medical “advise” to correct it is a good thing. It is not. But fostering isn’t designed as a remedy for bad parents, or even bad parents who permanently damage their children by bad lifestyle choices: it is designed to rescue children from acute distress.
Moreover, I am struck by the fact that the mom’s “obvious” failure is being measured by the fact that her kid remains severely obese. By that logic, what about the other 12% of children who are severely obese? Don’t they represent equal “failure” by their parents?
It is hard to believe that there is no other option to a weight problem (which is in many cases notoriously intractible anyway) than fostering. For one, fostering 12% of children is simply impractical even if it was desireable - which it is not. Programs designed to affect widespread social change from “undesireable” parental upbringing by removing children from undesirable parents have had a very poor record in the 20th century. It has been tried repeatedly and been a horrible, traumatic failure in each and every case (often resulting in official apologies and class-action type settelements decades later).
The evidence in the article is hardly conclusive that the mom was not following the doctor’s orders. She disputes it. The main evidence that she was not is that he was gaining weight (after having lost it).
Interestingly, fostering, for all it is being advocated here, has allegedly proved a failure. From the article:
Of course this is coming from the mom’s lawyer, so take it as you will. My opinion is that it is not obvious that the mom has been “neglectful” to the extent alleged (e.g., ignoring doctor’s advice) and if it is in fact true that the foster family also could not control the kid’s weight, that is evidence against the notion, no?
Could someone double check my stats, please? I’m not a parent, and unfamiliar with BMI calculators for children. This post was submitted assuming I’m plugging the numbers into this calculator correctly. If I’m wrong, please ignore this and make fun of me via PM.
For those decrying the impracticality of placing all 12% of Ohio’s children in foster care, bear in mind that obesity follows a spectrum. The idea of rounding up each kid who ranges above a BMI of 21 is absurd, and an exaggeration of the worst case scenario. If the kid in question is a generously estimated 52” tall, at 200 pounds his BMI measures 52.1, placing him in the 99.9 percentile. The same child would have been considered obese when he hit 81 pounds. The likelihood of 12% of Ohio’s kids being yanked from their homes is zero, and this exaggeration is just a dishonest distraction from the argument.
As hypersensitive to teasing and bullying as members of this board generally are, it would seem that the risks of social ostracization would be reason enough to consider intervention. Sleep apnea certainly isn’t the only risk for this kid. And what will happen during the twice yearly fitness tests required by public schools? Does anyone want this kid to drop dead from stroke or heart attack while attempting to keep up with his typically developing kids? Would you want to be the teacher responsible for pushing him to run? He probably struggles to breathe while walking, assuming his is comfortably mobile at all at such a weight.
The CDC website notes these health risks associated with childhood obesity: "What are the consequences of childhood obesity?
Health risks now
• Childhood obesity can have a harmful effect on the body in a variety of ways. Obese children are more likely to have–
o High blood pressure and high cholesterol, which are risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD). In one study, 70% of obese children had at least one CVD risk factor, and 39% had two or more.2
o Increased risk of impaired glucose tolerance, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.3
o Breathing problems, such as sleep apnea, and asthma.4,5
o Joint problems and musculoskeletal discomfort.4,6
o Fatty liver disease, gallstones, and gastro-esophageal reflux (i.e., heartburn).3,4
o Obese children and adolescents have a greater risk of social and psychological problems, such as discrimination and poor self-esteem, which can continue into adulthood.3,7,8
Health risks later
• Obese children are more likely to become obese adults.9, 10, 11 Adult obesity is associated with a number of serious health conditions including heart disease, diabetes, and some cancers.12
• If children are overweight, obesity in adulthood is likely to be more severe."
Nobody is disputing that severe obesity is a health risk, and that the further end of the spectrum is going to be the most risky.
However, by the same token - “severe obesity” (which is the term used) is, clearly, a “health risk”, as your own cite states, and if 12% of children have it, it is easy to see justification for at least some sort of intervention in those cases too, right?
I dunno how “severe obesity” is measured in BMI. According to your link, over the 95th percentile is “obese” but your cite does not break out “severely obese”, which is presumably some subset of that. What’s your case for not intervening when a child is “severely obese”?
I take issue with the characterization of this argument as “dishonest”. What it is, is a reductio ad absurdum:
… pointing out that the position you advocate, taken to its logical conclusion, leads to an absurd result. If it is true that “severe obesity” is a life-threatening health condition (which no-one denies) and if it is also true that the preferred way to deal with it when it proves intractable is to remove the child from the parents (very much the point in dispute) then it must logically be the case that more than this single child should be removed; and the logical line to draw is at “severe obesity”, which forms 12% of the student body at that grade level. QED.
Providing further sites about the horrors of obesity simply strengthens this argument.
The larger point (no pun intended! :D) is that fostering is hardly a panacea for weight issues, and allegedly has in point of fact failed to make any difference in the case under discussion. This seems to be overlooked - that not only is fostering not desireable as a remedy because it has troubling civil-rights implications, not only would its application prove impossible if generally done (the reducto ad absurdum argument), but on top of that … where is the proof it will do any good? The current case, as far as we know the facts, and assuming they are stated correctly, indicates it did no good at all!
Without more facts we can guess all day. Presumably after having worked with the family for over a year they’ve exhausted just about every other preferable option for helping this particular kid. It kinda seems like the mom was more or less okay with her kid being in foster care, and he was losing weight for awhile but then the foster parent (singular? I didn’t think single people could foster) was missing the kid’s appointments.
For all we know if this kid is left alone for two minutes he’ll eat paint chips, carpet fiber and his own clothing. We don’t really know.
We do know mom is a teacher also going to vocational school so she doesn’t have time to watch this kid every second and if this is basically a special needs kid who requires constant supervision, and there are no passably available adult relatives around fostering could be the best option. Or it was for awhile anyway.
You left out a very important step in the process: Prior to the boy’s removal from the home, the mother had one year to attempt to make the necessary changes to help her child achieve some progress towards better health. One year to make changes, and I would bet the consequences to her son’s health and her custody of her son were made very clear prior to his removal.
No one would think twice about removing a child who fell below .1 percentile for weight, and would likely be outraged the child wasn’t removed sooner than one year after the issue was investigated. This isn’t just a fat child, this is a child with a manageable illness who was not properly cared for.
According to the alleged facts in the article, the kid lost weight - when he was with mom - but then gained it again; that’s when the state removed him: presumably because the weight gain demonstrated mom wasn’t doing her job.
And you left out one very important fact: that, allegedly, the kid isn’t doing any better with the foster care, so allegedly the state is thinking of moving him again. So, assuming this is true, either the state did a lousy job of fostering, giving the kid to a similarly-neglectful fosterer (which hardly speaks well of the process), or perhaps his condition was not so easily “managable” in the first place - which puts the notion that fostering was a good remedy in doubt.
Any serious decision to foster should be made with serious proof that fostering will be in the best interests of the child. If the allegations in the article are true, I fail to see that this sad story demonstrates such a burden was met.
I fail to see how leaving the child in the same neglectful home with no improvement after one year is a better alternative to a supervised attempt at intervention.
The most glaring response to this is this: governmental agencies are run by people, people who look at “statistics”, these statistics need to be measured (accurately) so that they can defend themselves in a court room (when the parent sues). Where do we draw that line?
There will be no “kid by kid basis”, ever, because it simply isn’t measurable.
This is one of those decisions I have trouble with ultimately because I love kids, my kids, all kids and I hate obesity. However, the slippery slope is already here and the government is already using it.
It’s wrong.
First, “neglectful” is a judgment. That judgment was, from the article, based on one major fact - the failure to improve. The fact is that after the state’s intervention the same failure, and thus “neglect”, was experienced, correct? Assuming the facts are as stated in the article?
Second, we are talking about a specific form of intervention - fostering. It is this form which is being criticized, not the necessity for intervention.
So now the state has removed a child from his (apparently loving) family - with all of the negative effects on a child that would entail - and done, again allegedly, little good. On a “cost benefit” analysis, how on earth can that result be justified as in the best interests of the child? I see costs here but so far no particular benefit - let alone the sort of benefit that would justify the extreme remedy of fostering.
Rather, what it does is throw the judgment into discredit - perhaps the state was wrong in measuring “neglect” by a child’s failure to decrease in weight. Thus the state’s fostering is not “neglectful” … but then, by the same token, neither was the mother’s.
Of course, this is all hindsight. Perhaps the state made a natural error - in assuming “neglect” could be measured by weight results.
Yes, I gave a qualified answer. I had hoped that the qualifications would be clear enough, but evidently not for everyone!
It is, in fact, a fact that the allegations I cited were made (see, I do know what a “fact” is! ). There is nothing inaccurate in stating ‘in fact, the following allegation was made … if it is true, the implication is as follows …’. This is not the same as claiming that the allegations are in fact true, as you appear to believe.
But I’m willing to be educated: please tell me why this is wrong.
Of course, the alternative to giving qualified answers when responding to a news article where the “facts” are not yet established is to just assume certain things are true (but not others), assume stuff not in evidence, or just plain make stuff up.
Neglect was proven long before the child was removed from the home. Neglect was evident when the child reached nearly 3 times the acceptable weight for an 8 year old. Would neglect be obvious to you if the child weighed 3 times less than the acceptable weight for an 8 year old? Would you consider it neglect if the same kid weighed 25 pounds? Of course you would. Without hesitation.
“Apparently loving” is your judgment; I see this environment as selfish and neglectful, as does social services. Otherwise the mother would have done everything in her power to prevent his weight from reaching such staggering proportion, and a loving parent would have made documented attempts at intervention long before the boy was taken. She had a year of supervision. An entire year to show intent to care for the child’s health and well-being. She failed on both counts to prove intent to create a safer environment for her son, and to assist him with weight loss.
What I don’t get is how the fat apologists here fail to consider the alternative: whether or not a starved child should be removed from a neglectful parent’s custody. What I don’t get here is how fat apologists, who are unusually sensitive and sympathetic to children who are bullied aren’t rallying behind intervention. What, exactly, is your solution here? If one year of supervised intervention wasn’t sufficient motivation for this boy’s mother to take steps to improve the health of her son, how can you justify leaving him in the same enviroment? Clearly her son’s deteriorating health, one year of supervision by social services and the threat of losing custody of her child wasn’t sufficient motivation to help him.
I weep for this kid. At this point, he still possesses the awesome metabolism of a growing child. This is the easiest time in his life he can expect to manage his weight; once he reaches adulthood the struggle will increase exponentially. He is facing a lifetime of medical problems, food issues, bullying, and on top of all that: if he becomes a parent, he will likely realize that the adults in the home are in charge of the health, well-being, and diet of the children. He will know his mother neglected him, and set him up for a lifelong struggle when he was far too young to recognize the implications of his lifestyle. This disease (let’s call childhood morbid obesity what it is) is not his fault.
Neglect is possible but it is not obvious or proven. You are overstating the case.
I can see a case where a child weighed 25 pounds without “neglect”, and so can you - for example, where a child, in spite of the best medical care, proved unable to gain weight through some medical condition.
No they do not. Once again, you are overstating the case. Where does social services claim the parent is “selfish”?
Even presuming that mom stuffed the kid, or laxly did not prevent the kid from stuffing himself, that may well prove the parent was “neglectful” - but this is not the same thing as claiming the parent did not provide a loving environment. Laxity of discipline can in fact co-exist with love.
And, allegedly, the fosterer also “failed”. Though admittedly they did not have a year, as far as we know.
People don’t “consider the alternative” because the two situations are obviously not the equivalent: a starving child will beg for food and so will some obese children. Allegedly, in this case the kid was put on a diet and “snuck food” for himself. You do not see starving children deliberately rejecting food unless they have very serious mental or physical problems - and in that case, it is hardly fair to blame the parents for the resulting failure to thrive.
Heh, I’m a “fat apologist” now? Wow, never knew that. I thought I was objecting to an apparently silly and inappropriate extention of state supervision.
But it is nice to learn, via telepathy, what my real motives are! Clearly, I care nothing for this kid, or kids in general, and just want them to expand exponentially in pursuit of my big fat agenda.
). There is nothing inaccurate in stating ‘in fact, the following allegation was made … if it is true, the implication is as follows …’. This is not the same as claiming that the allegations are in fact true, as you appear to believe.