Stop feeding your kid!!

You! The morbidly obese parents dragging your overweight, sunburned kid around the fair.

Remember the end of Blade, when the vampire was swelling up blood red. That’s kind of what this kid looked like. I’m sure theres a slight chance this family has some genetic thyriod disorder, but I suspect its because these parents don’t know when to stop eating themselves, and subseuently have turned their child into a textbook case of Type II diabetes before the poor boy is 10 years old.

Stay away from the fucking McDonald’s!! Stop eating, and stop teaching your child to gorge himself the way you do!

CPS takes children away from parents who beat them, but is giving them cardiovascular disease before they’re old enough to like girls that much better?

Word. Maury Povich (what?) used to have fat kids on his show all the time and the parents (usually moms) were always, always the same.

Maury: What’s a typical day like? What does he eat?

“I let him eat whatever he wants! My baby is HEALTHY!”

Maury: We followed Ignorant, Child-Abusing Whore and Poor, Fat Kid around to see what a typical meal is like…

Breakfasts are usually heaping bowls of sweetened, fake-marshmallow laden cereal, plus toast, plus pancakes, plus candy (CANDY FOR BREAKFAST), plusplusplus. Lunch is a bucket of fried chicken, a whole medium pizza, some ribs (and then they show this fat kid with barbeque sauce all over him and the mom is like “OMFG, y’all, look at my baby! So cute!”), soda, mac ‘n’ cheese… Dinners are the same, but they also eat snacks and cakes and candy throughout the day, and bottles (bottles, as in “baby”, and these kids are, like, two) full of soda and milk all day.

So sad. And I don’t know what bothers me more: the physical aspect, that these children are so obviously not healthy, or the mental health aspect in that these kids are going to spend the majority of their formative years being ridiculed by cruel classmates and whatnot. What a sad life they’re facing.

Aren’t childhood obesity rates going up? Eventually, all the large kids will start ganging up on the healthy kids instead. See, bright side!

There’s one thing that bugs me a lot about the way “curving” is being used by pediatricians, at least in my neck of the woods (Spain).

The other day we remarked on what chubby, “eat me” thighs my nephew has. His mom instantly jumped up saying that he’s in the whatever percentile for his age for height, the whatever else for weight and the likeIcare for head perimeter (kid’s square faced, unlike his mom, whose baby face was wider than it was high).

OK… so… if kids start getting fatter, then the “50%” starts going up too, no? But so would it if kids started getting bigger as in more muscle, no? I mean, just because someone is in the whatever percentile that doesn’t mean it’s healthy or unhealthy.

Maybe I just paid too much attention in Applied Statistics.

Yeah, but the healthy kids can easily escape by walking up a gentle slope.

I know a couple who have a 4 year old daughter who wears a (kids) size 10. The child is enormous. I don’t see much of them, but every time I do, I want to slap them. The kid makes any sort of whiny sound, and they say “Want a cookie?” What the fuck? After the 10th “Want a cookie?”, I really can’t help but to start interjecting “Want a carrot? Or even better, want to find some way to amuse yourself that doesn’t involve chewing?”

I definitely consider this overfeeding a form of abuse. Being that fat is socially crippling for a kid, and I dread the poor girl starting school. Both her parents are obese, and I don’t understand why they, who know only too well how being fat makes everything harder, from climbing stairs to getting a good job, wouldn’t do everything possible to prevent their daughter from having to endure it. Someday that girl is going to be a 250lb teenager, and if she’s smart, she’s going to realize that it all started when she was a 70lb toddler, and she’s going to hate them for it.

I remember those shows. It was scary–he’s had pre-schoolers on there that weigh more than I do at 21.

I think it is a combination of Fast Food, zero cooking skills nowadays ( who here is not guilty of a pizza roll/ramen noodle/pop tart breakfast?) and the fact that kids just don’t play outside anymore.

They watch TV and play video games which are Electronic Pacifiers.

My niece is one of these kids. It makes me so angry when her mom comments on how “puny” my kids are. Ummm, no. Her kid is just huge. At two and change this little girl weighs as much as my five-year-old. My children are in the less-than 50th percentile and her kid is and has been all her life, off the chart. They’re not “puny”, “tiny” or any other diminutive adjective. They’re NORMAL.

Granted, Emily’s dad is pretty tall, as is her paternal grandmother. Maternal GM & GGM are both less than five feet tall. I don’t think that height-inclination though should be rounded off with width. Honestly, I was buying size 2T for her before she had turned one. I haven’t a clue if her mom worries about it; whenever I’d ask where Emily was on the percentage scales she’d give me a stock answer of “oh, I don’t remember”. Bullshit. You REMEMBER that stuff, especially right after the appointment. She was ashamed.

This kid has always had a big appetite. She was eating grown-up foods very early, when mine wouldn’t touch pizza with a ten-foot pole.

I feel sorry for the child. As mentioned, children can be very cruel. Her thigh is just about as big around as my calf - she’s ONLY TWO! I’d think her mom might be more aware, because she’s fought with her own weight for as long as I’ve known her.

Those kids on Maury are an aberration though. I think they must seek out the absolute fattest kids simply for the OH MY GOD! factor. I would hate myself if I encouraged or aided my children in something that will end up with them being ostracised. Childhood and teenage years especially are hard enough without begging for a reason to be teased.

I’ve found that when you see kids this much out of control it’s usually a symptom of their parents being equally out of control and often in deep denial about it.

I’ve noticed this phenomenon a lot, too - kids don’t play outside anymore. I live in a pretty safe development; it’s off the road, and there are huge tracts of grass behind the apartment where the kids can play. No kids ever go there. When kids play out front, they’re heavily supervised. And they come out for maybe an hour, and then run back inside.

Remember when we used to play in the snow? No one plays in the snow. No snowball fights, no snowmen, nothing. It weirds me out.

I was severely overprotected and I was still out every day from dawn till dusk if I could manage it. And thus, as a kid anyway, I was always skinny as a toothpick.

No kidding. When I was a kid if a friend called and asked if I wanted to play football, I’d put on my shoes, grab my football and head to the park. Now when a kid asks another kid if he wants to play football the usual response is X-Box or Playstation?

:smiley:

Maybe. This is what everyone says. But everybody are often wrong. Given the massive epidemic of obesity, it seems likely that something other than a moral failure is to blame. Possible explanations include the widespread use of anti-depressants, blood pressure and other medications. Further the effects of environmental pollutants is not fully understood.

The widespread contamination of drinking water with female hormones cannot be good.

While it is part of our nature to blame people for their failings, that does not mean it is scientifically correct in this case.

:dubious: Please explain?

How true. In my little town, we have several nice parks. The only kids I notice using them are the Hmong immigrant children. Good for them, at least.

On the other hand, you have kids like my niece who eats healthy meals, rarely snacks, and is extremely active (always riding her bike or scooter around town, plus playing softball, baseball and basketball) yet is still overweight. Poor kid. Genetics suck sometimes.

I am not sure if this is what he is talking about or not, but I have heard about this theory a bit lately.

Kind of makes you feel old before your time, doesn’t it?

But yeah, growing up at the beginnings of the PC and video game “revolution,” it’s fascinating to see how it (and probably other cultural factors) have changed how kids play since, oh, the early 80s.

Strange. So the female hormones are making kids fat?

I’m just not sure how it relates!

There was a story yesterday that said that most obese people claim to have healthy eating habits. About 40% claimed to exercise vigorously at least 3 times per week.

I really question whether people understand what it means to “eat healthy” and “exercise vigorously”.