Comments on: Debate: Should the State Take Severely Obese Children From Their Families?

By: Marian

Marian — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 09:12:45 +0000

I know a kid who is obese and I was trying to help him to eat healthier foods. His Mother would get mad and say where did you hear that if he asked for fresh vegis or to try one of the recipes I gave him. He’d ask for healthy food and she’d come home with pizza and baffallo wings. He struggled and argued with her. His mother just wouldn’t help him eat healthier. She still doesn’t and she hates me for getting involved. She also let him quit school at 14, I don’t know how they got away with it. How did the state not get involved with that situation.. But the kid wasn’t in school for 2 years when I met him in an online game. She was never home and always gone, I felt sorry for him and would talk to him on skype. Their house was condemned because the animals peed all over the place and they had to move. She gives him other peoples prescriptions for ear infections and his skin condition. He’s almost 400 lbs and is very depressed. I’m not sure what I could have done to help. But I really tried to help him get on a good diet and at least do home schooling. She needs help to learn to feed him good healthy meals and to get him an education. She has health insurance so there’s no excuse for not bringing him to the doctors and giving him other peoples prescriptions. I’m afraid some day he might get very ill from taking something she’s given him.

Anyway, I’m just frustrated with the situation. I don’t understand how she would want him not to eat healthy. The father isn’t in the picture much. So he doesn’t seem to get involved with raising his son. I feel very sorry for the kid. He begged me not to report her because I was seriously looking into it. He says he never wants to leave his mom. I just want her to get help and for him to get help to be a prosperous adult.

By: smgsmith

smgsmith — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 08:14:07 +0000

there are so many factors contributing to obesity and such a scale of possible body types (eg. i look thinner than my weight , but one of my daughters looks heavier than her weight although we are a similar height); how would obesity be measured?

how fat is “too fat’? is fatness a subjective condition wherein an anorexic social worker decides 5 lbs over starving is too fat? will a fat worker decide a child looks gaunt and underfed when they are actually average? (actually happened to a member of my family)

will cps workers be trained in nutrition and normal pediatric growth values – when they are not even trained in child development or child care now? it sounds like these untrained child protective services workers will be having the say and that is very dangerous to a family.

cps workers do not have to prove anything to take a child from a family, they merely have to make an accusation. and accusations by cps cannot be contested or spoken against in family court.

this idea scares me!

By: debra cole

debra cole — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 01:35:32 +0000

When we talk about removing the kids from their homes what exactly do we mean. Will they be placed in foster care where they have maybe a 50/50 chance of getting adult supervision that is educated and cares? How about a quasi orphanage run more like a fat camp they were all the rage in the 70′s but the kids I knew who went either did not lose much weight or had put it all back on before Christmas break. I hate to see obese children, ,well let me just face it I hate to see obese people at all not because of the way they look but because they usually don’t feel good physically or mentally. However in very, very ancient days a grossly fat wife was a status symbol for her husband sorry research did not mention if he actually touched her or not. Sorry too tacky. How in the world can we decide who is fat enough to need a new home shall we take grades into consideration? My mom would have swapped me in on a fat genius in a heart beat. I think happy children who are growing in such a way they will contribute to a productive society may be the best we can hope for with other peoples children. I’m not for fostering been there no love makes you reach for what ever comfort you can get usually food

By: Avatar

Avatar — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 21:26:43 +0000

My neighbors have great jobs with excellent incomes yet their two children are in the morbidly obese category. We think this is terrible. Even my kids feel bad for them. They are a boy going into 4th and a girl going into 6th grade. The parents are educated yet when the kids come for the school bus in the mornings they have the worst stuff for breakfast. The son has chocolate milk and cheese danish, the sister who complains that the brother polished off the danish has a handful of corn chips. Sometimes it’s even candy. I remember the mother telling me back in February she was going to work on the kids weight this summer. (Why wait?) Well it’s summer and they are bigger than ever. It’s a shame. They are nice kids but at this rate they aren’t going to be able to walk soon. I think the threat of losing their kids might get these parents motivated to do the right things. All the mom has to do is stop buying junk and have the kids drink water instead of sweetened drinks. It would slim them down a lot.

By: Templar 7

Templar 7 — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:18:32 +0000

You know, in medievil times infertility was a curse. Now they just go out, get degrees in social work , and run orphanages and Planned Parenthood.

Only the Strong Survive.

By: Ava

Ava — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:20:40 +0000

This is utter BS. I don’t even feel like I need to write a long angry rant about how stupid this is.

By: kevin

kevin — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:45:57 +0000

Having been raising 4 kids for 16 years I can weigh in how I feel about this. Giving the government this much control over things is just stupid. Want to see things go awry just let the government get a hold of it. On the other hand how do you make folks understand raising kids means controlling all aspects of their lives and guiding them to be all they can be? I am lucky to have four kids that look much as I and my siblings looked growing up as kids, Skinny by todays standards. We don’t cut them back on food I never gripe about what they eat or when, only if they get something and then do not eat it. My oldest will be 16 in Jan is 6′ 3″ tall and weighs about 205 and his ribs show my 14 year old is 6 ft. tall and weighs about 190 and looks thin compared to his friends, Both these boys eat like crazy. But they work like mad and play like mad and we don’t let them lay around playing games all day on the T.V. and the puter. They eat some pretty Junky food too! In short Lack of activity I feel has caused this.
I myself have experimented with the good diet as I at this stage in my life I am over weight and that I attribute to Lack of activity. I was normal in BMI even below for a while all my life till age 34 I got crippled up and very much less mobile then the pounds crept on. To loose has been hard but I have been on the Medi fast diet and it is working slowly. But had I been able to stay active as I want it would not be necessary at all. You are what you eat…….. unless you burn it all up.

By: Wayne

Wayne — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:41:27 +0000

Having been fat at school, and classified as morbidly obese now, I cannot fathom the notion of removing a child from their home because they are obese. I ate healthy meals almost everyday at home as a child, but it was the other rubbish that I put into my body during the day that led to my obesity. I do not and cannot blame anyone but myself for the state my body is in. I now am on a diet to lose weight as I came to the realization that obesity is detrimental to my health.

As with everything, it comes down to education. Do parents have all of the information at their disposal to see that their child being obese is not good in the long term; and if they do, are they actually using this information? Is it a case of that parents have such busy lives that as long as the child is happy, they don’t care what their child is eating when they are not around.

Obesity is something that parents can help eliminate in their children if the wish is to do so; just by saying NO, and ensuring that the diet in the home is conducive to healthy living.

It is always easy to say “remove obese kids from their parents” if:

1. You don’t have kids or
2. If your kids are already grown up and not living with you any longer.

Instead of trying to legislate what we can and cannot do in our own homes, make information available for everyone to make the right decisions.

By: brian

brian — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:01:34 +0000

wow what a crock of s***.

Some doctor tried to call my son obese, because all the look at is age & weight. Of course my son is heavier than the average kid, he’s in the 99%tile for height. He’s a bean pole, no fat on him.

So until the CDC can get their facts straight, we should avoid draconian police states taking away kids.

By: Bob Snyder

Bob Snyder — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 17:16:22 +0000

@19… that’s a very convenient cop-out. While you are correct, the timescale for evolutionary forces to correct the problem is longer than you or I plan on being around. For a more pragmatic approach, we need to think of something that will help fix this problem in our lifetimes. And taking kids away from their parents is probably the worst idea and would only serve to exacerbate the problem, as many comments have noted.