Med journal: Parents with obese children should lose custody.

[CitizenPained]

link

Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity specialist at Harvard-affiliated Children's Hospital Boston, said the point isn't to blame parents, but rather to act in children's best interest and get them help that for whatever reason their parents can't provide.

State intervention "ideally will support not just the child but the whole family, with the goal of reuniting child and family as soon as possible. That may require instruction on parenting," said Ludwig, who wrote the article with Lindsey Murtagh, a lawyer and a researcher at Harvard's School of Public Health.

First of all, our foster care system is already struggling. Second, what are we going to do?

Send them to fat camp?

Sterilize them?

Gastric bypass?

This is only going to make them feel WORSE about their weight. Kids with weight issues have ADDICTION issues.

Jerri Gray, a Greenville, S.C., single mother who lost custody of her 555-pound 14-year-old son two years ago, said authorities don't understand the challenges families may face in trying to control their kids' weight.

"I was always working two jobs so we wouldn't end up living in ghettos," Gray said. She said she often didn't have time to cook, so she would buy her son fast food. She said she asked doctors for help for her son's big appetite but was accused of neglect.

Her sister has custody of the boy, now 16. The sister has the money to help him with a special diet and exercise, and the boy has lost more than 200 pounds, Gray said.

"Even though good has come out of this as far as him losing weight, he told me just last week, `Mommy, I want to be back with you so bad.' They've done damage by pulling us apart," Gray said.

Stormy Bradley, an Atlanta mother whose overweight 14-year-old daughter is participating in a Georgia advocacy group's "Stop Childhood Obesity" campaign, said she sympathizes with families facing legal action because of their kids' weight.

Healthier food often costs more, and trying to monitor kids' weight can be difficult, especially when they reach their teens and shun parental control, Bradley said. But taking youngsters away from their parents "definitely seems too extreme," she said.

Dr. Lainie Ross, a medical ethicist at the University of Chicago, said: "There's a stigma with state intervention. We just have to do it with caution and humility and make sure we really can say that our interventions are going to do more good than harm."

A 500 lb kid? I can see that. But seriously? I mean, when are you going to draw the line? What happen in a custody case where someone says, "Oh, the kid is fat...give the kid to me!" or when CPS enters a home and decides a 200 lb 14 year old is being subjected to food abuse?

 

[ogibillm]

i can agree that there could be some interesting unintended consequences and some strain on an already strained system, but that mother with the 555 lb kid was abusing and neglecting him just as surely as if she were beating or poisoning him.

truthfully the solution could be as simple as a regimented nutritous meal program the parent has to pay for (their already paying for fast/junk food). i don't know, i just know you can't let a 500+ lb kid continue to eat as he was

 

[CitizenPained]

Nutritious food is a hard habit to support. And the kid had an addiction. Plus if the mom is working 2 jobs, how can she restrict what he eats?

Clearly she doesn't have the cash to help him. He needed MENTAL health, too.

 

[High_Gravity]

If someones kids are fat, how is this any our business?

 

[Truthmatters]

how about letting experts deside when a kid is so fat it is abuse.

 

[ogibillm]

Nutritious food is a hard habit to support. And the kid had an addiction. Plus if the mom is working 2 jobs, how can she restrict what he eats?

Clearly she doesn't have the cash to help him. He needed MENTAL health, too.

have you any idea what it would take to feed a 500+lb kid fast food every day?

she may have been working two jobs but how much of that was going to just support his fried chicken habit? and there are plenty of people out there that work 2 jobs and don't have blimps for children. they make it work, so could she.

when i was growing up there was a kid at a neighboring school with a brain disorder. he lived his entire life feeling as if he were hungry. his parents put a lock on the refrigerator. they monitored what he ate. sure, he was still a little heavy, but they made it work.

i have no sympathy for that mother. she was killing her child.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Wait....I'm checking Article 1, Section 8......hmmm......"fat kids,' ...."fat kids".....
nope....
.......maybe SCOTUS can find it in some penumbra....

 

[CitizenPained]

The 500 lb kid is a rarity. But what about kids that are 200 lbs? Should the state take THEM away?

 

[ogibillm]

The 500 lb kid is a rarity. But what about kids that are 200 lbs? Should the state take THEM away?

that depends. how old? how tall? what kind of bmi? is the kid gaining or losing weight?

there are lots of factors, and i don't think it should ever be an automatic loss of the child, but we do need to recognize abuse in this form.

 

[CitizenPained]

What about chubby babies? I had a fat baby!

My son at 2:

My son now:

 

[ogibillm]

Wait....I'm checking Article 1, Section 8......hmmm......"fat kids,' ...."fat kids".....
nope....
.......maybe SCOTUS can find it in some penumbra....

you're really defending child abuse?

 

[Truthmatters]

Wait....I'm checking Article 1, Section 8......hmmm......"fat kids,' ...."fat kids".....
nope....
.......maybe SCOTUS can find it in some penumbra....

Is there anything in there about Munchausens by proxy?


http://www.bing.com/health/article/mayo-126638/Munchausen-syndrome?q=munchausen+by+proxy

 

[Douger]

My son at 2:

Damn. Wanna go half's on another one ?

 

[California Girl]

Wait....I'm checking Article 1, Section 8......hmmm......"fat kids,' ...."fat kids".....
nope....
.......maybe SCOTUS can find it in some penumbra....

General welfare. That'll be the one.

 

[whitehall]

Don't laugh. If the federal government has the power to furnish health care it also has the power regulate unhealthy life styles. Here's your choice, send your kids to health camps or lose your own health care. Think it can't happen?

 

[Tank]

 

[lilbug]

Oops! double post!

 

[lilbug]

I agree this is a form of abuse, but I'm against involving CPS. They do a poor job as is it of protecting children because of an over burdened system, negligence on their part to followup and deception on the part of the abuser, not to mention a very poor foster care system. A lot of times kids are removed from an abusive environment and placed right into another one in foster care.

For me, a better way to go would be guidelines whereby when a child reaches a weight that is so grossly out of proportion to that of a healthy weight, a physician and psychiatrist/psychologist must be required to get involved providing a diet plan and exercise program, and counseling for both the child and the parent(s). Clearly, parents who allow their children to reach such grossly unhealthy weights have issues of their own to work on. I have also seen, through my work, where a child will go to the doctor for one problem, but their obvious obesity is never addressed.

 

[bill5]

Nutritious food is a hard habit to support. And the kid had an addiction. Plus if the mom is working 2 jobs, how can she restrict what he eats?

Clearly she doesn't have the cash to help him. He needed MENTAL health, too.

If anyone I'd say the mother needed "mental health," or at least an IQ upgrade. It is a myth that fast food is cheaper. You can eat as cheap or cheaper on healthy food, and/or at least much healthier than fast food. What's true about fast food is that it is much EASIER.

Also am I the only one sick to freaking death of every abnormal, unadvisable or generally stupid behavior being tagged an "addiction" or given some idiotic acronym to try and legitimize it? BS on his "addiction." What he has is an absolutely horribly stupid habit (which is tragically common) supported by of all people his mother. I sympathize that she is working 2 jobs and it's hard and all, but that hardly excuses just tossing him fast food all the time.

I don't even know where to start on the "how can she restrict what he eats" statement. Good grief. Be the parent. If she can't do that, yeah she SHOULD lose her kid. (So should a truckload of other morons out there that had no business reproducing, but that's another topic....)

Nutritious food is a hard habit to support. And the kid had an addiction. Plus if the mom is working 2 jobs, how can she restrict what he eats?

Clearly she doesn't have the cash to help him. He needed MENTAL health, too.

have you any idea what it would take to feed a 500+lb kid fast food every day?

she may have been working two jobs but how much of that was going to just support his fried chicken habit? and there are plenty of people out there that work 2 jobs and don't have blimps for children. they make it work, so could she.

when i was growing up there was a kid at a neighboring school with a brain disorder. he lived his entire life feeling as if he were hungry. his parents put a lock on the refrigerator. they monitored what he ate. sure, he was still a little heavy, but they made it work.

i have no sympathy for that mother. she was killing her child.

Somebody gets it, thank you

 

[Kooshdakhaa]

CitizenPained, your BEAUTIFUL baby boy just had baby fat. That's why people talk about baby fat, it is normal and healthy in a baby and melts away as they get older. Absolutely normal.

This, on the other hand is not normal or healthy. This is absolutely, without a doubt, child abuse. Bear with the video, I don't know why you can't hear what the news announcers are saying. Just look at the kid.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6j6GcP3-uQ]‪The 400pound 7 year old‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]

Here's an update. Someone had to step in and get the mother on the right track with this child. Check out the mother. No wonder.