Childhood Obesity= CHILD ABUSE
Options
Replies
-
Brett, I almost never enter these types of threads, because the "myopia" is too strong and that is time could be spending watching paint dry or something. However, in this case as a non-parent who has worked with children, I'm chiming in to support you and the other parents trying to get through the perfect world fallacies and to reality.
The baseline assumption that children will behave in predictable and linear ways is false. Human behavior and cognition is not linear. We uncover patterns in human behavior through research and study. The path is not simply "introduce factor A and observe behavior B with not other conditioning." If this were the case every parent in this thread would be breaking out the champagne and celebrating having a household free of back talk, sibling rivalry, complaints, anger, sadness, teenaged angst and so forth.
Food is no different than any other stimulus in the real world. Children are exposed to it at home, at school, in the media and can be indirectly influenced by the opinions of others. As young as kindergarten/preschool, children are coming into contact with other people's eating habits, opinions and cultural expectations around food and eating. As soon as children have enough linguistic experience to differentiate positive and negative context in speech they are exposed to outside opinions about food through advertising. Refusing or fixating on particular food are idiosyncratic behaviors that parents may have to spend months or even years trying to correct or work around, because the source of the issue is not always related to immediate family or easy to identify.
If anyone is capable right now of explaining in detail how to account for each child's personality differences and their responses to parental influence and outside stimuli, you need to write the definitive book on parenting. Every parent, teacher, doctor, therapist and park ranger will buy it if it's published. Until that book is available on Amazon, I'm going to keep agreeing with people like Brett. If you do not understand that children are just as capable of idiosyncratic behavior as individuals in any other age group, then your powers of observation are being limited either by choice or lack of adequate exposure the children's environments.
This is great info and a great post. The sad fact though is that many parents do not give the tools that the child needs. Any parent can only do their best, but not arming your child with the proper life tools is putting them at a disadvantage. Yes I know just because a child is taught things, doesn't mean they will do them....but a child that is never taught, has a major disadvantage. Plus if the parent never was taught then how could the parent teach.
As a parent my job is to teach and give the tools to my child to live a healthy and productive life. Saying teaching these things are easy, I feel is true but that is not the same as believing my child will always use what they were taught. My girls think college is just part of life and anything less than a masters isn't complete..... At 18 they could tell me to kiss off but at least they are valueing their eeducation and the odds of completing their master's is increased. All we can do is teach and lead, some kids do their own thing but many parents do not teach and those are the ones I take issue with. I find obese children a form of neglect but at the same time there is no answer...taking kids away is normally not the answer and each situation is unique. A child with medical or mental issues, a child that has 2 parents with different ideas of parenting.....so many factors and it is not always the parents fault but unfortunately many times it really is just because a parent is lazy.0 -
One of my daughters loved green beans. Then she started gagging and throwing them up on the table. The other one used to love shrimp. Then she started gagging and throwing them up on the table. I used to like pecans, now just the smell of them make me gag. So, please, tell me how any of those are because of poor indoctrination, poor parental education, or poor normalization of textures.
watch your kid literally gag and throw up cause of textures and LMK how it goes for you. My kids get plenty of healthy foods but I'm not gonna cry over letting them have chicken nuggets or pizza once or twice a week.I've never understood this constant claim that children are picky eaters.
....
I know how it went for me when I would act out like that, I'd be done with dinner that night, and can pick up again the next day in the morning with breakfast.
Thing is, the indoctrination started early, so traditional foods like kraut and liverwurst were there from day one, which taught me that the texture and flavor were normal. Although, if I remember correctly, my grandma DID put honey in my sauerkraut, just like she conned me into eating carrots by letting me dip them in a bowl of sugar. (That didn't last long, carrots are sweet enough.)
I realize this sounds like I'm trying to take a piss, but looking at my family and friends, I'm surely not unique. I'm just not sure where it all comes from. How much of what a child is willing to eat is parental education? If a child has had foods with differing textures normalized, then how does pickiness even have a chance of getting hold?
I wondered this when I saw a friend's daughter refuse to eat a piece of cooked shrimp, but was eating some foie gras I made.
Edited for poor iPad autocorrect.0 -
watch your kid literally gag and throw up cause of textures and LMK how it goes for you. My kids get plenty of healthy foods but I'm not gonna cry over letting them have chicken nuggets or pizza once or twice a week.I've never understood this constant claim that children are picky eaters.
....
I know how it went for me when I would act out like that, I'd be done with dinner that night, and can pick up again the next day in the morning with breakfast.
Thing is, the indoctrination started early, so traditional foods like kraut and liverwurst were there from day one, which taught me that the texture and flavor were normal. Although, if I remember correctly, my grandma DID put honey in my sauerkraut, just like she conned me into eating carrots by letting me dip them in a bowl of sugar. (That didn't last long, carrots are sweet enough.)
I realize this sounds like I'm trying to take a piss, but looking at my family and friends, I'm surely not unique. I'm just not sure where it all comes from. How much of what a child is willing to eat is parental education? If a child has had foods with differing textures normalized, then how does pickiness even have a chance of getting hold?
I wondered this when I saw a friend's daughter refuse to eat a piece of cooked shrimp, but was eating some foie gras I made.
My favorite food at age six was escargot, and I knew exactly what it was. At age eight I stopped eating veal when I found out what that was and my parents respected my decision. My gagging on sauerkraut was a reflex physiological response, no amount of indoctrination or exposure at any age would have changed it but because my parents did not understand why it was happening they tried to force the issue, it didn't work.
My brother can't stand soda because of the texture of the fizz, when he refused to eat something growing up it was 100% because something about the texture of the food upset him, that was a developmental issue and again had nothing to do with early exposure. My parents had both myself and my brother eating every form of food imaginable from the youngest age possible. There was very little food wise I would refuse to eat, my brother was much more difficult because of the texture issue. No matter how hard you try, no two children will be guaranteed to respond the same way, even when treated in the exact same manner.0 -
0 -
Food for thought:
My mother feed me well. Never bought soda for the house, EVER. Had vegetables and fruits every day growing up. For the most part cooked during my childhood. And yet in high school I was over weight. And had terrible eating habits.
Sooooo should I blame my momma because I couldn't get my **** together even as a teenager (still considered a child under the age of 18)
The answer to that is no.0 -
What I'm reading is a lot of excuses. "My parents weren't educated about nutrition" "Nobody knew any better"......... hmmmmmm with all of the resources available for free on the internet nowadays, although I know back in the day it was much harder to access information.... there really is no excuse other than poverty to not be educated and implementing proper nutrition into a child's lifestyle. I DO agree with other posters that this is not just a parenting problem, this is ALSO a problem with the capitalist system in general. For example:
It is NOT solely the parents fault, however........ the fact that parents on here believe they should have no responsibility and the responsibility should be on the innocent child have flawed logic it seems to me.
I don't think that kids should be put in foster care in the majority of cases IF the parents are willing to educate themselves or become educated.0 -
+10
-
Food for thought:
My mother feed me well. Never bought soda for the house, EVER. Had vegetables and fruits every day growing up. For the most part cooked during my childhood. And yet in high school I was over weight. And had terrible eating habits.
Sooooo should I blame my momma because I couldn't get my **** together even as a teenager (still considered a child under the age of 18)
The answer to that is no.
In the original post, I said that children who are older teenagers would be harder to blame the parents for because they are more independent and have more control over their eating choices, like at school or when away from home unsupervised for example.0 -
What I'm reading is a lot of excuses. "My parents weren't educated about nutrition" "Nobody knew any better"......... hmmmmmm with all of the resources available for free on the internet nowadays, although I know back in the day it was much harder to access information.... there really is no excuse other than poverty to not be educated and implementing proper nutrition into a child's lifestyle. I DO agree with other posters that this is not just a parenting problem, this is ALSO a problem with the capitalist system in general. For example:
It is NOT solely the parents fault, however........ the fact that parents on here believe they should have no responsibility and the responsibility should be on the innocent child have flawed logic it seems to me.
I don't think that kids should be put in foster care in the majority of cases IF the parents are willing to educate themselves or become educated.
That salad is probably only 100 calories. It would not provide the child with enough energy to function let alone protein, fat and carbohydrates, all needed for proper growth and brain function. The burger is actually the best choice here.0 -
Something like this makes the most sense. ^How about give them mandatory counseling, don't take the kids away.0 -
There is a girl I know who is 12 and is overweight. (She wears a ladies medium). I know she's had to go for walks to help her with her weight issue and to do other forms of exercise (She's told me about the walks she has to do and I went by the place where she lives once and saw her outside with a jump rope. Not that she really jumping at the time. Mostly playing with it.) Last Halloween she was not permitted to go trick-or-treating. However, she took her younger cousin out. At one point her cousin started to fall down stairs. She grabbed her, but in the process fell herself. As a "thank you" for saving her cousin, she was "rewarded" (I use that term lightly) with something like 3 boxes of chocolate bard and 2 boxes of bags of chips. WHAT??????!!!!!!!! That is NOT how you reward and overweight child for doing something!!!!!0
-
How is that a problem with the capitalist system itself? What economic system do you believe is best suited for food production?What I'm reading is a lot of excuses. "My parents weren't educated about nutrition" "Nobody knew any better"......... hmmmmmm with all of the resources available for free on the internet nowadays, although I know back in the day it was much harder to access information.... there really is no excuse other than poverty to not be educated and implementing proper nutrition into a child's lifestyle. I DO agree with other posters that this is not just a parenting problem, this is ALSO a problem with the capitalist system in general. For example:
It is NOT solely the parents fault, however........ the fact that parents on here believe they should have no responsibility and the responsibility should be on the innocent child have flawed logic it seems to me.
I don't think that kids should be put in foster care in the majority of cases IF the parents are willing to educate themselves or become educated.0 -
What I'm reading is a lot of excuses. "My parents weren't educated about nutrition" "Nobody knew any better"......... hmmmmmm with all of the resources available for free on the internet nowadays, although I know back in the day it was much harder to access information.... there really is no excuse other than poverty to not be educated and implementing proper nutrition into a child's lifestyle. I DO agree with other posters that this is not just a parenting problem, this is ALSO a problem with the capitalist system in general. For example:
It is NOT solely the parents fault, however........ the fact that parents on here believe they should have no responsibility and the responsibility should be on the innocent child have flawed logic it seems to me.
I don't think that kids should be put in foster care in the majority of cases IF the parents are willing to educate themselves or become educated.
Since no one has answered my question, I will ask you. In order to make people do something, there must be incentive or repercussions. What do YOU think we should do to hold parents accountable? Because if you can't hold them accountable, there is no deterrent for the behavior, ie speeding tickets deter speeding in some cases. Or at least they are meant to. Posting you poor opinion on a social site will not correct parenting or the government.0 -
I disagree with you on this, but that's just me. I don't think someone should have their kid taken away and put into foster care just because they're fat.
Yup. Things like how fat or skinny a child is just isn't as simple and black and white as it sounds... And ignorance of nutrition and excerise is not a good reason to make an already overwhelmed system that can't get children out in worse situation than "my parents feeds me too much mcdonald's because they don't know any better" even more so.
Does it suck? Sure... But most parents are ignorant of what to feed their kids or they just make up excuses... but it does not equal child abuse in my opinion.
Agree!0 -
What I'm reading is a lot of excuses. "My parents weren't educated about nutrition" "Nobody knew any better"......... hmmmmmm with all of the resources available for free on the internet nowadays, although I know back in the day it was much harder to access information.... there really is no excuse other than poverty to not be educated and implementing proper nutrition into a child's lifestyle. I DO agree with other posters that this is not just a parenting problem, this is ALSO a problem with the capitalist system in general. For example:
It is NOT solely the parents fault, however........ the fact that parents on here believe they should have no responsibility and the responsibility should be on the innocent child have flawed logic it seems to me.
I don't think that kids should be put in foster care in the majority of cases IF the parents are willing to educate themselves or become educated.
I never thought your Original Post was vindictive or ignorant, just poorly thought out.
Now I know you not only have no clue what you're talking about, but you're dead set on proving that fact.
You don't have kids. You don't know what it's like raising them. Your opinion counts for nothing.
You think overweight children should be taken from their homes and placed in foster care. Because you're young and you know very little about how the world works.
But mostly, you're just wrong.
I want to applaud and hug you at the same time.0 -
Brett, I almost never enter these types of threads, because the "myopia" is too strong and that is time could be spending watching paint dry or something. However, in this case as a non-parent who has worked with children, I'm chiming in to support you and the other parents trying to get through the perfect world fallacies and to reality.
The baseline assumption that children will behave in predictable and linear ways is false. Human behavior and cognition is not linear. We uncover patterns in human behavior through research and study. The path is not simply "introduce factor A and observe behavior B with not other conditioning." If this were the case every parent in this thread would be breaking out the champagne and celebrating having a household free of back talk, sibling rivalry, complaints, anger, sadness, teenaged angst and so forth.
Food is no different than any other stimulus in the real world. Children are exposed to it at home, at school, in the media and can be indirectly influenced by the opinions of others. As young as kindergarten/preschool, children are coming into contact with other people's eating habits, opinions and cultural expectations around food and eating. As soon as children have enough linguistic experience to differentiate positive and negative context in speech they are exposed to outside opinions about food through advertising. Refusing or fixating on particular food are idiosyncratic behaviors that parents may have to spend months or even years trying to correct or work around, because the source of the issue is not always related to immediate family or easy to identify.
If anyone is capable right now of explaining in detail how to account for each child's personality differences and their responses to parental influence and outside stimuli, you need to write the definitive book on parenting. Every parent, teacher, doctor, therapist and park ranger will buy it if it's published. Until that book is available on Amazon, I'm going to keep agreeing with people like Brett. If you do not understand that children are just as capable of idiosyncratic behavior as individuals in any other age group, then your powers of observation are being limited either by choice or lack of adequate exposure the children's environments.
This is great info and a great post. The sad fact though is that many parents do not give the tools that the child needs. Any parent can only do their best, but not arming your child with the proper life tools is putting them at a disadvantage. Yes I know just because a child is taught things, doesn't mean they will do them....but a child that is never taught, has a major disadvantage. Plus if the parent never was taught then how could the parent teach.
As a parent my job is to teach and give the tools to my child to live a healthy and productive life. Saying teaching these things are easy, I feel is true but that is not the same as believing my child will always use what they were taught. My girls think college is just part of life and anything less than a masters isn't complete..... At 18 they could tell me to kiss off but at least they are valueing their eeducation and the odds of completing their master's is increased. All we can do is teach and lead, some kids do their own thing but many parents do not teach and those are the ones I take issue with. I find obese children a form of neglect but at the same time there is no answer...taking kids away is normally not the answer and each situation is unique. A child with medical or mental issues, a child that has 2 parents with different ideas of parenting.....so many factors and it is not always the parents fault but unfortunately many times it really is just because a parent is lazy.
I 100 percent agree with the poster of this quote. Education is key......... it is true that you can "lead a horse to water but can't make them drink", however........ if all you provide is water then when the horse gets thirsty he has no choice but to drink it. Okay in literal language....... if you do not even start the child with the proper tools to eat healthy, then unhealthy eating habits are almost guaranteed to follow. Why set children up for failure? The world is a harsh enough place....... being oobese as a child myself...... and I'm not just talking about overweight, the pain and suffering was immense. I couldn't shop at "Limited Too" or other cute girly stores because the sizes ran too small.... I got made fun of...... my self esteem was inherently low because of my size... meanwhile I have my parents awarding me with ho-ho's, susie Q's, twinkies... and encouraging me to "finish my plate because of the starving kids in africa"........ how about teaching kids to sense when they are full and stop? What's so hard about that?0 -
Something like this makes the most sense. ^How about give them mandatory counseling, don't take the kids away.
And if that doesn't work? If the parents make no effort even with the given help to help their child?0 -
What I'm reading is a lot of excuses. "My parents weren't educated about nutrition" "Nobody knew any better"......... hmmmmmm with all of the resources available for free on the internet nowadays, although I know back in the day it was much harder to access information.... there really is no excuse other than poverty to not be educated and implementing proper nutrition into a child's lifestyle. I DO agree with other posters that this is not just a parenting problem, this is ALSO a problem with the capitalist system in general. For example:
It is NOT solely the parents fault, however........ the fact that parents on here believe they should have no responsibility and the responsibility should be on the innocent child have flawed logic it seems to me.
I don't think that kids should be put in foster care in the majority of cases IF the parents are willing to educate themselves or become educated.
I never thought your Original Post was vindictive or ignorant, just poorly thought out.
Now I know you not only have no clue what you're talking about, but you're dead set on proving that fact.
You don't have kids. You don't know what it's like raising them. Your opinion counts for nothing.
You think overweight children should be taken from their homes and placed in foster care. Because you're young and you know very little about how the world works.
But mostly, you're just wrong.
I'm not really sure where you are coming from? Why don't you go up to the local mcdonalds and compare the price of a single cheeseburger and a grilled chicken salad........ or heck even a grilled chicken sandwich? Compare the price of fresh vegetables at the market, with pre-packaged potato chips and you tell me which costs more? Until then I'm pretty sure you are ignorant and in the wrong.0 -
Our local county welfare office actually does come and teach nutrition to people in their home ( how to cook it food choices and how to get the most for their money) But i think you need to have a child endangerment case against you. Used to go to school with a woman who was on it and had to take meet mandatory0
This discussion has been closed.
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 391.6K Introduce Yourself
- 43.5K Getting Started
- 259.7K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.6K Food and Nutrition
- 47.3K Recipes
- 232.3K Fitness and Exercise
- 393 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.4K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 152.7K Motivation and Support
- 7.8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.3K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.3K MyFitnessPal Information
- 23 News and Announcements
- 937 Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.3K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions