Overweight and obese children!!!

21June

Out of all people who are overweight/obese, it seems that there is a minority that are like that due to a medical condition and/or medication. What about the majority? Its not about judging people but its always easy to make excuses. I met a paediatrician the other day who said one can always use lack of time as an excuse!

I agree. It isn't about the minority who are obese due to no fault of their own. And believe me they are in the minority. The majority of overweight/obese kids got that way because the parents are most likely obese and were never taught the correct way to eat. Its gets me nuts when i hear a mother say the child is big boned. Had a co-worker who went through 2 pediatricians because her 6 year old 85 pound daughter was called obese by the doc and was told she needed to lose weight. The mother was offended. The next doc told her the same thing. So she left that one as well. The whole family was obese from the mother to the 16 year old. How do you educate that??

Well said and so very true!

roachhaley

My biggest issue is parents saying "oh, my kid WONT eat healthy food"..... um, you feed them healthy food, and if they dont like it, too bad. unless they have a medical issue with a certain food, they should be eating what you cook them. i don't have kids but i wouldn't give them a choice in the matter.

21June

My biggest issue is parents saying "oh, my kid WONT eat healthy food"..... um, you feed them healthy food, and if they dont like it, too bad. unless they have a medical issue with a certain food, they should be eating what you cook them. i don't have kids but i wouldn't give them a choice in the matter.

Here, here! Its also about portion size as well.

Guitarjon

I do believe that you shouldn't put your own ethics and morals on other people but sometimes you really do have to look twice to believe it.

I love teaching pe at school and I do better than the majority of the kids. In fact me and the year 6 teacher are going to start a running club next year. Don't know how much red tape we will need to get through yet though so its not set in stone. Running the school grounds woud be fun... Not

BlueJean4114

Again, i think one can and should teach proper nutrtion to their children, without criticizing the child!!! or ruining their self esteem!!! I think all children should be taught proper nutrition,
whether the child is thin or fat. I think this is an ongoing lesson, too, not a 'one-time mention and it's done' thing.
I think if one doesn't put fattening foods and junk foods in their home, it will be probably be easier to keep children eating healhty foods.
If there are no poptarts, sugar laden cereals, candy, ice creams, etc, in the house,
while the child is developing their taste buds and habits,
the kids think plums ARE candy. I know, cuz i did this, when i was raising my children. Just no junk, no colas, no crappy foods were in my house.

My kids are both fit and healthy, slender at age 30 and 35, one runs marathons, the other is an athletic vegan,
and both love fruits and veggies,
cuz that is what they grew up on.

If your fridge is only full of healthy fruits and veggies, when the chlid wanders into kitchen,
the parent does not have to worry about WHAT the child is eating. There just won't be any arguments about "No ice cream before dinner", cuz, there is no ice cream in there. My kids just didn't know any different, this was all they knew, from birth on.

AND there is no competition for the child's att'n or cravings. The child LEARNS to love fruits and veggies. It's hard for a 10 year old to want an apple,
if there are ice cream and junk foods and cookies also nearby.
Remove those type of items from the kitchen, and the apples will begin to become appealing to children, especially if the child is raised on those items, all along, from the get-go.

Teaching a child how to eat, what to eat, how much to eat, CAN be done without causing psychological damage.
Same as when we teach them how to use shampoo, or how to do their laundry,
it is not saying "you are filthy!"

---

it is saying "This is how we do it."
Do these same people think we should not teach children how to use shampoo or else, they will have self esteem issues about their hair?
Life skills are part of parenting, imo.

Thanks for your excellent contributions!

THANK YOU!! )

SonoraflowerKim

Again, i think one can and should teach proper nutrtion to their children, without criticizing the child!!! or ruining their self esteem!!! I think all children should be taught proper nutrition,
whether the child is thin or fat. I think this is an ongoing lesson, too, not a 'one-time mention and it's done' thing.
I think if one doesn't put fattening foods and junk foods in their home, it will be probably be easier to keep children eating healhty foods.
If there are no poptarts, sugar laden cereals, candy, ice creams, etc, in the house,
while the child is developing their taste buds and habits,
the kids think plums ARE candy. I know, cuz i did this, when i was raising my children. Just no junk, no colas, no crappy foods were in my house.

My kids are both fit and healthy, slender at age 30 and 35, one runs marathons, the other is an athletic vegan,
and both love fruits and veggies,
cuz that is what they grew up on.

If your fridge is only full of healthy fruits and veggies, when the chlid wanders into kitchen,
the parent does not have to worry about WHAT the child is eating. There just won't be any arguments about "No ice cream before dinner", cuz, there is no ice cream in there. My kids just didn't know any different, this was all they knew, from birth on.

AND there is no competition for the child's att'n or cravings. The child LEARNS to love fruits and veggies. It's hard for a 10 year old to want an apple,
if there are ice cream and junk foods and cookies also nearby.
Remove those type of items from the kitchen, and the apples will begin to become appealing to children, especially if the child is raised on those items, all along, from the get-go.

Teaching a child how to eat, what to eat, how much to eat, CAN be done without causing psychological damage.
Same as when we teach them how to use shampoo, or how to do their laundry,
it is not saying "you are filthy!"

---

it is saying "This is how we do it."
Do these same people think we should not teach children how to use shampoo or else, they will have self esteem issues about their hair?
Life skills are part of parenting, imo.

Thanks for your excellent contributions!

THANK YOU!! )

Well said and so right on.....Training is in everything we do with our children!

sammyjbray

My 14 yr old daughter is overweight- 5'9 and about 200lbs right now. We couldn't figure out what was going on- I need to lose weight but we don't have a lot of junk in our house and what junk we do have i keep in my room in a locked box because my daughter used to binge eat in the middle of the night (side affect of some meds she was on for ADHD). I would make and send my daughters lunch to school with her (school food here is crap), all stuff she likes but healthy foods. I found out in June that a friend of hers would bring in huge amount of candy and junk food every day (7-8 candy bags, bags of chips, 6 pack of soda etc) and share it with her friends. My daughter was eating 2 candy bars, drinking 2 sodas and eating handfuls of chips ALONG with her lunch every day. In the month and a half since I have found out my daughter has dropped 10lbs..... I feel like a complete failure as a parent for her being as big as she is yet there is really NOTHING I can do to keep her from eating all this junk her friend brings to school. BTW last Sept she was 5'7 and weighed 160. On the flip side of that my son is 8 yrs old 4'4 and 64lbs- which puts him right where he should be.

My daughter also doesn't get to sit in front of the tv or a computer all day- I make both of my kids spend as much time outside as the weather allows. I limit video games ta a few hours a week (usually only when we are in the car or after dark) there is NO tv allowed between 10Am and 8PM during summer time, she also doesn't have a cell phone to sit and text her friends all day long- she will sit and read outside or draw for hours if my attention is on something else and I don't catch her. She loves to walk to the library and does so several times a week as well as walks to the store if I need something (each only a 1/4 to 1/3 mile round trip), and will spend hours playing in the pool.

Not every child who is overweight or obese is the parents fault- I hate being overweight and have tried very hard to provide good, healthy food for my children. I know what it feels like to be "skinny" and what it feels like to be "fat" (I am at my heaviest ever yet when I was 17 I was only 125).

On the flip side of this coin I do know parents who feed their kids crap, an old neighbor has a child who is about 4 and weighs 140lbs- the mom and grandma are quite heavy (both over 350 and less than 5'4), so I do know why people get angry at the parents of kids who are overweight. All I am trying to say is to not judge the parents by the kids weight- there may be factors you don't know. Now kids with horrible manners... judge the parents (as long as it isn't the horrible teen years when kids to whatever they can to make their parents look bad).

I know how you feel. My 13yo daughter went to secondary school a healthy weight, then started piling on weight. We have discovered in the 2 years she has been there, she quite happily finishes her friends' lunches. So I feed her healthily here, send her to school with a packed lunch, and she still manages to find a way to sneak food and get bigger. She's 5'5 and 150lbs which isn't hideously overweight, but when you look at her siblings and what she used to be the difference really shows. My 12yo son is 5'3 and 80lbs, for example! It is so hard when they are not around to get them to make healthy decisions.

Do you know why she eats so much? If you can try and control it now before she gets bigger (actually I should say if your daughter can try and control it). Does she talk to you about her weight, if she is happy with it or not? Being overweight/obese is in your younger years would really hold you back in life.

She says its because she's hungry/bored/different to what we eat at home. I have tried reducing the boredom factor by constantly changing her packed lunch but she still does it. She has reached puberty, and her body is more that of an adult than a child, but she fas also managed to put on 40lb in just over a year. I think she just doesn't stop even when she is full.

AthenaErr

So last night I was out working in what turned out to be a food desert. I usually buy a sandwich when I am out working late. Going into local grocers I notice lots of folks queuing outside the chippy. Tuesday night - not really the night for a deep fried 'special' meal, I think. But 5 mins in the supermarket turns up nothing I can eat. Ready meals and packaged food only: biscuits. cereal sweets. So off I go to join chippy queue. Makes you realise how endemic the obesity situation is. Sure if I was home would ahve been able to cook something from what was available - but really in terms of healthy food I didnt see much available it was all macaroni cheese, pot noodles.

Made me think again how hard people have it in some areas to get basic good food rather than stuff that will just make you fat. ON the plus side saw loads of kids out on bikes, skateboard, plenty of walkers even groups of children playing games in some of the clu de sacs. Made me feel sad how underserved this community is foodwise.

suziecue66

http://drlutz.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/what-infants-teach-us-about-preventing.html
Worth a read:


"Back to those studies: Levine and colleagues put 16 non-obese young adults, aged 25-36, on an 8-weeks supervised diet which provided a daily excess of 1000 Kcal over what each individual needed for weight maintenance [2]. The participants had to maintain their usual level of exercise throughout the experiment. Physical activity and body composition were measured with the same gold standard methods, which the Eriksson group used on their infants. As a group, the participants of the overfeeding experiment stored 44% of the excess kcal as fat, and dissipated 53% through increased energy expenditure. 

But those average values over a group of people don't interest us here. What we want to know is how much difference was there between participants. Well, fat gain varied more than 10-fold from a minimal increase of 360 Grams to a whopping 4.23 kg. Think about this for a moment: you let 16 people gorge themselves on a daily excess of 1000 kcal for 8 weeks and what you get is one whose weight remains virtually the same, while another gains more than 9 pounds, and all the other 14 show up anywhere in between those two."

suziecue66

Okay... Coming from personal experience as a fat kid all of my siblings and my mom are skinny folk. I was always the odd ball out being the chubby baby, the fat kid, the obese teen, the morbidly obese adult. My mom put me on so many diets as a kid I remember say for bedtime snack the other kids would be eating chips and popcorn and there I was with my apple (they all should have had an apple in my opinion) even though they are skinny lol but for 2 reasons 1. its a healthier choice and 2. I hated being treated differently.

At dinner time they could eat as much as they wanted (within reason) and I had smaller portions (not so bad now that I am an adult and can look back) BUT at the time as a child I hated being the only one with an image problem.

I can recall a time when I was around 8 my mom caught me hitting myself over and over in the mirror and I was yelling at myself "I hate myself, why cant I be skinny" HOLY lol I havent thought about this memory in so many years I am tearing up writing this.

I worry for my daughter who is turning 4 this month she is an average child weight wise, but I don't want her to end up like me but at the same time I don't want to pass my weight issues onto her. She just needs to worry about being a little kid. I try to offer her healthy snacks but she does like her chocolate milk (wont drink white milk only in her cereal) but I am the parent and the final choice is mine what I put in front of her for dinner or lunches etc. I do the cooking not her (obviously) so I make the choice to cook say skinless/boneless chicken breast instead of a household fav growing up Shake n Bake chicken. I never understood a healthy portion of side dishes say rice because my mom would heap our plates full of it (probably because she was a single mom of 4) and it was a lot cheaper to feed us the side dishes than say the meat part of it. As I got older I saw how much my sister would dish out for rice and I remember thinking... WOW... You eat like a bird?? Is that even a normal amount? It turns out... IT IS!!!!

Bless my moms heart for all she tried to do for me as a kid and teenager (diets, diet pills, diet teas, monitoring portions when I was little, saying no to me even though the other kids got the go ahead) but as I got older she kind of stopped caring and said yes and dished me out the same amount as her (enough for probably 3 people) shes 95 pounds maybe 100 so she eats what she wants and as much as she wants now that I am an adult living on my own I make my own choices and no longer follow her foot steps.

Sorry its such a long reply but this post hits home because I was that overweight child so I know oh so well! lol.

I'm sorry if you've got upset by this debate. That was not the intention! I'm sure you're setting a good example to your daughter. You're on here, thats a start!

It shows some people fatten easily.

angeseabridge

I wish my parents had educated me in nutrition when I was a child. I wouldn't say I was fed rubbish food but from what I remember there was a fair bit of processed meals.. sausages, fish fingers that sort of thing but with veg. I used to go out to play all the time, computers weren't really around then! Sweets were a rare treat but I think once I turned teenager I wanted to be like my friends and that's probably when the junk crept in and the weight went up.

I don't ever remember my parents telling me what was healthy, why it was healthy, maybe they didn't know themselves, I've never asked them. I do remember them forcing me to stand on the scales in the living room, destroying what little self esteem I had at that time, for nothing, because there wasn't a positive outcome from it.

It wasn't until years later and probably only really now in my 30's that I've worked it all out. If I'm lucky to have children I won't let it be that long for them that's for sure!

suziecue66

Most parents do the best they can.

samandlucysmum

From what I see kids don't go out to play anymore, they don't run around, ride bikes etc. they are stuck in front of a telly or pc screen.

Agree with you, I have 6 kids, my youngest daughter who is 3 is the most active, the others spend their non school time on the pc, watching tv, or gaming, so this summer holiday I have made the rule that they come off after 2 hours for a hour, and jump around on the trampoline, or go to the park , it doesn't help that we live in a town with very little entertainment.
Times have changed, for the worse sometimes, I have even seen workout equipment being sold in childrens sizes and colours!!
It doesn't help that healthy food is more expensive than bad, fast food.

agriffiths73

She also said that her 4 year old has also already had four teeth fillings. ?

Wow!! that is terrible - sounds like she could do with a chat with her folks.....

But I can't bear to see overweight kids - it may also be one of those changes in our society, or perception of it. When I was a kid, my mum struggled to get me in the house at meal times, as I was always outside, kicking a football, riding my bike, or just running about with my fiends. My first trip to the dentist for a filling was in my teens....

suziecue66

From what I see kids don't go out to play anymore, they don't run around, ride bikes etc. they are stuck in front of a telly or pc screen.

Agree with you, I have 6 kids, my youngest daughter who is 3 is the most active, the others spend their non school time on the pc, watching tv, or gaming, so this summer holiday I have made the rule that they come off after 2 hours for a hour, and jump around on the trampoline, or go to the park , it doesn't help that we live in a town with very little entertainment.
Times have changed, for the worse sometimes, I have even seen workout equipment being sold in childrens sizes and colours!!
It doesn't help that healthy food is more expensive than bad, fast food.

Were you a fat kid?

camelgirlmn

A LOCK ON THE FRIDGE FOR AN 11 year old

No lock on the firdge in my house when I was a kid. If you wanted something you asked, if you were told no that was the end of it

Parents nowadays think there kids are special and need to be treated and waited on hand and foot.

In all fairness, spanking a child now a days is child abuse! Some children have issues that need to be address properly! FOr all anyone knoes this kid could have a eating disorder which is why the mom needs a lock on the fridge! But agreeing with what youre saying!

samandlucysmum

From what I see kids don't go out to play anymore, they don't run around, ride bikes etc. they are stuck in front of a telly or pc screen.

Agree with you, I have 6 kids, my youngest daughter who is 3 is the most active, the others spend their non school time on the pc, watching tv, or gaming, so this summer holiday I have made the rule that they come off after 2 hours for a hour, and jump around on the trampoline, or go to the park , it doesn't help that we live in a town with very little entertainment.
Times have changed, for the worse sometimes, I have even seen workout equipment being sold in childrens sizes and colours!!
It doesn't help that healthy food is more expensive than bad, fast food.

Were you a fat kid?

Nope, skinny til my mid teens, when the lure of the canteen chips and sausage rolls caused me to gain my weight, plus 8 pregnancies, and a total lack of self control and willpower, since joining MFP, I have learnt a lot about nutrition, and am passing it on to my kids so they have a better understanding of what food does to your body so they don't get to where I am now.

krystyleee

Most parents do the best they can.

Or what they were taught to do by their parents which may not always be the best thing.

krystyleee

I was never super over weight. I definitely wasn't the skinniest kid, but I was also far from the biggest kid. I am also VERY petite. I have really small feet hands, really skinny wrists, and I am only 5'2''. The women in my family were built small. However, I was always a little chubby and most of that was carried ni my tummy. I was never taught to eat healthy. I grew up in an italian family and for most of my life have had some type of pasta at least a few times a week. What was good for me was, my mom cooked frequently (so we weren't always going out to dinner, maybe twice a week if that, and I never started eating fast food hardly until I started working when I was 16). So at least I was getting home made meals and we didn't have the biggest portions. My mom usually just cooked enough for her and I. She would also always make veggies, and we always had fruit in the house. So I got my nutrients as well.

My boyfriend's sister is really overweight and she has 3 kids. One 10 year old girl who is also over weight, and two young boys one is almost three and the other is one. His sister was VERY thin when she was younger in highschool, and his other sister and two brothers (and him as well) are all a healthy weight. It is just the sister who makes poor choices. She gets her kids McDonalds all of the time, and every time I go there there is some type of cookies or candy or lollipops sitting out on the counter for the kids to just take whenever they want. It's sad. Her kids are precious, too, I just wonder about their health. I talk to my boyfriend about it all the time and we have already agreed we are not giving out kids fast food! Maybe a happy meal every ONCE in a VERY little while, but every day? I don't think so!

Raven413

I, too, see so many children who are overweight and/or obese and many times it is not b/c of health problems! Unfortunately, too many parents have forgotten that they are the parents and allow the children to rule the household. The children yell at them and tell them what they will and will not eat and the parents go along with it. HELLO...that IS NOT acceptable!!!! :mad: Stop trying to be their friends and be their parents! Help them to become responsible adults. They learn from the adults in their lives!!!!! Okay, I'll get off my soapbox and let it go. I've been an educator for over 30 years and I've seen too much of this role reversal stuff and I guess I'm just tired of it. Sorry!!!!