Childhood Obesity= CHILD ABUSE

Wait a second? I'm to blame for my fat cat? What do you think I do, hold her down and shove kibble in her mouth?

You know when she got fat? When I took her in, spayed her and forced her into a sedentary indoor lifestyle. Lack of activity kills, but there is no way I could replicate the exercise she got outdoors.

Extremely simple solution. Feed the cat less food. If its fat, its overeating. As the one providing the food, yes, its absolutely on you.

I hoped the guy who was helping by pointing out irony yesterday would need to step in... Except. No.

OP must not have children. Otherwise she would not suggest having children taken from their family for being overweight.

She is just really pissed off at her parents. This isn't the first post like this.

Wait a second? I'm to blame for my fat cat? What do you think I do, hold her down and shove kibble in her mouth?

You know when she got fat? When I took her in, spayed her and forced her into a sedentary indoor lifestyle. Lack of activity kills, but there is no way I could replicate the exercise she got outdoors.

Extremely simple solution. Feed the cat less food. If its fat, its overeating. As the one providing the food, yes, its absolutely on you.

+1
There's a reason there are recommended amounts on the package. And if that's too much, decrease it. No offense, and kudos to you for taking her in and taking good care of her!. It's just that you can also help her to lose weight. :flowerforyou:

I have 4 children and I agree it is the parents responsibility to teach their children how to eat and to get them active. I also think schools fail them in the exercise. Gym is only 2 days a week and they only get one 15 minute recess daily. I think an hour of physical activity should be required every day of school.

I hate the misuse of the word "abuse"

it's like some people think that there are only two categories "good parenting" and "abuse" - i.e. more of the dichotomous thinking that seems to be so prevalent nowadays

parenting is on a scale, from excellent, to bad, with abuse at the very end of the bad end of the range. Most people who overfeed their kids are not being abusive, they;'re caring, attentive parents, who are giving their kids too much food, or not giving them enough opportunities to do physical activity. If those parents are going to be categorised as abusive, then what about the parents who don't check if their kids have done their homework, so the kid gets a detention the next day, or gets low grades when they should have got higher grades... is that abuse too? I mean seriously, I know you have to draw the line somewhere, but there's no such thing as a perfect parent (the scale I mentioned at the start of this paragraph starts at excellent) and some parents are better informed, better organised, better at guiding their kids and all that than others... but that doesn't make less good parents abusive.

To be honest I think it's insulting to people who have lived through child abuse for relatively trivial things to be classed as abuse. And yes I know childhood obesity itself is not a trivial issue, but overfeeding kids and failing to give them enough opportunities to do physical activity are not the result of parents not giving a damn about their kids or deliberately harming their kids. If anything, these mistakes come from love (too much food, well you feed kids because you don't want them to be hungry and you want to give them treats..... lack of opportunity to exercise, a lot of parents have exaggerated ideas about dangers to kids to they keep them indoors where it's safe, plus their kids want all this technology that keeps them on their backside staring at a screen, and they love their kids and want them to have nice things). They're actually quite common errors, and also bear in mind this is the inevitable result of modern society where we can get all the things we want delivered to our door and we don't actually have to do any physical activity any more... childhood obesity is part of a much wider social problem, in that we've become a society of lazy fat-arses. Even lots of people who don't look fat have too high a body fat percentage, so that comment about our society doesn't just apply to people who look obese - it applies to everyone who's sedentary no matter what actual size they are. Childhood obesity is because of this.

We live in a society where it takes effort to not be fat, and the sooner people accept that, the sooner they're going to start making that effort. And with kids the emphasis IMO should be on encouraging physical activity rather than trying to control what they eat, which can easily cause kids to have a bad relationship with food that makes obesity even harder to fight. Of course parents should provide healthy meals and limit high calorie snacks, but IMO the main emphasis needs to be on encouraging physical activity. And not just to stay thin because being sedentary is unhealthy for a whole lot of different reasons, not just increasing the risk of becoming obese.

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-25299764

In October 2012 the girl's weight rose to 10st 10lbs (67.5kg), but had fallen to 7st 7lbs (49kg) by August 2013 while she was in care.

This child was five.

Sometimes taking them away is the right decision and in this case she lost weigh - though at that weight she is still twice what she should weight.

While I doubt most cases are child abuse some are. And it's ridiculous to say otherwise.

It's not always the parents' fault... My daughter is 9 and loves to eat. She's been putting weight on over the last 6 months or so and is overweight. When we go shopping, I try to educate her about food and give her healthy alternatives to sweets and 'junk' food. I ensure she has fresh fruit and vegetables to snack on and encourage her to think about why she's eating (for instance, she'll say "I'm bored, can I have an ice cream?"). I tell her how the body works, that food is energy and if we don't use all the energy our bodies keep it as fat for another time. I don't restrict her from having treats, but they are just that, treats; not an everyday occurrence. However, she'll trade lunches with kids at school and will come home with chocolate wrappers in her pockets or if she has pocket money she'll go to the shops with her brothers and spend it all on crisps, fizzy drinks, sweets... I do my best to ensure that she gets a healthy, varied diet but I feel like she is sabotaging my efforts and ultimately herself. I don't want to make such a big deal of it that she develops an eating disorder or a dysfunctional relationship with food but I feel I can't just leave her to her own devices. I was a chubby teen and I was miserable. I believe I set a good example now with my eating habits and I get plenty of exercise and encourage her to do the same but I'm acutely aware that there's a fine line between encouraging someone to be healthy and forcing them into doing something they don't want and potentially causing a bigger problem further down the line.

I'm pretty stumped as to what to do...

P.S. My daughter may only be 9 1/2 but she is very forward and switched on, for those that may think she's unable to understand what I'm trying to teach her. She has started going through puberty already so I'm sure this is a contributing factor to her weight gain.

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm

read/watch these articles/reports

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdGYitGIIps

Answer one question for me: Do you have children?

That is irrelevant to the point OP is trying to make.

"You don't have kids, so your opinion is invalid" is a tired and flawed argument.

One of my all time favorite movies.

It's not my mother's fault I grew up fat. It's my fault, even as a child I manipulated my mother to buy my love with take out food and gifts by being an emotional little brat with daddy issues.

These kinds of things really undermine the phrase child abuse. Sort of like certain things in today's culture really undermine the word rape. Lets all just chalk it up and lose the weight.