http://www.komonews.com/news/national/200-pound-third-grader-taken-from-mother-134616468.html
What is this world coming to? This lady obviously loves her kid enough to feed him/her enough to be 200lbs. That's the way it is. I hope the people who decided to take this kid out of his niche get shot in the fuckin head.

This is a rough one...he seems to be a good, well-adjusted kid who gets good grades and stays out of trouble.

On the other hand...and I may be a bit extreme in this belief, I'll admit...I think allowing your child to be obese is tantamount to child abuse, for two reasons.

1. Whether we like it or not, or agree with it or not, in a world full of challenges being really obese just makes it harder. Our society does not view obese people very well...which is kind of funny, since we are just about the fattest country on earth.

2. Obesity is the number one cause of health problems and early death in our country. It might be "heart disease"...it might be "diabetes"...but the fact of the matter is that if you are obese, you are in trouble health wise for a ton of physiological and orthopedic problems.

If you are an adult, then I think you have the right to be obese and unhealthy...if you are a 12 year old that responsibility falls to your parents.

Assuming that is true...the next question is...

Is the kid better off in foster care than with his mom?

In my opinion that's the only question that really matters, and the only way I'd say "no" is if the mom acquiesces, and the kid loses about 80 pounds, and they get back together and do it right the second time around.

Would that happen? Will the kid being in foster care make that more likely? How much more likely?

These...are really, really tough questions. As a general rule I think kids are always better off with their parents, all other things being equal.

Fish on...

Todd

Actually, if the kid is that fat at 12, it IS the mother's fault. There are other options at the grocery store for the aware and health concious.

How do those people know that it wasn't something to do with the kids metabolism? There are a million reasons why he could have been overweight. Taking the kid out of the home for no reason other than being 200 lbs is a crime, I hope they get a stiff punishment. A year in jail sounds at least exactly right. I want to see what kind of diet they put him on and how much weight he actually loses. Not that I really care about this issue, it's just the fact that some state worker took it upon themselve to infringe on someone else's life like it was affecting their own. Now it's left to the state to make this kid lose x amount of pounds to be considered sane. Then when he grows up he's gonna say "Well when I was in third grade I was taken away from my mom cause I weighed 200 lbs. and I never saw her again". Abuse of power. I'ms sure he's no different then a sumo wrestler in Japan.

Keerist is there any dire thing that is not the fault of the Corporations?
Keerist. Politicians, lobbyists, food, poop, waste management.
divorce, and death. All corporate shenanigans.
Hell all this time I thought it was just life in general.

Tough call, but just maybe a wake up call for Mom. Letting a young kid weigh 200 pounds is either child abuse or no less than one rung below it. It's possible that there are causes other than eating too much, but I read that about 98% of overweight is caused by plain and simple overeating, along with too little exercise.

Illyrian,

Yes, damn near every dire thing is the fault of corporations for the simple reason that they will do anything, anything at all, to make money. Use chemicals? Sure! Unintended consequences - so what? As long as the corporation isn't held accountable or can get away with it, it's all good if it serves the bottom line. Greed is good! Didn't you watch Wall Street, the movie?

You are responsible for what your kid eats. Corporations should not lie, should not sell garbage, and should not market that garbage directly to children...but, as a parent, it's your job.

Fish on...

Todd

Sometimes the guardians of children are simply not competent and need to be called out. They may have judgment issues or financial issues that prevent them from properly caring for children.

I don't think anyone on this board could witness the mistreatment of a child and not do something about it.
The obesity case is the same an any other medical or abuse case in my opinion.

Ya know it's kinds sad. Man and woman have all the necessary
equipment to concieve a child and yet there is nothing other than
a brain, preferrably two to raise that child. I think perhaps the
school systems are missiing the boat in the basic education area.
No guarantee that old time Home Economics with a few add ons,
would work. But something is missing. Both sexes, btw, should
be required to take that bit of advanced Home Ec. Not talking
about pie recipes here.

Todd, are you a parent?

I have kids.

Feel free to take them any time you want.

Don't need to be a parent to comment on this.


Come on, the kid's in 3rd grade. He needs proper care and guidance from his guardians.


If they let it happen on their watch and don't take appropriate steps to mitigate and the child is a minor, they are liable, IMO.

It really gets tough when freedom of religion is tossed into the mix.
We have a group down here in Oregon City called "The Followers of Christ". They don't believe in medical intervention.
There have been some sad stories of children losing their lives to easily curable ailments.
The court cases go on for months/years.

I don't think you have to have kids of your own to make a judgment call on how poor of a parent you are if you let your child be obese...period.

The medical complications from it should be enough to call your judgment and parenting skills into question, not to mention the social stigma involved for an obese kid...

Little kids aren't born with food addictions, they don't buy their own food, and are not able to make those decisions for themselves...that's why they are called "children" and you, the parents, are called "adults".

Fish on...

Todd

How about the story from several years ago about the vegan hippies who had their child taken away from them because she was undernourished from mainly eating only lemon grass and tofu for three or four years?

Child abuse?

Fuckin-A-right it is.

This is no different.

Fish on...

Todd

I am a parent and try to make sure my daughter eats 3 healthy meals a day, while I admit I can't police everything she eats but if we limit the amount of junk snacks in the house it helps. I am no food Nazi as I like some oreo's or Cheeze Its every now and then but moderation works. To try and blame poor parenting on Corps is just ignorant.

I wasn't attempting to justify feeding a child into obesity,that would be a major problem if it was my family whatever the cause of it was. I don't think people that haven't raised children realize how they are bombarded with all sorts of advertising and peer pressure to eat the garbage that is passed off as food. It's a epic battle between the junk food pushers with their mega million dollar advertising and parents trying to keep their children on a healthy diet. Then there are the junk-food junkie parents that pass their eating disorders onto their children,no excuse for that.

Well maybe the parents shouldn't give into the peer pressure! I suppose you give your kid the Visa card anytime they ask to go to the mall as well.

The number one reason 60% of America is overweight and over 30% obese is people choose to remain uninformed about the consequences of thier eating habits. People, AuntyM comes to mind are looking for the silver bullet cure for an epidemic. The epidemic is lack of knowledge of information that is widely available to them. It is much more convieniant and socially acceptable to place blame on a single food or macro-nutrient then to change eating habits and create a healthy diet. A quick look back through the fat free 80's and low carb-90's shows us blaming one part of a diet is not solving our weight issue. Overweight and obesity numbers continue climbing every year and will continue to do so.

Did I say anything about what I do except for pointing out that if there was obesity in my family it would be a problem? You can suppose anything you want. I suppose your head is up your ass.

My head is no further up my ass than yours is if you think that choosing a proper diet is to hard of a task for a parent given all the other tough choices required with parenting. Maybe yank yours out and get a breath of air once in a while.

Way bigger contributing factors to obesity in kids is lack of exercise, too many video games, cell phones, ipads, lack of physical activity such as recess and pe, way too many kids in day care due to necessity of 2 working parents, crappy quality of food served at school for breakfast and lunch. AMs theory about corporate America is way down the list.

This is just a generalization, but it's one that is formed based on many, many years of being on this planet...you don't often see an obese kid with a skinny sister and two skinny parents...the family that eats together gets fat together, often.

Lack of education? Maybe. Compensating for something else in their life? Probably. Flat out don't care? Who knows?

I do know this, though...all of my friends who are in at least decent shape have kids that are at least in decent shape, too.

The obsegen concept is interesting...but it's even more interesting that if it's the cause of all the fat people in the USA, that it somehow manages to infect whole families, and not the whole family next door.

Fish on...

Todd

America doesn't have a weight problem, America has a lack of exercise problem.
When I was a younger athletic type, I could eat as much as I wanted, and never gain a pound.
Then I got older and stopped playing sports and my weight started to climb.
Long story short, so did my blood pressure, now through diet and exercise, I've lost most of it.
Kids today just sit on their butts way to much.

There's something to the info Aunty posted, which is why I included a short anti-corporation rant in my earlier post. However, the dominant cause of overweight and obesity in the US is overeating, followed by its associate, lack of exercise.

Unless you buy exclusively organic food, which is pretty hard to do and still have an interesting diet, you're going to regularly ingest some nasty chemicals, including the kind Aunty is describing. My kids had no weight problems, primarily because their parents were also thin due to high metabolism as young people. They also were fed as healthy a diet as we could provide. My house has never had much in the way of processed food beyond canned or frozen veggies, etc. No chips, no soda; my oldest daughter wouldn't drink a sip of coke the first few times she was exposed to it. They grew up drinking water, milk, and fruit juices (no sugar added). Advertising wasn't much of an issue as we had no TV in the house, which probably eliminated 90% of the junk in American life. I never bought them video games, but we had baseball gloves, basketballs, and tennis balls and rackets, and running shoes. From this horribly deprived childhood they became adults who still aren't overweight and still play organized sports.

It's not that corporations are totally to blame. The primary responsibility is with parents. But corporations don't make the job any easier, and they do deliberately make it harder because money is more important than America to them. Pretty simple.

Sg

Typo.


Nobody gets fat eating lettuce.

Sorry,I was a little harsh in that reply. Just pointing out what parents are up against in our product pushing society. Your comment on handing out the credit card pushed my hot button. I don't use credit cards and my kids hate the mall.

Is that really the best America can do? Take away a heavy kid and put him in a foster family. What's the states' excuse gonna be if the kid gets killed by his new dad? "Oh well we didn't know the dad was a psycho". Sorry Charlie, you're too fat to live with your parents. Unbeleivable. I can hardly believe tax dollars pay for that.

I could have chosen my words better as I was not trying to make a statement towards you but making just a general statement. I wish I could say the same thing about my daughter and the mall but she is learning that sometimes you can buy more with $50 dollars if you don't shop at the Gap or Buckle.

You tried eating kitty litter?

Genetics may play a much larger part in it then most of you think. When I was young I could run and almost never stop. Only two or three of my close freinds were in better shape then me. My two best freinds both weighed close to 60 pounds less then me growing up. The one in the best shape took each of us on bike trips to mount rainier park. He took the skinney freind on the first trip and it took 9 hours. Despite protests, he insisted it would take us longer. We made it in less than 4 hours up and then turned around and rode back. Despite running the rest of my freinds in to the ground, I was always heavy than them. My family just has weight problems.

On the flip side, my wife's family has always been fairly thin. My kids can out eat me and are the skinniest kids around, while I still stuggle with weight.

So many factors involved it's just ridiculous the state could justify what they did.

Something that pisses me off is these local news sites like KOMO putting up a snippet of some article that leaves out 90% of the info which really distorts the whole story. I'm not going to defend what happened one way or the other but there is a lot to consider that was left out of the originally posted article.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/28/an-obese-boy-is-placed-in-foster-care-can-it-help/

An honor roll kid being taken away from his endearing parents for being ovrweight. Completely ridiculous. That is homegrown terrorism.

You can just as easily call it "terrorism" as you can "child abuse"...

Fish on...

Todd

You know what sugar causes?

Cavities.

I'm betting a lawyer is going to make a bundle on this bungle. Kidnapped by the State for eating too much? Beautiful!

my nephew is 7 now and maybe 55 pounds...cant get him to eat anything but he eats...i think he is heathy but i dont think he eats super heathly...my sister doesnt eat much anymore either she had a surgery where they cut out 60% of her stomach...i think she lost 100 lbs...i know she watches what her son is eating but i think he will be just like his dad..his dad every once in a while will actually try to gain weight...some kids are just lucky they wont be fat

on the other hand he has a freind Kira who has decided on her own since she was 3 that she was going to be a vegitarian...i was surprised cause her parents eat meat...i think she is 8 now and still a vegitarian...her parents played along with it in the beggining ...i think they had to pay attention to what thier very heathy child was eating way more than any one of us would...hey she knows what she wants to eat...i was just surprised a kid that young would make a decision that has lasted this long..but they also take her to the doctors and make sure she is getting the right food

when i was younger i was in competitive swimming, and swam 7 hrs a day if i wasnt doing weight training...i could eat whatever i wanted and loved carbs...now i still love carbs but my problem is beer....my doc just cut me off hahahaha...sometimes i wish i had the cash to go to mexico and have the same surgery my sister had...but i just like beer too much

i think its sad that they are split up..but it may be for the best if the mother cant feed him correctly...she may be able to learn and get him back...either way it is a wake up call...maybe she wouldnt act on his weight issues or thought it wasnt that bad...thats not good