Is It a Crime to Raise a Morbidly Obese Child?
Meet Jerri Gray. On the surface, she’s just your average single mother. She works as much as she can to provide for her child, a boy named Alexander Draper. Sometimes, she works two or three jobs at a time in order to make ends meet. There are thousands of single moms out there just like her, doing the best they can to get by. But Jerri’s case is just a little different.
Alexander is an obese child. And by obese, I mean morbidly obese. At 14 years old, he weighed a whopping 555 pounds. Her excuse was that she had to work a lot in order to provide for him, which led to eating mostly fast food all the time. But does that explain or excuse her son being the size of a baby killer whale?
According to the South Carolina government, the answer was no. Alex was going to be forcibly removed from his mother. Her response was to become a fugitive. She fled to Maryland with her son, where she was eventually found, arrested, and charged with child neglect — a felony which could land her in prison for ten years. She was released on bail, and lost custody of her son.
After Alex was taken away from her he was placed with a family member. Since living with his aunt, he has lost 300 pounds.
Another mom, Jennifer, was recently on the Dr. Phil show with her four-year-old son, Grayson. He weighs 115 pounds. Jennifer admitted that she overfed him intentionally because it made her feel “nurturing.”
Parents like Jerri and Jennifer are hardly a rarity, as evidenced by the skyrocketing rates of childhood obesity across America and the world. And in response there are more and more calls for these children to be taken away from their parents, and for charges of child abuse or neglect to follow. But is this really a good idea? After all, having a fat kid has never before been a case of child abuse. But morbid obesity, such as the cases of Alex and Grayson, is different. These kids, and children like them, will suffer lifelong medical problems because of their obesity. So is it child abuse or not, and do their parents deserve to lose custody? According to both Jerri and Jennifer, their kids were fat, but not unhealthy. Is that true? How bad is it to be an overweight kid, anyways?
Cassy,
The notion of taking away obese kids is a slippery slope, that our leftist elites will use to further their power over parents. The ultimate goal of these leftists is to make the state more important in running children’s lives than their own parents (which is one reason why the left is so keen on out-of-wedlock births and single parent “alternate” families – it allows them more control, particularly due to financing these kids).
It will start with morbidly obese kids, and it will expand – to moderately obese, and then to “slightly” obese. – “Your kid is 10 lbs, overweight? That’s an early indication of trouble, we’ll have to take your kids away, for their own good.”
Your kid developed asthma? You’re not doing something right, we’ll have to take them away.
Your kid used a racial, ethnic or anti-gay slur? We can’t have a kid raised in such an evil, hateful, racist KKK rethuglican environment, we’ll have to take her away.
Start on this one, and it won’t stop until the state is raising all our kids in good leftist nurseries.
That’s exactly right. Your example of losing custody due to parental racism has, in fact, already happened in Canada. Some American pediatricians and most social workers would also say the presence of guns in the home constitutes child endangerment. Also swimming pools. Because once the government crosses the line, there is no end to being able to justify removing a child for “his own good.”
To say that these morbidly overweight children are victims of obvious child abuse and that their removal from the home by the state will continue to be very rare is to ignore history. Regulation of adult behavior started out with rare and obviously good ideas, like seat belt laws. Fast forward a couple of decades and now there are regulations against trans-fats.
While it is very sad to see cases like this, there are other ways to deal with this other than violating parental rights.
The problem is that parents are now so afraid of the boogie man that they won’t let them go outside, or ride their bikes all day long and go on unattended adventures.
When I was 8 (in the 1900s), I could go as far as my bike would take me, just so long as I was back before 6pm or the street lights came on (whichever came first). I didn’t tell anyone where my friends and I were going. We didn’t know. We just went where life took us. No one got fat pedaling around as much as we did.
No, kids get driven to school (no one did at my schools). They get driven to playdates (worst word ever). They get taken EVERYWHERE. Bring back bicycles and freedom and obesity will be greatly reduced.
Add to this: bring back daily school gym class from 6th grade up. We’d be a better society if we were all in the habit of daily physical activity as well as sitting or standing at our mostly-sedentary jobs.
Fairfax County, Virginia has a rule that all schools must offer at least 15 minutes of recess a day. And that’s what most of the schools offer and no more: both public and private schools. Oh, our kids’ school has 20 minutes, but by the time kids get outside, it’s more like 12.
There is so much control of their gym and recess time that they often only get a minute or two of actual exercise.(schools are more controlling of everything kids do nowdays) Whether it’s relay races, or duck duck goose, they’re taking turns at everything ( and standing around waiting for their turn). I teach and I see this all the time. When I was a kid we just invented our own games and ran around in the school yard (or in one school I attended- the closed street). All the teachers did was make sure no one was hurt and there were no fights..At the end of the day we ran around on the street until dinner and homework time. Todays kids sit in front of TVs and video games.I grew up in NYC one block from a major highway and didn’t know a single kid with asthma. Now they all seem to have it.
When you were a child rapists were put in jail, not in therapy. Child molesters didn’t survive jail, if they went. Some died by assisted suicide. My child attends a school on a street where children have been snatched, in separate instances. Now, I could get relaxed, and tell my child to walk home b/c he might be in that 99% that never have a problem. That one percent is still too high. That child is MY 100%.
There is a much lower percentage of people with small children about. There is a much lower percentage of social interlacing- I don’t know that the other mothers at the park will react the same way I do when there’s an issue with kids being kids- I know, in fact, that the women I talk to can talk to my kids, and the women I don’t know may call the police. I don’t think my children need to come home in a squad car, b/c there was a hard tackle in a pick-up football game. A real incident- btw- a mom decided to come out the last day of school, to bond with her son. Her son joined the semester long pick- up football game, an didn’t like how hard he was tackled. She called the police. The other mothers thought she was insane, but the police had to act like she actually had a point. Her kid had never played before, and, well, nobody let him play after that, either. I got to watch- a semester’s worth of good will between the project kids, and the apartment kids, and the house kids, their mothers and fathers- even sometimes teachers- sitting on picnic tables to watch- done in by a cry-baby and a psycho mom. Kids who had been coached by the various dads on days off- a pastor, a banker, a delivery route driver, a clerk at a convenience store, a baker- men getting to be men with their sons- moms refereeing on days dads weren’t there- and there were usually dads b/c there were unemployed fathers who finally were getting to be men to their boys- done in by a police complaint by an outsider.
“That child is MY 100%.”
Please don’t misread my observation as judgment, but I’ve noticed the rise in overprotectiveness correlates with the rise of women having 1 child in middle-age instead of having 3-4-more starting in their early 20s. My grandparents all came from families of 6-11 children, and they were out working with farm equipment by age 6…
The childhood obesity epidemic is just a symptom of a greater social malady – the deconstruction of our public schools from education centers to socialist-union indoctrination centers.
As the leftists seized control of the schools, education assets were diverted from teaching to union thug bureaucracy. Teacher standards fell, traditional common sense curricula disappeared, and we now find ourselves with kids who ‘graduate’ completely unable to take care of themselves but are a perfectly primed dependency class voting block.
IDIOCRACY ALERT!!!!
“Many of these families come from low-income backgrounds, and don’t know a better way to feed their children than cheap, high-fat, and high-calorie foods.”
What does “low-come background” have to do with it? You’d have to be from Mars or living in the late Bin Laden’s former cave NOT to know high-fat fast food isn’t “good” for you or your chunky progeny. And I’m sick of hearing junk food’s “cheap” too…10 ounce bag of Cheese Doodles (which I like): $3.99 ($6.38/pound); 5 pound bag of red delicious apples: $2.89 ($0.58/pound). Now grab an apple, wash off those nasty pesticides & stop giving the lazy more excuses to fail.
Your EBT swipes just as easily with broccoli as Doritos. Start there, and leave those of us who pay for our own groceries alone.
Most people don’t understand unless they have had to use EBT programs from the state, that in most cases they amount you receive for a whole month for a family of 4 is equal to what most families spend in 1-2 weeks. I worked full-time at my job and by the time I paid rent, utilities, insurance, gas for getting to work and picking up the children, and childcare my pay check was gone and the only food budget was the $238 deemed enough to supplement my income. Now if you are only able to find employment that might pay you about $50 more than your expenses how does that amount supplement your budget? You are budgeting that for the month of food. The price of a pound of 80/20 hamburger meat is around $2.00 to $2.50 while the price for skinless chicken equals $3.50 to $5.00 per pound. Chicken is the healthiest choice but trying to buy enough for one meal is going to cost you around $10-15 and you can stretch the one pound of hamburger meat to feed the family of four at that meal. Sometimes you just don’t have much choice in what you are able to afford.
Which meat is healthier is debatable (I’m a meat eater, so this isn’t ‘all meat is bad!’). Regardless of that though, if you by the 80/20 hamburger and then serve it as spaghetti or lasagna or enchiladas (my mom was a fan of 1-2 pan meals), or even grill up burgers, you’re doing two very important things- a) your probably controlling portions, and pairing with vegetables (or baked fries, or possibly chips- but still with fewer calories than you get in fast food), and b) you’re cooking at home and directly (if unconsciously) teaching healthier habits along with home ec.
Is occasional fast food ok? I’d say yes. But it’s important to show cooking at home, and it’s usually (not always) less expensive per serving- especially when cooking for a larger group. So- don’t worry about the details of who thinks what food is the best- so long as you have plenty of veggies, some fruit, and avoid a lot of processed stuff, you’re probably fine. Be proud you’re cooking at home though.
Those children are the property of the State!
“After Alex was taken away from her he was placed with a family member. Since living with his aunt, he has lost 300 pounds.”
That proves that when the child was placed on a proper diet, he lost weight very quickly. It also proves how abused this kid was. The child also probably would have died an early death had he stayed with his mother. Then the mother would have been charged with at least manslaughter, rather than child neglect. The only problem to watch out for here is who determines what the “proper” weight is? And how far do you stray from that “ideal” weight before you land in jail? Is it 10 pounds, 20 pounds, 30 pounds? Are we going to have to now create a “weight police?” I’m sure Michelle Obama would go for that. This may have been an extreme case and it was right for the state to step in to save the child’s life. But do we really want to go down the road of the “weight police?”
You sum it up well. The kid in question was in mortal danger. I think we’d all agree that if the mother was feeding crack to the kid, he should be taken. How many Big Macs are too many? I’d argue that enough to put the kid at 500 pounds is too much.
But where do we draw the line? And who draws it? The government certainly isn’t trustworthy.
He does not sum it up well.
The Draper kid’s mom was working two or three jobs, making money. Gone a lot, so she gave the kid money to eat out – the story says “fast food”, not “junk food”. McDonald’s doesn’t take food stamps.
This was benign neglect. Yes, she should have cut back on his meal money, BUT IT’S NOT OUR BUSINESS. (Every family is dysfunctional in its way, even yours.)
The idea that giving your chubby kid a kiss and a twenty when you rush off to work is like feeding him crack is stupid.
Is it possible that because the mother was having to work 3 or 4 jobs at a time to provide that the child stayed at home and ate all day due to loneliness? Alex may have been depressed and used food as comfort. In the Aunt’s house is not known if there was an adult that provided set meal and snack times. We also don’t know if the aunt was a stay at home “mother” and was able to provide the nurturing Alex needed and had before tried to compensate for with food and t.v.
Good points, Amanda – lots of stuff we don’t know. The kid’s smiling in the picture, and maybe the aunt motivated him by saying he wouldn’t get to live with mom again till he lost weight.
The kid’s age is also significant. I had a neighbor who was a tubby little guy – he just ate and ate. But when he hit puberty and got interested in girls, he didn’t like the way they weren’t interested in him! He started dieting and got a growth spurt at the same time. Two years later he was a tall, lean Don Juan.
Is it is a little scary to think that someone from the government, a do-gooder social worker, would have the power to take someone’s overweight kid from the home. However, there are a lot of steps in between that can be taken. Let’s face it: children don’t do the grocery shopping. It IS the fault of parents who let their children balloon up to the size of Jaba the Hut by the time they start school. It IS within the power of those same parents to change things. If the government or social workers poke their nose into the tent, the family should first be provided with guidance on nutrition and proper serving sizes, as well as goals that must be met. If the family receives government assistance or food stamps, it makes it even easier: disallow ALL of the snack foods that lead to obesity. Parents have to take responsibility for their morbidly overweight children. If they can’t or won’t do that, it is right and proper for the government to intercede on behalf of the child.
Sandra, your first sentence is on the money – the rest, not so much.
Look, consider what a new problem obesity is. Before the Second Agricultural Revolution (brought on by the development of fertilizers and pesticides in the 1950s), the huge problem with food was how to get enough of it to survive. For just a few generations the problem has been how not to eat too much.
Government, and especially Democrats, have made the problem worse. With our great abundance of food, prices have fallen – so fast that farmers scream at politicians. So we get price supports for Archer Daniels Midland and the boys, ethanol that keeps corn expensive enough to keep Central Americans skinny, and food stamps, food stamps, food stamps.
Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” program is pathetic – bully some restaurant chains and pretend to have an organic garden. It’s just politicians stepping in to make hay while “solving” a problem they helped to create.
Humans only learn parenting from their parents. This is a new problem that will work itself out AMONG FAMILIES, and that’s going to take time. Government should be encouraged to stand back and shut up.
Oh, your foodstamp idea: “If the family receives government assistance or food stamps, it makes it even easier: disallow ALL of the snack foods that lead to obesity.” How will that work, hire bureaucrats to follow them around? The government would like that. Why not just have six-month check-up for food stamp recipients? If you or anybody in your family is overweight, no food stamps for six months. The indignity would be a good thing.
Unlike food stamps which is based on a dollar amount, the WIC (Woman Infants and Children) program is based on food items. Ex X many ounces of juice, x many oz of milk, x many oz cereal etc. Food stamps should give out # of oz of nutritious foods instead of just a dollar amount of food. Also vegetable based meals are healthful and often less expensive so beans and lintels should be included.
These people are quick to blame the parents and want to treat them as criminals, and take the kids away from the parents, but if it’s high-carb, processed foods that are the problem, why not treat that as the perpetrator and go after the companies that are pushing those foods into the market, just the same? Why not criminalize that as well as parents who let their kids have that food?
But I really get tired of people who see something they don’t like and want to make it a crime. Some would be appalled if they saw kids riding bikes without helmets… so charge the parents with a crime. Those kids shouldn’t be climbing that tree; it’s dangerous! Charge the parents with child endangerment. Those kids are shooting their Red Rider Carbine Action 200 Shot Range Model Air Rifle in their back yard without adult supervision! That kid might shoot his eye out! Put that child in protective custody!
We’ll let Sandra lead the charge. She thinks it’s “right and proper for the government to intercede on behalf of the child.”
but if it’s high-carb, processed foods that are the problem, why not treat that as the perpetrator and go after the companies that are pushing those foods into the market, just the same?
Possibly because millions of people who enjoy eating those foods who don’t weigh 455 pounds have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
I don’t disagree with you Heather. I’m not suggesting that we have the government go after the companies that produce products that we want to by. I guess I was going after some sort of juxtaposition to think about.
Any you make a perfectly good point. People are in charge of making their own choices and the government doesn’t have any place in making those choices for us. So if they should leave the companies alone, then so should they leave parents and individuals alone. The child isn’t owned by the state, nor should it be raised by the state. If the parents bring a child into this world and then proceed to let that kid get morbidly obese, well that’s their problem. If concerned family, friends and neighbors want to intervene to help, that’s one thing. But letting your child get fat, even if it’s really fat, by being a permissive parent, shouldn’t be a crime. I didn’t hear that this kid was being force fed, and I didn’t hear that by this kid being able to eat and get fat, was he causing injury to others and violating their rights?
So the solution to this is to give them more social programs?
Funny.
THX 1138 is the answer, yes liberals?
The fact of the matter is that the Marxist Gramscian attack plan against the family, education, religion, and every other basic building block of our “bourgeois societies” in the West and here in the U.S. has almost entirely succeeded in destroying or warping the entire traditional support structure—family—school–church–that used to inculcate and reinforce the basic morality and values of our society and the American creed and consensus, that gave us social cohesion, and that turned out reasonably sane, civilized, disciplined, and well educated children–all working from the same shared knowledge base–who became, in turn, effective citizens.
One of the main aims of Gramsci’s plan of attack was to destroy that social cohesion that resulted from our common American viewpoint, moral consensus, and purpose, and to sow confusion and doubt, to Balkinize, divide, and pit individuals and groups against each other, all to deliberately weaken, handicap, and disarm those future citizens, so that subversion against and an ultimate takeover by the Left of our bourgeois societies would be much more easily accomplished.
The entire structure—the foundation, main beams, and reinforcing elements of that old world in which you could reasonably and safely let your kid play outside in the neighborhood until dark, in which most parents had a good idea of how to raise a child and did so, in which the vast majority of parents agreed on certain moral values, and certain things as being normal, reasonable, and good, is gone; deliberately undermined, destroyed, weakened, or so warped that it is hardly recognizable.
The pathology that resulted in these 500 plus pound kids is part and parcel of that warping.
I do think that feeding these kids so much junk food shows that the parents involved are incompetent, but I am reluctant to suggest any treatment that gives the State more power—for, after all, the whole aim of Gramsci’s attack plan was to ultimately give a state, subverted and taken over by the Left, dictatorial power.
Excellent point(s) Seth!
Uh, “cooking classes, nutritionists, and personal trainers,”…Really?! Why don’t people take responsibility for their own damn lives, why should we have to pay for it? I’m sick to death of people wanting the “state” to take care of their problems. Also, I’m sick of hearing about ‘children who go to bed hungry at night.’ Everybody knows that the ‘poor people’ are the fat people…they get free breakfasts, free lunches and food stamps. If they are going hungry, it’s because Mom is selling her food stamps to the crack man. I am so done with this. I do NOT CARE ANYMORE.
Intelligent comment, thanks Seth. Cultural Marxism has many tentacles.
The idea that ‘processed’ or ‘junk’ food makes fat is religious leftie foodie rubbish. That kind of food is not unhealthy (there is better, but it will feed you) and it’s perfectly easy to get enormous on a ‘wholesome gourmet diet’.
What makes fat is the amount eaten, and also how much trivial exercise is taken, not only sport but also doing chores, walking etc.
Regards the ‘feeder’ mom, she has a mental health problem that she is taking out on her kid. I’d say kid should be removed until mom is fixed and kid has a saner eating culture, it should not take too long and once that is sorted, they should be reunited as a family. Frankly if the shrinks can’t fix that one, perhaps we should sack the lot and save serious money…
I agree with removing the kids from the Scottish couple, but not with that they have lost them permanently –it’s not a crime to be somewhat bonkers, and sometimes people do annoying, somewhat harmful (but not evil) things that need to be dealt with, but not that the price of vengefully destroying their entire lives irretrievably with our ‘help’.
Good point about processed food. Last month Rush was talking about a nutritionist who lost weight on a diet of nothing but Hostess Twinkies – all he did was watch the calories.
And a Big Mac’s not so bad – the patties are thin and it’s got fresh lettuce and tomato.
Nutritional science is hardly “settled”. We don’t need the government sending us to reeducation camp on this.
And yeah, the mom with the obese 4-year-old takes the cake here. But she’ll pay for her mistake without the government’s help. (It’s just not our BUSINESS. Look, if a kid runs into a crowded street and gets hit by a bus, should the cops run to his home and breathalyze his mom? Is that what police are for?)
The Brit government’s mad. Let them send fat little Scots to Libya for the Lockerbie diet.
WTF? Who gave the State the “right to own, move, dispose of” people in the first place? Why is this even a topic of discussion?
If I, the citizen X, don’t have the right to take your child away from you, the citizen Y, nor citizen Y have the right to dispose of the lives of citizen Z‘s children; therefore:
you can’t give to the State “rights” you yourself don’t possess.
Remember that thing about “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”.
You are right the state never had ability to move people without their consent. Except for the power of eminent domain, zoning laws, voluntary draft, Indian displacement, Japanese internment, general incarceration, sex offender laws, and probably countless others that I failed to mention. All of these instances have surely come before the Supreme Court in one way or another, so they were deemed constitutional. Meaning your intellengent comment is actually stupid, something that seems pretty common when teaparty types educate themselves about history, economics, policy and the constitution.
You’re the only one not-really showing a intelligent comment here, for you start first twisting my discusion about RIGHTS in order to make a rant about ABILITY.
There are -of course- countless examples of ability of State to kill people, to persecute minorities, to commit genocide.. now answer if the State have the RIGHT to do that, and explain why you choose that answer.
My position, here for everyone to see, is that the State don’t have such a right, since every single citizen doesn’t have it either.
I liked your original comment, X – a cry from the heart against totalitarianism. What next, loading Chechens onto freight cars and shipping them to Siberia?
But get a load of this Notreally guy: “Except for the power of eminent domain, zoning laws, voluntary draft, Indian displacement, Japanese internment, general incarceration, sex offender laws…”
What a list! Is he proud of FDR for interning the Japanese? Or is he ashamed when pedophiles get their wrists slapped? Does he admire the leftists on the Supreme Court for Kelo? Does he encourage his neighbors to park junk cars next to his property?
He’s too confused to have a computer. A social worker should come and take custody of it – unless he voluntarily drafts himself first.
As I see it, the government has allowed gang warfare and drug pushers and sexual predators onto the streets where our children once played after school and on weekends. It is no longer safe for our kids to run off the calories they consume sitting in front of a television or a computer. Yet, this boy who weighs 555 pounds has bigger problems than simply hiding from danger, eh? Instead of attacking this boys mother, maybe the state needs to take responsibility for engineering the response to the lack of application of criminal law.
Very true.
Respectfully, it’s not true. At least, not in the entirety. There are some problems, yes, but the majority of towns in the US are still safe. We’ve let ourselves be scared into thinking them dangerous havens of drugs, gangs and child molesters. All of these things do exist, but not to the degree the media has portrayed and parents have reacted. Most drug criminals don’t want to go to jail and keep away from family areas, especially in the after school hours- gang members are the same. Molesters are an unfortunate, aberrant example, but also an extremely minor risk. In most places it’s still completely safe to let your kids go to the local park or playground on their own. And if you have worries- go with them! Heck, adults need to get out too, and you can socialize with other parents and get your own fresh air (I won’t even get into parent led activities like anything to do with a ball game in a park, nature walks/hikes, finding a Y or boys and girls club, or a local youth center with lots of activities and sports). And while it’s not a solution for everyone- especially in urban areas- there are such things as back yards- throw your kid outside with a ball. He or she might mope for a while, but eventually they’ll figure out a way to entertain themselves.
Too many people are letting fears, justified or not, keep them wrapped up at home. If you feel comfortable taking the dog for a walk, or walking with your friend after dinner, then your kids are likely to be fine. If you can’t let them outside to play, how can you let them- when older- drive to an after school job, or go out for pizza with friends on a Friday night? Go to their highschool ball games? There is more potential for trouble there- where they might actually seek out experiences (teens being occasionally hormonally-stupid and all). Will you let them out of the house then?
You start with basic stupid…..it will manifest itself in any number of ways. Overfeeding the kids is a symptom of Basic Stupid, which is what is taught in most government schools. Aren’t unintended consequences wonderful?
And isn’t it interesting that “unintended consequences” actually was not a useful phrase in These United States of America until about 20 years ago or so? Before that, most folks had enough common sense not to embarrass themselves by identifying Their Stupid Harvest as “unintended consequences.” But hey, there’s a bright side! It establishes and grows a whole new industry, which leads to demands for infrastructure and new taxes, and provides job opportunities for more of those afflicted with Basic Stupid: Victimohood!
No, Emma. Widespread obesity is a NEW problem, brought on first by the marvelous prosperity that free markets have yielded in America, and by the 2nd Agricultural Revolution in the 1950s. (Kids eating too much just was not a problem when FDR was king.)
Sorry, but you sound like a Democrat, calling people stupid. 150 million Americans have above-average intelligence, you know. (And I’d much rather be represented by a Senator with a 100 IQ who tries hard to follow the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule than a 150 IQ Senator who thinks it’s a dog-eat-dog world.)
I agree with you about public schools producing victims, though.
Whatever the reasoning behind regulation, regulation must never be written by bureaucrats accountable to no one, nor should we ever allow bureaucrats to have discretion about what constitutes a violation. Rather, let the regulations be written by the legislature and their enforcement be subject to contest in court.
Yes, mythbuster, bureaucrats are accountable to nobody, and it would be nice if elected legislators wrote all regs.
But elected legislators don’t even write their own laws any more. Orrin Hatch is the supposed “architect” of the DREAM Act, but you know he delegated its thousands of pages to his own bloated staff and committee staff. Hatch will never even read it. And if we manage to toss Hatch (not this time, it seems), the staff that wrote the pig will just seek employment with his successor or elsewhere on Capitol Hill.
It shouldn’t be that people not from Utah have to pay for the staff of Utah reps. But that’s how all these Congresspeople have rigged it. And for that matter, the Utah legislature should decide how much Utah will pay its U.S. Senators, not the Senators themselves!
Plus, most of these clowns have “safe seats”, so they aren’t very accountable at all.
Logically, I am against removing children from a parent’s custody unless there is some serious abuse going on, but on gut level, when I see toddlers that are as wide as they are tall, waddling behind their parents at the store, I want to punch the crap out of the parents and throw them off a cliff.
A poor diet and lack of exercise will, obviously, lead to weight gain… in anyone. But I’m sorry, it takes more than the availability of McDonalds to make a toddler morbidly obese. There is something seriously wrong happening there.
Most people don’t realize that almost any law or public policy put into place can become lethal. Let’s say a parent is in danger of losing their precious child. The state’s social worker with the police comes to retrieve the child. If the parents refuse, they are arrested, if they resist, they could be beat up, or shot in the calamity. Next time a law comes up for a vote, we should be asking the politicians, “Is this law or policy worth killing someone if they refuse to comply?”
“Many of these families come from low-income backgrounds, and don’t know a better way to feed their children than cheap, high-fat, and high-calorie foods. Give them cooking classes, get them a nutritionist and a physical trainer.”
You have to be a total moron not to know that candy bars and fast food aren’t the way to go. Being low incom does not mean you are dumb and can’t read. People were a lot more poor during the Depression and we did not have nationwide obesity at that time.
Being fat is caused by two things: eating too much and lack of exercise. Why should we pay for cooking classes for these lazy people?
I heard that sex education would solve the teenage pregnancy problem. Has it? Teen pregnancy has skyrocketed over the past several years.
One way to reduce obesity is to deny welfare benefits and other benefits to fatties.
Funny and true, especially the sex-ed bit. Thanks.
The point was not that I think that’s what should happen, but that why is the government’s first instinct to take the kid away? If the government’s going to get involved then why are they not trying to help the parents, instead of stealing their children? It doesn’t seem to me that the best interests of the family are at heart, because if they were, these bureaucrats would be trying to find a way to solve the problem for the family and not break the family up. But broken family = more dependence on government.
Unless the food is actively toxic (which they aren’t) or you’re allergic to it, no food from a grocery store is “bad” for you. It’s simply a matter of amount, volume and taste. While the strict 3500 calorie = 1 pound of fat thing is mostly wrong, there’s some truth to it.
You can survive very well on a diet of nothing but McDonald’s. You can actually even lose a lot of weight. Or you can stuff yourself silly and get really fat. It’s your choice, as an adult.
When it comes to kids, there’s a lot of really, really sticky issues about parental rights and responsibilities. I think, since the Nannies are headed that way, that maybe heading them off at the pass would be easier. Set a requirement, to even approve an abuse investigation, that the child must be 200% above age & sex adjusted median weight. So if the median weight for a boy at 15 is 150, then the kid has to be at 450, for instance. *And* they have to prove the child lacks a medical condition that would cause that naturally. (There are some freaky ones)
While not perfect, that idea might head them off at the pass, since they definitely want to slowly make it so even a 25 BMI would be grounds for an investigation.
Your comments about food are wise, Reverend. Your comments about “heading them off”, not so much.
What once was handled by families with the help of church and community has been snatched by government. It used to be a law against urinating on the street was completely unnecessary.
You can’t compromise with totalitarians – they’ll just be back next year to get what they didn’t get this time. 25 BMI will turn to 15 and then to 5, as new bureaucrats who want to “change the world” rise in the ranks.
Just say no.
YOu can’r slowly kill your child by putting cianide in their food over time. THAT level of obesity is killing them just as surely. Those kids acan barely even walk! Of course they should be taken away. You could say taking away kids who are beaten bloody is a slippery slope, too, because they might start taking kids from parents who spank. But any reasonable person knows the differnce, and thus far so does the gov’t.
Parental rights don’t trump the life of the child, to live. Easy peasy.
Peasy schmeasy, momof4. Poisoning your kid with cianide is premeditated murder. Giving him an extra helping of mashed potatoes when his eyes plead for it is not.
If your four kids aren’t obese, good for you. You have common sense. And go ahead and spank them, it’s not our business.
You may disapprove of this woman who works three jobs, but maybe she felt bad about leaving him alone, so she gave him a kiss and a twenty when she rushed off to work every morning. Not smart, but NOT OUR BUSINESS.
Personally, I think the parents of these kids suffer from a mental disorder somewhat akin to munchausen by proxy. They are getting something mentally from making their kids THAT fat. And mentally disordered people should not be raising kids.
All mobidly obese people have enablers. Too many reality shows that have proven this to be true. This has been profiled on every talk show starting with babies to rotund to walk. Then moved on to the reality shows. the beginning of the fat high profile movement was to prove that being fat was a medical disease so insurance would pay for fat treatment. Munchausen is a good bet here and heavy on the “munch”. Bet she gets food stamps too.
I don’t doubt that this Mom truly loved the portly boy. I think a little “King Solomon” might have been the key to this wrenching drama. Send a social worker over to dear old Mom and tell her either the boy loses weight or we cut him in two. if after a month no weight loss is seen, then take the kid away from her. I doubt putting Mom in jail will help either of them. MJB
Sorry, but thumbs down on this blog post, Ms. Fiano. You sound establishment Republican to me.
Offensive bits:
“But what about parents who smoke? Their children are at risk.” Really? Most of the Baby-Boomers’ parents smoked – and the only problem with the Boomers is that they live too long and whine too much.
“Ron Jones, a wellness expert based out of Atlanta, has strong opinions on this topic.” A “wellness expert”? Sounds like an advocate of partial-birth abortion to me.
I’ll believe the government is worried about kids when they shut down the abortion mills. The truth is it’s just nosy nannyism to make more bureaucrat jobs and seize more power.
Still, it’s an interesting topic – thanks for bringing it up.
To claim that secondhand smoke is not harmful is just ignorant. Regardless, the point I was making was not that just because you smoke your children should be taken away. It was the exact opposite, actually — that if overweight children are taken away from their parents, then what’s next? Children of smokers, children of parents who drink, children of parents who get too many tickets, etc.? Because those all could be considered “risky” behaviors. Letting this happen could set a dangerous precedent.
And just because I quoted Ron Jones doesn’t mean that I agree with him, and I didn’t give him the title of wellness expert. I was giving an example of what some of these people are claiming their reasons are for wanting to take obese children away from their parents.
Did you not see how I argued *against* taking the children away from their parents? That was the entire point of this column.
The science behind secondhand smoke is the flimsiest ever. The government set out to prove something by hook or by crook, and the best they could do was crook.
By stretching the standards of scientific experimentation, they managed to “prove” that a non-smoking woman who lived in a small apartment with a smoker for thirty years had a higher risk of lung cancer than a woman who never lived with a smoker. Pathetic. (They wanted to prove it about a person in a smoking workplace to generate more lawsuits, but they couldn’t.)
It was anti-smoking zealots that ginned this up – they were so angry that smokers wouldn’t quit after proving smoking causes cancer that they enlisted non-smokers with the lie about second-hand smoke.
Yes, some people are allergic to smoke. It’s not good for asthma sufferers. But it’s quite safe for normal kids to be with a smoking parent.
And creepy family court judges in New York State have already decided custody battles by taking kids away from smokers.
Who’s ignorant? It’s pretty establishment GOP to forward the Dems’ junk science.
As for the rest of your reply, yes, you argue *against* taking children away from parents. Taking the kids away would be almost as drastic as shooting them, but you don’t seem to see that.
Do you remember the case of social services in Texas swooping in to an off-shoot Mormon community and taking all kids away to foster care, including infants who were still breast-feeding? Some of the second “wives” were rumored to have been underage (they weren’t), so obviously nursing mothers were a danger. They’d broken no laws, those freaky Mormons, it was just bigotry and tyranny.
You write about the psychological pain being obese at school can cause, but do you spend a moment on the pain being ripped away from mom and put with strangers can cause? No.
And who is Ron Jones? I understand that a quote is not an endorsement. But why not tell us where he works? “Based in Atlanta” is all we get. Isn’t that where the CDC is? Is he a government guy? Political appointee, or what? Why not say, Ms. Fiano?
And your alternatives to breaking up the family? “Many of these families come from low-income backgrounds, and don’t know a better way to feed their children than cheap, high-fat, and high-calorie foods.” You’re ignorant here. High-fat, high-calorie foods are CONVENIENT, but more expensive than eating healthy by cooking from scratch (see comments #4, #12, and #20 above).
“Give them cooking classes, get them a nutritionist and a physical trainer.” Send them to reeducation camp to learn the lefty line on food, you mean. A big government suggestion from an establishment Republican. Why not suggest that the government simply BUTT OUT?
Losing weight depends solely on eating less. Exercise is healthy, but it just makes you hungry.
Thanks for responding, though. Some of the things you’ve written at Hot Air, I’ve liked.
Nowhere in the articles or comments on this subject have I seen anyone addressing health problems that lead to obesity. Does the child have hypothyroidism? Cushing’s syndrome? Insulinomia? Side effects from medications? Has anyone bothered to investigate? Apparently not, judging from the articles in the media.
The assumption that these children are morbidly obese because their parents do not feed them appropriately is just that: An assumption. Possible medical issues should be investigated, not assumed to be absent. I believe that taking the child out of his/her home without such investigation should qualify as practicing medicine without a license, as it amounts to a declaration that the child has no medical issues that lead to obesity.
First, I have to ask, where was Alexander’s father? Maybe if he had stuck around, his mom wouldn’t have had to work 2 or 3 jobs just to make ends meet, or, if she did, then maybe dad could’ve fixed healthy meals for the family.
Second, as someone with multiple problems hormonal and genetic that contribute to my own weight challenges, I have to question the very real tendency of people to consider obesity a disease rather than a symptom. In Alexander’s case, it was a symptom of a dsyfunctional family life. In other cases it could be thyroid, pcos, cushing’s or a number of other diseases for which obesity is merely a symptom.
Taking children away from their parents is not the solution. Treating the problem that is at the root of the weight gain is. In Alexander’s case, adding another adult to the mix may have helped, or even cooking ahead and freezing meals rather than providing money for fast food. I’m sure that for the money that mom spent on fast food, she could have bought ingredients and hired a neighbor to make healthy meals for the week for her son.
More government is not the answer. More personal responsibility is.
Oh, but wait, silly me, I forgot that the government has already quashed all those alternatives with regulation. If the dad sticks around, mom is no longer eligible for (in WI ) up to $35,000 worth of gov.t bennies. And, of course no sane person would take on cooking healthy meals for a neighbor. Why the health dept would have to come and inspect their kitchen first. Then they would have to become a restaraunt or something which their home would not be properly zoned for…. and etc. add nauseum.
If the child is alone outside the house, they might be assaulted or get into mischief, for which mom would also be blamed. He could put up a lemonade stand-oh wait no, that would require food service regulations to be met and as for any other business, its likely that zoning or child protection regulations would prevent those too. He’s too young to get a regular job at 14, according to the government, so that’s out as a way of getting more exercise too. Sports teams in my area all require a fair amount of parental participation and volunteerism, not something a single mother with 2-3 jobs could committ to.
Exactly how are parents supposed to navigate the government regulations?
Here’s an idea, let parents and employers decide whether or not a young person can handle a job. Encourage marriage by cutting aid to single moms.(yes, sounds cruel, doesn’t it? But look at where the subsudization of single motherhood has brought us.) And For goodness sake, de-regulate so that kids and parents can start their own businesses.
Do I really need to go on?
A search for the term “BALANCE” does not show one entry on this page.
Has anyone ever heard of it in relation to D I E T?
It has to do with caloric expenditure offsetting caloric intake. Like so many other “common sense approaches”, it is not even hinted at in the “indoctrination centers” (aka public schools) in America anymore. Who, exactly, would THAT offend?
If people want to fatten themselves up like a Thanksgiving turkey, let ‘em have at it. Their medical bills and insurance will eat up their income. Their quality of life will be basal, and their life will be unhappy and short.
Oh, wait! That fat kid can vote? Cancel this comment.
I agree with your next comment about “oral control” (which is what quitting smoking and losing weight both come down to), but this comment puzzles me. Are you calling for the Department of Education to hire more gym – oops, Physical Education teachers?
I did some substitute teaching back in the 1980s, and it left me with some funny memories. One thing’s for sure, you can’t make a kid exercise if he doesn’t want to. (Unless you have a gun or a whip, I suppose.) High school girls especially are almost universally determined not to break a sweat in gym class – they don’t want to mess their hair or their make-up.
I’d say gym class was pretty useless, but a break from the classroom is stimulating – especially if all they’re learning there is global warming, Darwin, and how horrible America’s always been.
I went to middle school in S. Florida. At that time, just sitting in class would break a sweat. I don’t remember any classroom with A.C.
We got plenty of exercise at recess, because we taunted each other and chased each other all over the place. Who needs a Phys. ed. instructor for what kids do naturally. And I rode a bicycle to school; 10 miles round trip.
In high school, phys. ed. was the last class of the day. There was required dress and showers after. (The discipline was horrifying!)
A motocross hobby kept me trim ’til about my thirties.
My caloric expenditure was greater than the intake, at that time. But now, I have it reversed. Ah; The good life.
And, oh yea; I quit smoking “cold turkey”.
Discipline, itself, has become “politically incorrect”. We’ve got such an overbearing Nanny State, at the Federal and State level, parents are afraid to discipline their own children.
Coddling, enabling, and entitling, are the only accepted “mandated” customs, these days. And look what it has done for our highest levels of government.
This kid in the article is a victim of our current prosperous and “politically correct” customs.
Interesting observations.
Cold Turkey’s tough. I’d probably still be smoking if nobody’d invented the Patch. And the Atkins low-carb approach to dieting doesn’t require as much discipline to keep you slimming.
I dunno, Geezer – are all people capable of the same levels of discipline and will power – even if they dig down deep? I think there’s human variation, in that and in pain thresholds.
Even if I’m wrong about that, easier ways to endure hardship will always be welcome inventions.
Well then, there’s this other little motivator called “desire”.
That can be influenced through peer pressure. We used to have a little of that going around when I was a kid.
This seems to have been completely legislated out of Proper American Etiquette.
My grandsons would drink soda, eat cupcakes, and play video games all day if I let them. Thankfully, I’M GROWN UP ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT’S NOT GOOD FOR THEM.
Family life used to teach responsibility for ones self. And that led to understanding responsibility for your siblings.
It looks to me that our government and education system are negating the effects of a healthy family model.
This whole conversation looks lame to me. Have we become dumbed down this much?
This cannot have a happy ending, folks.
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying, except that the conversation is somehow lame.
The Left since before Marx has taken aim at the family – it’s a naturally conservative institution that passes along tradition. Woodrow Wilson spoke about education’s main purpose being to teach kids to forget what their fathers taught them. (It’s not hard to find awful instances of family-splitting as policy in the USSR and Mao’s China.)
But some of it is societal entropy is the midst of unprecedented prosperity. Back in the 1950s, there was a program like AFDC, but it was only for married couples – single mothers couldn’t get benefits. The cry went up that this was unfair, religious bigotry and such. So they opened benefits to single moms. If you reward something, you get more of it, and that we have.
Illegitimacy’s been a huge bane. If you correct for illegitimacy, racial disparity in our prisons goes away.
And illegitimacy’s the root of this boy’s trouble. With a working father in that home, mom wouldn’t need three jobs. And boys need manly role models.
But the idea that how much you feed your kid is the government’s business is absurd, and it’s scary how many commenters here buy it. Obesity is no death sentence. Neither is being spoiled by mom in any other way. It’s a problem to be worked out WITHIN THE FAMILY.
retlaw;
I detect greater knowledge of this subject than you first indicated. It appears there may be enough for you to write an article of your own with ample authority.
My comments do rely on some education, and much experience and interest in personal relationships and rearing.
Having an actively religious mother, and going to parochial school definitely had an influence on me.
Another item not as prevalent today, was the church. It used to be one of the most universal sources for family counseling. My opinion is, the church has been less active in this area, and even had legislation applied in an attempt to undermine it as a leader of family guidance.
But, back to the case of this overweight child; The responsibility for his lack of involvement in outside activities and interests can be placed at the feet of his parent/guardian. The societal/peer pressures and norms we have been writing about were obviously absent.
Government mandated and approved “political correctness” is exacting its toll.
Thank you for the kind words, Cybergeezer. Sounds like both our mothers saw to it we weren’t unchurched.
You’re right, the overweight child’s plight is at the feet of his mom. I’d bet serious money she’s not a slender reed herself. The thing is, kids are constantly studying their parents, even subliminally. I still have habits I picked up from watching mine 50 years ago. (According to my wife, my temper is exactly as bad as my mother’s – sure ticks me off when she points it out, too!)
Again, no parents are perfect – it’s only the maliciously abusive ones who need to be separated from their kids.
If you’d like to read more about the real history of the Left, I recommend Ann Coulter’s new book, DEMONIC. Most political books just start repeating themselves after chapter 3, but Coulter’s are all well researched, well written, informative, and funny. This one’s especially timely – it’s about Democrats using mobs and riots. (Her column is always linked at Drudge, so you can try her writing style for free before you buy.)
Basically, it comes down to O R A L _ C O N T R O L (aka DISCIPLINE) which is what the DLSP* Party and constituents have a continual problem with.
*[Democrat/Liberal/Socialist/Progressive]
I am the mother of a fat kid. He is smart, funny and fat. What do you know about him just by looking? You will see that he alone in our family is fat. You will see that the way he moves is strange. Is it because he is fat? What came first the illness or the fatness? His mother works 2 jobs to support him. Is he fat because she loves him enough to work like a dog to support him and his siblings? Of course maybe it was the work for what you want attitude of the family that has made him fat. Oh no that doesn’t work does it? We all KNOW that laziness makes you fat. AND mothers that work hard. Fathers that work hard are an inspiration to every living thing on the planet and produce only viral, well adjusted off spring. Certainly my son is fat. Without a doubt I worked hard to make him this way.
That was telling ‘em. Cheers!
The Ultimate Child Abuse: Abortion
Abortion, in Russia and in Obamaland
According to Reuters, last July Russia went where the Obama administration dares not go on the issue of abortion. With a declining birth rate and one of the highest abortion rates in the world, the Russians mandated that abortion providers carry warnings of health risks in their advertisements.
Ironically, the now-defunct Union of Soviet Socialists Republics under Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks was one of the first nations on the planet to legalize aborting pre-born babies in 1920. Ninety one years later, Russia is finally coming to the realization that abortion can be almost as harmful to women as it is to fetuses.
The administration of Barack Hussein Obama can evidently learn a few things about the “procedure” from the administration of Dmitry Medvedev and Vlad Putin: Abortion not only has terminal effects on the pre-born, it can have deleterious effects on the mothers who abort them.
The most pro-abortion American president in history, a distinction preceded by his record as the most pro-abortion United States senator during his two-year stint in that august body and his history as an Illinois state senator where he voted in favor of requiring that babies born during botched abortions be left to die, Obama hasn’t done or said much lately regarding abortion.
(See “Obama Flips OFF Babies, http://bit.ly/q4pHk3.)
Election 2012 is less than thirteen months away so he prefers to have his henchmen do his dirty work.
With America’s predominant abortionist posing as a “family planner,” Planned Parenthood of America, exposed as a fraud and its taxpayer funding under scrutiny by House of Representative Republicans, Obama’s henchmen are duly stressed and forced to execute his policies surreptitiously and cunningly.
Thus, they quietly ended a five year agreement with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the USCCB.
Catholics, of course, are notorious for staunchly holding to the principles that human life is sacred from the moment of conception and that abortion is an abomination but the agreement in question was irrelevant to those beliefs. Rather, the rescinded $19 million grant related to comprehensive services provided by the USCCB to assist sex trafficking victims–2700 since 2006–with food, clothing and access to medical care . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5704.)
“If we give these families the resources to help these children lose weight and they still don’t, then it would seem to be clear to me that there would be a deeper medical issue at play here …”
I’d think in the case of morbid obesity, a medical reason would the FIRST thing to rule out. THEN move on to giving families resources.
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