Raising a Dangerously Obese Child Is a Shame — But Is It a Crime?
In aisle six there’s a man wheeling a grocery cart filled with prepackaged and ready-to-make food: TV dinners, frozen breakfasts, macaroni and cheese, and similar items. The cart is also overflowing with sugary cereals and a variety of soda. The man weighs about 400 pounds. With him is his son. The boy is about 12-years-old and weighs close to 200 pounds. He’s pointing to things he wants — Pop-Tarts, Oreos, Rice Krispies Treats — and the father is throwing everything the kid asks for into the cart.
“That’s child abuse,” I think to myself. “That man is endangering the welfare of his child. He should be arrested.”
Of course, I was speaking hyperbolically. You can’t really arrest someone for what they choose to feed their child, right?
Now it seems as if my hyperbole wasn’t so outlandish after all. A South Carolina woman was arrested for criminal child neglect because her 14-year-old son, Alexander Draper, weighs 555 pounds.
When the boy’s mother, Jerri Gray, was asked for an explanation as to how her son got so dangerously obese, she said, “Well, a lot of times it had to do with lifestyle. A lot of times I had to work full time second shift or full time, third shift. And I wasn’t home a lot.” She explained that she would often purchase fast food for Alexander because she didn’t have time to cook due to work.
It’s easy to call the mother out on this. There’s no reason Gray could not have provided healthier food choices for her son. Keeping fruits, vegetables, and low-fat food in the house so Alexander could have the opportunity to eat right would have been the right thing to do instead of filling the boy with fatty, fried foods.
At 14, there’s no reason Alexander couldn’t prepare his own meals when his mother wasn’t around — if he was taught to do so and provided with the proper, healthy ingredients. There are other factors as well. Gray had previously been contacted by social services in regards to her son. She was issued a treatment plan, appointments with doctors were made, and she was warned that she could lose custody of her son if she didn’t get his weight under control. Instead of helping her son, Gray fled with him to Baltimore (after failing to show up for a court appearance), where they were found by authorities. Gray was subsequently arrested on the child neglect charges and Alexander was placed in foster care.
Despite Gray’s mistakes in regards to her son, is she really a criminal? Does she deserve to go to prison for this or should attempts be made to educate Gray about nutrition and health and reunite her with son, perhaps with weekly visits from social services? There just seems to be so many ways to approach this besides further damaging this child by taking him away from his mother.
At the heart of this story lies a bigger issue than the child’s weight. What kind of precedent would be set if Gray is found guilty of these charges? The proverbial slippery slope could end up in a waterfall of bad laws. If you arrest a mother for letting her child get fat, where do you stop? Do you arrest the parents of the young girl with anorexia? Do you take children away from their parents if they smoke or drink or do drugs, even when away from their homes? What about kids who don’t do homework? Kids who lead sedentary lifestyles? Kids with high cholesterol or low iron? What is neglect and what is bad parenting and where do you draw the distinction between them?
It’s unfortunate that Alexander was allowed to get to this point, but is it criminal? Gray did neglect to take her son for his medical appointments. She did neglect to follow through on his treatment plan and she did flee the state with him when authorities were looking for her. That, obviously, is a criminal act. But I think the rest of this can be solved not with criminal charges and jail time, but with education. Enroll Ms. Gray in mandatory nutrition classes. Mandate medical appointments for Alexander. Social services could oversee the regulation of the boy’s diet and weight loss. There are so many options here besides the one that will bring a slew of similar cases to the court, cases where the state will probably step over their boundaries by using the Gray case as a precedent. If they can try a woman for her son’s health problem, what’s to stop an overzealous government from prosecuting parents for habits they consider bad or unhealthy? Sure, there was an aspect of neglect here, but the cure for things that ail society is not always more laws, more regulations, and more prosecution.
Sometimes that cure lies in eradicating the symptoms one at a time. Set a better precedent by showing other parents how Gray and her son can overcome this situation by working together with experts and educators.
Maybe this case will give parents like the man I saw in the grocery store an opportunity to think about what they’re doing to their children. There are thousands of families out there like this. I think that those watching this case because it reflects their own lives would derive more benefit from watching Gray and Alexander enjoy the benefits of a healthy rehabilitation than they would from watching mother and son get separated by a suspect law.
In a case like this, don’t legislate or incarcerate. Educate.
Some cases such as this one become so extreme, that the state must be forced to step in and do something. There are haevy children out there, but a 555 pound 14 year old is something of a whole new level. This mother is a disgrace, and she has not only put her son in an early grave, but killed his social life as well.
Any parent who allows their child to become fat is doing them a disservice far worse than most drugs(both legal and illegal) and lack of eduction could ever do them.
Normally you don’t need to worry too much what kids eat (and what they won’t!) — this for most people is regulated naturally and such a complex process that we still don’t understand it fully. So cut mom some slack for not being specialist about it, even if she decides to put her son on a diet, other, even more difficult situations will arise from that. She does not look like someone who’ll manage that very easily, it’s a lot to ask of her and probably brings more grief than it prevents.
However, all this said, dieting does not work for the vast majority of very overweight people in the long term, the only thing that helps here reliably is prevention.
Some say it’s self-discipline, but well, the human race appears to have an inbuilt design fault here, haranguing does not work unfortunately, if you read some history, you’ll see that being grossly fat is one of the many common and recurring fates of being human.
Diet and change of lifestyle and food regime can help people who are not too obese from getting very fat, but it very rarely turns a fat person into a slim one.
But once someone is as fat as this child, only a gastric band will help reliably.
Jailing people for failing to do the impossible is just as nuts as selling them diets that never work!
Check the success statistics of diets and you’ll see, people are kidding themselves, diets don’t help people at all(in fact, they are worse than random food intake and make people fatter in the end), and the emotional damage done to dieters and their families is often worse than the damage done by the extra lard they carry.
Btw, social services often have quite the Gestapo demeanor and before you blame the mom for legging it, consider that the social workers often are not friendly helpers but bullying enemies who have boxes to tick and targets to hit, and who can destroy a family if they decide to take revenge on them for being ‘difficult’. In the UK they are famous for baby snatching to order to fill their adoption quota and resorting to blackmail to scare people into compliance in front of anonymous kangaroo courts, I guess the US is not to dissimilar here.
Also notice that there never is report on the efficacy of diets, and when there is a study (such as weight watchers put out) it’s carefully arranged to look good. But when you look at the actual numbers… you see that it’s a con — diets do not work, never have done and never will.
“In a case like this, don’t legislate or incarcerate. Educate.”
But what if the parent is not willing to be educated? I am a libertarian—but I recognize the need for the state to involve itself in exceptional circumstances. And a 555 pound child is definitely an exceptional circumstance! Young Alexander probably represents something like .00001 % of the general population. The challenge is to prevent government bureaucrats from harassing normal parents.
555 pounds isn’t a result of eating fast food. Whopper Juniors and such don’t magically make you fat. It is letting your kid eat 3 Big Macs, a supersized order of fries and a couple malteds, all in one sitting.
Once they outlawed smoking in restaurants, allowed lawsuits about transfats in foods (and now salt) and the like, this was pretty much inevitable. As we turn more and more of our health choices over to a third party, we can expect any non-optimal decisions to be considered criminal.
That aside, the answer here isn’t to put mom in jail, it is to take the child away and put them in foster care, just like we would in any case where a parent isn’t taking proper care of their children.
This is one of the few cases I’ve seen where I’d like to see a reality show developed around real humans — in this case, a show about how a mother AND her son work together not to lose weight, but to develop a healthier lifestyle. While eating is certainly a basic human drive, being paid positive attention to is often even more seductive.
“Gray did neglect to take her son for his medical appointments. She did neglect to follow through on his treatment plan and she did flee the state with him when authorities were looking for her. That, obviously, is a criminal act. ”
Since when is it OK for government to dictate doctors appointments and “plans”, etc. These are only a crime because we have already started down that “slippery slope”
Not in a free couontry. Are you going to arrest the millions of mom’s and dad’s whose children eat breakfast candy called cereal each morning,and the companies which make the cereal? Are you going to arrest parents for taking their children to McDonalds and Burger King? Or to go even further out,are you going to arrest teachers because children are receiving a noneducation or in most cases a miseducatiion?
When you are honest about it,in many ways our pampering parents and costly misguided schools are a mess. Our politicians are shameful poor excuses. Whom do we arrest first? Do we start arresting all of them?
This is a slippery slope.
And our obese and diabetes filled nation wonders why health care costs have risen to the point of creating political opportunity from it….
“She was issued a treatment plan, appointments with doctors were made, and she was warned that she could lose custody of her son if she didn’t get his weight under control.”
It would seem as if the mother failed to follow through on the above mandates. Right?
“She did neglect to follow through on his treatment plan and she did flee the state with him when authorities were looking for her.”
Oh, OK, so she did fail to follow through.
“Mandate medical appointments for Alexander. Social services could oversee the regulation of the boy’s diet and weight loss.”
Seriously?! So the solution to the problem is to apply the same solution to the problem that the mother refused to follow the first time? OK, so what are the consequences for the mother? How are the mandates to be enforced? What power would you give to the government to enforce the mandates that the government has mandated? The government, by design, always has few enforcement options: jail, fines, loss of privledges, etc, ect. So, if we remove the enforcement options, as the author is suggesting, then what are we left with? What do we do when the mother consistently fails to follow the mandates? Why should we even bother? Why waste time/money at the very beginning? Why do we even care? Why do we wish to interfere AT ALL in the private life of a citizen? Who are we to pass judgement? Why is it so horrible to seperate a mother from her child because of neglect BUT it isn’t horrible to dictate to a mother how she should care for her own child? YOU CAN”T HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO.
“This is a slippery slope.”
The decision by the government to even put up a street light in your neighborhood is something of a slippery slope move. Distinctions must be made. State authorities also involve themselves when ultra-religious parents refuse to allow their sick children to receive modern medical attention.
Yes, it’s criminal. She’s killing him as surely as with a gun. We’re not talking a little pudge here. Any sane person can see the line, and this kid is way, way across it. Just like parents who abuse physically can not only lose custody but go to jail, that should apply here too.
It is obvious, mom and son need an education.
This is the exact reason why we should NOT have universal Healthcare.
If these people want to have 500lb kids, go for it! Its your kid but dont expect me to pay for it or your healthcare.
Goes for welfare too!
I think medication can help many obsessive people, but education doesn’t always work. I have heard this from morbidly obese people who found meds helped them control their weight. My husband was overweight, being raised by his obese aunt and his mother who didn’t like vegetables. He overfed his pets and refused to listen to reason. I saw that he couldn’t control his urge to eat or feed his pets until he was on antidepressants.
This kid did not get that fat on his own- his mother was obviously the enabler. When he strokes out at age 19, can’t this be considered manslaughter?
How is the mother’s refusal to work with the state to get her son’s weight under control any different than a parent that refuses treatment of their child in a situation with cancer? The sad and simple truth is that the mother is not willing to do what it takes to get her son’s weight under control. At his age, his actions represent his upbringing. While I dislike the nanny state, just how screwed up can you be as a parent before you face any repercussions?
I would like to make a small point: All the slippery-slope arguments the author makes against arresting the mother are just as valid for her solution: “Enroll Ms. Gray in mandatory nutrition classes”.
“Where do you stop? Do you [enroll in mandatory nutrition classes] the parents of the young girl with anorexia? Do you [send to mandatory re-education classes] parents who let their children smoke or drink or do drugs, even when away from their homes? What about kids who don’t do homework? Kids who lead sedentary lifestyles? Kids with high cholesterol or low iron? What is neglect and what is bad parenting and where do you draw the distinction between them?”
Soon enough you’ll have so many people enrolled in these classes, you’ll need to set up camps for them. We could call them “Mandatory re-education camps”. I think someone’s thought of that before, though.
In my opinion, the author is barking up the wrong tree. The problem is not that Gray did not know how to feed her son properly. The problem is that she lacked the will to do it, because she does not take her duties as a mother seriously. This is a result of poor character, or poor upbringing. It is not a question of ignorance. And if she pleaded ignorance in court, that was no more than a pretense to avoid punishment.
If this is a matter of will, rather than ignorance, then any “mandatory education class” will have nothing to do with education. It will rather have to do with coercion. It will be an attempt to make the mother do that which she ought to do, but will not do. That the cause is undoubtedly just in this case is not reassuring, because the state will always find new things which we ought to be made to do.
There is a scene in the movie 1984 (I don’t remember if it’s in the book) in which Winston Smith takes a break from his morning jumping-jacks, and is sharply reprimanded by the woman on the television screen. Surely, morning exercise is a good idea, is it not? Ought we not all to do a few jumping jacks each morning?
Jailing this woman will do no good. She apparently chose to ignore warnings from the authorities in regard to his weight and his eating habits continued. He is the one who should be getting counseling so he can make the right choices. This is not a child, he’s a teenager and we all know that at 14 they should at least be somewhat resposible.
Eating properly is a learned behavior. I bet you dollars to donuts that the mother at ust as poorly as her child.
at just as not at ust.
GAWWWWWWWW
ATE
oh I give up. ;p
when I say they both need an education, i do not mean nutrition classes. I mean counseling, showing the young man a better way of life, finding out why he is where he is in weight. There is a reason other than nutrition. His mother does not care, or she would have tried just a little bit
I’ve watched a couple of “fat teen” shows on tv, and no one in the household seems to care what goes on. We can’t be going out pulling fluffies off the street and putting them in jail because of nutrition!!
.. He’s 14 years old!!…it is a learned behavior and he needs emotional/mental health. there is probably more going on then a little extra gravy.
Then whose responsibility does it all become?????
what next the “fluffy patrol”?
Social services is the largest form of government tyranny next to income taxes this day and age. Who gives them the right to snatch anyones children up without due process. Your family is to be protected under your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is still America until the social engineers turn it into Amerika we are still innocent until proven guilty. Has the government even bothered to look into other options, this could be a case of a child eating the amount of food your average chunky kid eats but having a glandular disorder, or rare disease. Has anyone bothered to ask the child if he feels he has been neglected, before we send him off to a government run foster neglect system instead of with his loving imperfect family.
Sounds rather naive to me. She was already given all of the opportunities for education, and she didn’t take them. Why? SHE. DOESN’T. WANT. TO. You can give her every opportunity for education in the world, but none of it matters if she doesn’t want to take them. At that point, the only way to change the situation is negative consequences for her – jail time and foster care. This also has a strong effect on everyone else – people with kids like this don’t care that there are better ways to do things, and no amount of education programs will make them care. But they will care if they see that they will lose the kids if they let them get that far over the line. It’s not ideal, but sometimes there are no ideal solutions.
Diets do not work? How strange. When I left my ex-wife I started eating better and have dropped about 35 pounds.
I suppose it’s possible that it wasn’t the change in my eating habits, and that proximity to my ex-wife was making me fat, but it seems somehow unlikely.
Raising children should require some sort of certification or training, I mean really, look what’s become of us!
Now that’s a slippery slope.
When our family was just starting out, my wife and I read tons of books about raising children. All these years later, one of the few things I remember is a little snippet about sports and child development. It stated, with statistics, that girls involved in sports were far less likely to do drugs, get pregnant out of wedlock, and do much better in school. Forget about just weight loss! I bought into this. My grown children are now lean, mean, active adults.
Problem is, for whatever reason, many parents can’t devote the time and resources required for organized sports.
If you want to make a difference, I would suggest volunteering with the Boys and Girls Club or some such organization. I still regale friends with stories of my basketball coaching prowess. Or you can sponsor local kids with your largess, whatever. For me, it’s better than just giving money to the United Way because I see the impact I make first hand. I have some great success stories I could bore you with. You would not believe!
A good book on sports/exercise and kids is “Kid Fitness” by Kenneth H. Cooper, M,D., M.P.H.
But throw unfit parents in jail? That’s the wrong way round the mulberry bush.
Certainly not in this case, but for people who are trying to lose weight, but are unable to, they may have hypothyroidism. Hypothyroidism causes weight gain, severe fatigue and other problems.
Fluoride added to our drinking water damages the thyroid. Soy also damages the thyroid.
The problem is, for many people, tests on the thyroid come back normal when they are actually hypothyroid and have all the symptoms of hypothyroidism. For those so fortunate as to have one of the few doctors who treat the symptoms of hypothyroidism, even though tests come back as normal, are the lucky ones.
In any case, for those of you who are doing your best to lose weight and not succeeding, get your thyroid checked. Check out this great site and the symptoms of hypothyroidism:
http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/
And my lovely little blond daughter is not succeeding at gaining 6 pounds. I wonder if she has a bad home? No she lives at school. she took 16th at the NCAA track and field championships. We taught her how to play outside.
Would we still be up in arms if a mother let her child eat fast food all the time but the child was fortunate to have a fast metabolism and wasn’t 555 lbs? Should she have stopped working and gone on welfare so she could prepare meals at home for her son?
I really don’t know what to say about this. Acting and not acting are both things that don’t appeal to me in this situation. I am all for government staying out of people’s business (this case is a surefire example of government getting in other people’s business) and if action is taken it leads to a slippery slope of if this, then that. Eat this, not that. Do this, not that. Such a chain of events would certainly do nothing but put us in chains.
Doing nothing is also not a good choice. I feel that I am closer to the situation of this child more than most because I was a very heavy child and am quite obese today. (I have been losing weight and it has been a slow, no diet process.) Being fat as a teen or pre-teen into adulthood carries with it many things that only makes the behavior a cycle. If your fat most people don’t want to be your friend, you never have many friends at school. You are looked down upon and are generally the butt of jokes, ridicule, and believe it or not disgust. Some people gifted with a great set of genes will always be harsh to those non-supermen. These behaviors only worsen the situation. The turning point in my life came when a select set of people accepted me for who I am, befriended me, and where a great support for me. In this group I count my fiance as having the greatest impact in my turnaround.
Before being loved for being nothing other than what I am I had to turn to things that couldn’t distinguish fat from thin. I really loved my pets ( a dog and a cat ) because they were not cognizant of the realities that I faced with those of my own kind. The problem in this idea was that they were biased. I fed and took care of them and that is what endeared them to me. It was something, but not enough to change me. Food was always there for me as well. Food will never tell you no, gawk at you, or publicly ridicule you.
When you are fat you have no desire to be seen in public. Not much exercise is to be had indoors. Even if there is exercise found indoors, indoors is also where the refridgerator and the pantry are. So you can’t go out for fear of ridicule and you can’t stay in because you will continue on your reckless path. So you can see there is a cycle and there really needs to be someone that is there to break the cycle for you. I am so blessed that I have had these people come into my life. What I didn’t want to do for myself because I thought myself worthless was turned into something I wanted to do to benefit the ones that loved me. Love is what fat people are missing. Love is indeed what the world is missing.
I can and do draw a parallel between the love of God for all men to the love shown to me by the people that really care for me in this life. I am a disgusting creature wallowing in my own filth and God loves and wants the best for me. These people that help you break this cycle love like that. Not in the same magnitude but in the same way. That love truly never does fail.
Now that I know that I am loved for who I am the desire and the ability is there to break the cycle and to change who I am for the better.
A word of warning to all of those people who look down on fat people like they are the scum of the earth, like they are the ones causing others medical bills to rise, like they are not worthy to share the same air you breathe or the same room you as your august presence — remember that the love you failed to show caused what is so disgusting to your eyes. Know that it was a failure on your part and not on the part of others. We are all weak and fallible. You caused your brother to stumble into a hole which he cannot dig himself out of. We are all made of the same stuff. We all have rational thought and share the same needs. We are not all that different you and I. Remember.
(I got long winded when I started out to write just a snippet. So I will cross post this on my own blog which you can visit by clicking on my URL above. Malishious_Iintent of Christian Barbarian)
Funny, I thought I was on a right leaning site, and I come across this article, which reads as though it’s straight from Kos. If you really want state intervention people’s private lives, make sure to vote Democrat in ’10, and you’ll get all the nannyism you want.
“Soon enough you’ll have so many people enrolled in these classes, you’ll need to set up camps for them. We could call them “Mandatory re-education camps”. I think someone’s thought of that before, though.”
Interesting how many “libertarians” are quick to jump on the re-education camp idea when it supports an end they agree with.
First, no amount of overeating can cause 14 years old to weight 555 lb. The kid clearly has methabolical disorder.
Second, there is no healthy food, and there is no unhealthy food. There is unhealthy diet. If processed food or even fast food supplies balanced amount of proteins, carbs, fats, fibers, microelements, and vitamins, it is as good as homemade or from best restaurant. Crusade against processed food, fast food chains, fried food, or read meat is just indication how illiterate these crusaders are (Inclooding Michelle Obama).
Third. Fibers, microelements, vitamins (and omega fats) are easy to balance by taking food supplements. What is not so easy is not to consume triple amount of calories our lazy lifestyle can burn. The easiest way is to cut on potato, bread, rice, pasta, and other starches. Next very important thing is stop drinking sugary drinks and cut on fruits, jams, and other sweet stuff. Human body requires almost a gallon of water per day, and if this water is consumed as pop or juice, it is already 2000-3000 Cal (about how much Cal we need, sportsmen aside). One important note: our bodies need Sodium, Calcium, and Potassium with water, to replenish salts which are rejected with sweat and urine. Calcium is milk and milk products, or dietary supplements. Sodium we consume by salting our food with table salt. For 90% of population Potassium is missing, so we drink gallons of high-Potassium beverages like Coke and orange juice, and stuffing our bodies with tremendous amount of liquid sugary Calories.
Solution is simple. Ideal Sodium/Potassium ratio is 4:1. Just buy high-Potassium salt at food store, mix with regular table salt in proper proportion, and use it as regular table salt for cooking and eating. In a matter of days you and your kids will drink mostly water.
Maybe if we could get the government to back the hell off of every other aspect of American life, the prices of food and gas and every other freaking thing in this country would go down to the point where one person working one full time legit job would have enough of their own money left to spend time performing their responsibilities to their own families, instead of playing step-n-fetchit to the interests of the state above all other priorities.
Perhaps she wouldn’t need to work second shifts if she didn’t feed her son 10,000 calories of fast food a day. And couldn’t she just buy, say, one Big Mac and not 3? Or not buy soda and go with water?
The problem isn’t that food is to expensive, Badroto, but too cheap. Can you really say that the reason why a kid is 555lbs is that food is too expensive?
And where is the father? If she was married to an employed man, she could stay at home and cook. There are plenty of people who work 50-60 hours a week and still cook every day. It really doesn’t need to take any longer than going through a drive-through. Cereal and fruit in the morning, sandwiches and veggies at lunch and even a frozen meal for dinner would be much cheaper and healthier.
A general blood test does not delve deeply enough into the thyroid. The child needs to have his thyroid tested by an Endocrinologist. No 14 year old could gain this much simply eating pre-cooked meals and fast food. Also, misssing in the story was any mention of physical activity.
Stephan. It is none of the state’s business. THE STATE DOES NOT OWN THE CHILD.
This over bearing usurpation of the rights of parents by the state is one of the worst developments of the last 40 years. What is next? Taking people’s children away because they are taught certain beliefs that authorities disagree with. Seizing them by force. Look at what Reno did at Waco.
This is where society steps in, as opposed to the State. Had it not broken down for her, as no doubt it has, this woman would be shamed into proper behavior by those around her. (it would be interesting to see how much, if any, of her income comes from welfare transfer programs provided by the state, BTW.) If you lived near to such a person and really cared so much about the child then, Stephan, you could go over there and try to educate her or you could go to her family members or to her social groups: Church, work place, etc. (But I suspect that you do not really care about the child, you kust want to push people around. I doubt that you would take it upon your self to under take the moral improvement of others. _
That is how the real world works.
We need to do away with “family courts”, social workers and all the intrusions by the state on private matters such as this. Ironically, it is just this sort of intrusions that lead to problems such as this.
We need to just stop this notion that the citizen os a subject of the state. We were founded on just the opposite principle.
D. ThompsonL Once you start down that road, there is no stopping. That “small percentage” soon becomes large indeed. Once you allow the state into control of the family, there is no stopping it. It is just a matter of time.
You say you are a libertarian. Well if you are, then you know that it is that family’s responsibility to deal with it, and if they can not, then thy pay the price for it. They become a cautionary tale, and other learn from it.
We got along just fine for 150 years or so of our history without state in trustion.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Certainly any parent allowing their child to reach such a point is deplorable but it is not government’s place to step in. We need to stop, as citizens, intruding into other people’s lives and imposing our own personal standards.Since when is anyone’s health the business of the public?
People need to understand that these ‘health standards’ have been imposed upon us by bureaucrats and for profit agencies. Every year they change their stances on what is healthy and what is not. What is consistent is the millions of dollars spent on diet plans, home gyms and gym memberships. Has anyone not noticed that it can be 2 to 3 times as expensive to purchase healthy foods as it is to buy junk? That isn’t by accident, and what would you expect that lower income families will do, limit the number of meals they are able to have to ensure a ‘healthy’ menu, or make sure that their children go to bed with full bellies?
This country has gone backward and upside down, it’s time to get back to basics.
We have ruined ourselves. No one raises their own vegetables, walks to the park, shoos thekids out of the house to play in the neighborhood.
Why isn’t anyone bringing up welfare? We started ruining millions of people when we took the responsibility for their own well being on themselves to the state. Now, everytime someone has a problem, it is the states responsibility when in reality the state started most of this mess.
I have a young employee who won’t get married to his ‘girl’ that he and she have three kids with. The reason: they won’t receive free health care, free food and a ton of other free social services and products. Of course, to receive these entitlements, he can’t show too much income or have too much success or he won’t qualify. Is this the type of lessons we want to teach our society.
Did you know that in the fifties, there were minority high schools who had terrible buildings, books etc that outperformed the white schools? Do you know that the #1 predictor of a high SAT score is a two parent family? We ruin ourselves and we don’t even know it. Well meaning people on these posts talk about hyperthyroidism, fast food and what the nanny state should do.
When do we start using common sense?
The pursuit of happiness does not guarantee outcome or slimness, personal responsiblity is the road to the pursuit of happiness. This Mom and her son have no idea of how to solve their problems because we have taken away their right to fail. If this Mom had to be responsible for her life early on, I can guarantee you she would not put her son into this situation. She has no common sense because we have not allowed her to try and fail and , then, to try and succeed. I would never tell you that I should be anyones model but I will tell you this: I have failed many times, and on my own dime. And each time I have come out smarter, wiser and a better, more thoughtful person.
I don’t say these things because I do not like this Mom and her son. I say them because I know from experience that they will only come out of this if they are left to solve it on their own. When they are sure they want to change, then we can help, as we should. Education doesn’t guarantee outcome, never giving up and personal will guarantees outcome.
At the age of 57, I have taken up the DVD workout P90X with my son. i was already walking and doing yoga but needed to lose 30 pounds and felt the need to take charge of my health and looks. It has made a big difference in a couple of weeks, it costs $135 and would change this Mom and her son’s life. But you have to do the work.
I don’t think that we should be spending the money on prosecuting this mother OR providing medical care to this child. WAKE UP! He did not get this way over night and he didn’t get to be 555 lb by eating a few fast food meals. This child is consuming enormous amounts of food and his mother is aware of it and enabling it. Until she makes the decision to change this situation and help her child, nothing will change. Unless the state is going to remove him entirely from her care and force him to exercise and eat right he will continue to be morbidly obese. These are lifestyle choices that they are making and no one has the right to interfere. That being said, as a taxpayer I don’t want to pay for their poor choices either. They should have to deal with the consequences of the poor choices they have made.
There is a man at my work who is atleast 550 pounds maybe we should arrest him. Force him on a diet or make him take nutrition classes. Why does the government have such vested intrest in telling us how we should use our inalienable rights, to life, liberty and our happiness wether our not our version of happiness is eating 3 bigmacs at a time. This mentality I am reading on this page is the kind of crap that is going to lead us to, soda, salt, trans-fat/anything but granola and soy taxes, with Obamacare leading the way of governmental control of our health. Funny that the same people who say that the constitution gives us medical privacy through roe vs. wade. Believe that the government has the right to peer into our medical records decide our medical procedures and force euthanasia counciling. So if we get Obama-care can we overturn Roe Vs. Wade under the premise that it sets a government mandate that they have the right to our medical information.
Individual responsibility is needed. Parents need to do what is best for kids and teach them healthy ways to live. Food producers and retailer need to take responsibility and offer healthier choices at lower prices. How about dropping the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables and raising prices of the comfort foods? Even fast food restuarants could get in on the act and let an adult choose a side salad instead of the fries as an option. In the end if we want to see government less involved, the people need to stand up and support each other.
Check out this site. Interesting stuff.
http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Financial-Industry/Cost-of-eating-healthy-low-calorie-foods-escalates
You do not get to weigh 500 plus pounds by the type food you eat but by eating too much and little or no physical activity. I am willing to bet that this kid sits on a couch all day and night either watching cartoons or playing video games but more likely just watching television with a pile of potato chips and or pretzels and other assorted snacks and plenty of beverage and is constantly chewing or drinking something. If he had a paper route and had to move around everyday doing something he would keep from adding unwanted pounds. I have maintained the same weight as I was after high school and turn 56 next week, but am highly active and do not eat like a pig.
Surely this is Obama’s fault.