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Parenting overweight children

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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 1:08 pm
Post subject: Parenting overweight childrenReply with quote

I thought this was a powerful article:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/31/tips-parents-fat-kid-unable-recognise-obesity

Quote:
We live in a culture where every inch of our physicality – every curve, pound, bulge, bone – in both public and private life, is obsessively monitored, catalogued, critiqued, and leveraged for cash. The worst thing you can be is always fat, the best thing you can be is never fat, and the richest thing you can be is formerly fat with a weight-loss book deal. So it’s almost alien to imagine that any human being on earth wouldn’t recognise a fat person when they see one. But, according to a new study published in the British Journal of General Practice, one demographic group struggles with just that blindspot. That group is parents, and it happens solely when they’re looking at their own fat children.

Researchers studied almost 3,000 families in the UK, categorising children by BMI as “normal weight, overweight (above the 85th percentile), or very overweight (ie equivalent to obese in the US, above the 95th percentile).” They then asked parents to guess which category applied to their kids.

According to Forbes magazine, almost all of the parents guessed wrong:

“It turned out that parents were extraordinarily poor at determining whether their children were overweight or obese. Of the 369 kids who were very overweight, only four parents thought they were. When the researchers analyzed the numbers further, they saw that for a given child with a BMI in the 98th percentile, a whopping 80% of parents would say that the child was normal weight. It would take a child being in the 99.7th percentile for the parents to even say the child was overweight, let alone very overweight.”

Of the 369 kids who were very overweight, only four parents thought they were.
It’s interesting – I’m so used to hearing stories from women who inherited eating disorders from overly critical moms, or men whose hypermasculine dads thought fat was inherently feminising and shameful. So, you know what my first thought was when I read about this study?

Honestly? Good. Fine. Great.

If these parents can’t perceive that their kids are fat, that’s two fewer people in the world to teach each of those kids that they are broken and have no value. Two fewer parents to instil food anxieties before kids are even in double digits, to drastically restrict calories while they’re still growing, to undermine their ability to ever have a healthy relationship with food. And, don’t worry – the rest of society can certainly perceive that those kids are fat, they will notice, and they won’t be shy about making it known as early and as cruelly as possible.

I’ve been a fat kid. There is no shortage of messaging. At no point did any of that messaging make me thin, and it certainly didn’t make me healthy.

That’s not to say that, as a parent, you shouldn’t devote your life to protecting your children’s health. You should. You must. It is, arguably, your only mandatory job. But there are ways to fight for their health and longevity without undermining their humanity.

Because I know that navigating the intricacies of whether or not to abuse and shame vulnerable children is confusing for some people, I’ve come up with some Hot Tips for raising a fat kid:

1a. For the love of gruyere, if you suspect that you might be the parent of a fat kid, DO NOT MENTION IT TO THEM. Talk about it among yourselves as much as you like. Talk to your spouse! Talk to your pediatrician! Talk to your inlaws! Talk to the erotic phone psychic! Just dial a bunch of numbers and talk to whoever picks up the phone (they will definitely have some opinions on fat people)! But, as I said before, your kid is going to get the message – from their gym teachers, their peers, their overbearing grandmas – and what they could really use from you is a little unconditional cheerleading and the overwhelming sense that they are OK. Protecting your child’s health also means protecting their mental health.

I literally do not remember a time when I wasn’t aware that I was worth less than other people because of the size of my body. It took me almost 30 years to shed the ingrained certainty that I was a work in progress – and, concomitantly, since I didn’t seem to be making much progress at all, a failure. Why indoctrinate your child into that paradigm a moment sooner than necessary? Do you know how pointless it feels to try to take care of yourself when you’re told that you’ve already failed? And, on the flip side, do you know what a joy it is to take care of something you love?

1b. For that matter, how about don’t comment on your kid’s physical appearance at all, particularly if you have a girl? Your daughters will have the better part of a century to internalise the fact that they are being scrutinised, evaluated and ranked everywhere they go, and even positive commentary feeds into that. Instead, why not compliment their sense of humour? Geometry skills? Jumpshot form? Kindness? Compliment what they do – not just what they are.

2. Stop trying to make your kids thin and focus on making your kids healthy. Feed your kids nutritious food and take your kids on a hike. Or have a danceoff with them, or throw the frisbee, or destroy them at tennis because they have ridiculous short arms. Give them fuel and ways to burn it – because exercise is fun and satisfying, not because their bodies are gross and messed up and in need of repair. All of that applies whether your kids are fat or not, by the way. Thin kids deserve nutrition and exercise, too.

3. If your kid comes to YOU with questions, concerns, or anxieties about their weight, be kind. Make sure they know that body size has nothing to do with worth or intellect or potential, and that they can prioritise health without chasing an arbitrary number on the scale. Then do the tennis thing and all that other stuff in #2, above.

4. For that matter, be kind to yourself. Stop telling yourself you’re ugly and gross. Your kids hear you.

5a. Finally, if you really care about promoting health on a large scale, support policies that help make affordable, nutritious groceries available in low-income neighbourhoods. Fight to make those neighbourhoods safer and cleaner, so that families feel comfortable letting kids play and run outside. Lobby for a higher minimum wage, so that parents don’t have to work multiple jobs with unreliable hours, and they can have time to cook and eat at home with their families. Health is often a privilege, and it holds no inherent moral value.

5b. And fight for the dignity and humanity of fat people. Research has indicated that body shame and fat stigma can actually exacerbate weight gain. If widespread weight loss is really your pet project, let fat people live their lives free of abuse and ridicule.

They’ll weigh a lot less without you on their backs.

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Wokko Pisces

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Joined: 04 Oct 2005


PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 1:59 pm
Post subject: Reply with quote

http://hiit-blog.dailyhiit.com/hiit-life/fat-shaming-work/

There's an interesting article too and while coming from a far different place still highlights the shit that fat kids cop at school. I'm not sure I agree that a parent shouldn't be telling their kid that they're overweight if the reason for it is the kid coming home and chowing down on everything in sight then sitting for 4 hours on the X box. Of course berating and belittling isn't going to help but getting rid of shit food in the house and telling the porky child "We're only having healthy food around now, I've noticed you're packing on some weight and my food purchasing choices have probably caused that". No blame, just an observation and a solution. Better than rolling along in fairy land and letting your portly kid become obese.
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think positive Libra

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 2:49 pm
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I truly believe allowing your kids to get obese is child abuse.

From a young age, Lead by example, have the right food choices at home, have the right ratio of feel good foods at home. Do not use food as a baby sitter, or soother, and not all the time as a reward.

When it's age appropriate, Teach your children why too much fat is bad for them, why too much sugar is bad for them. Explain that extra weight causes unnecessary stress on joints, and vital organs.

I'm not going to say any more, cos I still remember the caning I got from someone the last time this subject came up!

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David Libra

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Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 3:02 pm
Post subject: Reply with quote

I think this is the key paragraph re: keeping kids physically healthy:

Quote:
2. Stop trying to make your kids thin and focus on making your kids healthy. Feed your kids nutritious food and take your kids on a hike. Or have a danceoff with them, or throw the frisbee, or destroy them at tennis because they have ridiculous short arms. Give them fuel and ways to burn it – because exercise is fun and satisfying, not because their bodies are gross and messed up and in need of repair. All of that applies whether your kids are fat or not, by the way. Thin kids deserve nutrition and exercise, too.


But all the rest is of equal, if not greater, importance. The dehumanisation of overweight people has to stop.

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Wokko Pisces

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Joined: 04 Oct 2005


PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 3:41 pm
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David wrote:
The dehumanisation of overweight people has to stop.


'Fat acceptance' has to stop. Giving people a free pass to be unhealthy isn't in the best interests of society and certainly isn't in the best interest of themselves. Shaming works to curtail negative and destructive behaviours and becoming obese is both of these. We relentlessly shame smokers for this very reason.

Why is beauty so terrifying? Why is what we find beautiful something that has to be attacked relentlessly? Being obese is not and never has been considered beautiful, so why are we trying to say that it suddenly is? If someone wants to be fat, that's on them and their choice, so be it. Lets not celebrate it or try fruitlessly to create some new paradigm of beauty. I have my suspicions that this whole thing is another rung of the whole 'equality' crap where nobody can be naturally placed above anyone else on any metric (except for unattractive or poor men, those guys can get £$%$ed).
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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 3:59 pm
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The idea that "shaming" is an effective response to addiction is terribly primitive and not in any way backed up by modern science. It's true that smokers are shamed in our society and that some people, perhaps even some in positions of power, misguidedly think that it's a good thing, but that doesn't make it right.

Weight is pretty much the same. As the author mentions at the end of the piece, shaming has been found to have more of a negative than positive effect on obesity. This is so because shame, social ostracisation and rejection lower people's self-esteem and make them more vulnerable to crutches like food, cigarettes and so on.

This "tough love" discourse—scream at someone long enough about their worthlessness and they'll eventually crack and become a better citizen—is complete nonsense. It already causes way too much damage.

Some people construct this as a purely gendered issue (and you've got to admit fat chicks get it worse than fat guys), but that's not the approach I or the writer of this article are taking. If we want a better, kinder, more empathetic society, we should be fighting for the dignity of all people, whatever their external characteristics. Physical health, while important, is a secondary goal.

(P.S. beauty is subjective.)

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think positive Libra

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 4:27 pm
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nothing to do with beauty, same as smoking, its about healthy.

encouragement is good, but sometimes it takes more than that. how do you tell someone something is a bad thing to do, for their own good, without them feeling shame? even if you don't mean it that way.

what do you do if they ask? do you take the husband stance??

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Wokko Pisces

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 4:34 pm
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I disagree on beauty being subjective, the things that are inherently 'beautiful' have remained the same for thousands of years. Sure there are different fashions of each era, but a beautiful person whether male or female has been considered beautiful in every time. Sure there is some scope for subjectivity, but someone who is amazingly beautiful or horrendously ugly will be seen as such by everyone who isn't trying to delude themselves or destroy the very concept of beauty in the first place.

Shame DOES work and always has. Shame is why so many men don't act like men anymore, because a generation of being shamed for masculine behaviour has changed that behaviour. Same with smoking rates. It has been known as something that is unhealthy and causes death since the 40s, but it wasn't until as a society we decided it is also undesirable and shameful that people have stopped doing it.

Shame also can be the final trigger to stop addiction. Sure, unrelentingly shaming someone for their behaviour can be counter productive, but feeling NO shame for destructive behaviour is even worse.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/rendezview/david-campbell-my-familys-alcoholism-stops-with-me/story-fnpug1je-1227287463512

Shame is a powerful motivator, because we're social animals and care what people think about us. Without shame there are many people who would never work, do drugs until they die, drink all day every day, drink and drive, sexually harrass, etc, etc. The same goes for unhealthy eating habits and staying lean, it is only people who want to increase their own value by destroying the benchmark who think otherwise.
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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 6:02 pm
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I would strongly contest your assertion that shame has been the main factor in reducing smoking rates. Surely the success is far more attributable to the information campaigns about the associated health risks. Smoking is still as cool as it ever was, really; we're now just told over and over again that it'll kill us horribly.

I'm not denying that shame is a behavioural motivator. My argument is that, for every superficial positive consequence (the overweight guy who so wants to be treated like a normal human being that he goes to the gym and ends up with a healthier build), you get five deep-seated negative ones (e.g. the same guy, never having learned to accept himself regardless of weight, packs it on again after a traumatic divorce and ends up killing himself because of the additional shame).

Your comments about beauty are utterly wrong. Forget about different time periods; there are radically different conceptions of beauty across the world now, both across different cultures and within them. Have you seen the sort of women Robert Crumb finds attractive? Have you seen the sort of women men who watch mainstream hardcore pornography seem to find attractive? I'm sure you and I are attracted to different women. And then when we do look back through history, you get the ancient Venus fertility statues, which would be considered obese today. The idea that beauty is some kind of objective quality is crazy.

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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Thu Apr 02, 2015 3:02 am
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David wrote:
I'm not denying that shame is a behavioural motivator. My argument is that, for every superficial positive consequence (the overweight guy who so wants to be treated like a normal human being that he goes to the gym and ends up with a healthier build), you get five deep-seated negative ones (e.g. the same guy, never having learned to accept himself regardless of weight, packs it on again after a traumatic divorce and ends up killing himself because of the additional shame).

This is the realistic version. Shame is very often a nuclear option, to be reserved for egregious social acts, and even then with due caution because at scale it may simply trigger an underground prohibition effect.

As with most of these discussions, the simplistic Darwinian view is hundreds of thousands of years out. There is no way to calculate the benefit of shame in advance of each and every context now we've made it off the savannah and into dense, complex, surplus-blessed urban environments.

When it comes to property theft, at first blush you might plausibly argue we've got shame levels about right, except when it comes to corporations and the wealthy, or the political-military complex, or such, who have the money to conceal their theft or redefine the very meaning of the word.

But, as David has rightly argued in my view, we may very well have crossed the positive "returns-to-shame" line with pedophilia, driving up rates. Or, at the very least, we have to concede the rate of shame—dialed up to about the highest level we have in the case of this particular social menace—isn't working.

In the case of obesity, shame is probably about the most scattershot force getting around because obesity has so many layers of causes. E.g., if you think shame is going to do anything positive to help folks who are socially isolated, time poor, under physical duress, anxious or depressed (or in the case of kids even indirectly affected by those things), then you'd probably best recuse yourself from giving an opinion without further research.

As ever, just because people know something works for them, or they can imagine something working for them, or it works for their best mate and sister-in-law, doesn't mean it's the bees knees of getting things done for the rest of humanity.

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think positive Libra

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 03, 2015 8:20 am
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You need to change the total to something like

Bad parenting allows overweight children

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Culprit Cancer



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PostPosted: Fri Apr 03, 2015 8:37 am
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Everyone is a expert on what other parents should do. What next, parents with skinny kids are bad? Parents who let their kids run around naked are bad? We have become a finger pointing society which is sickening.
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David Libra

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 03, 2015 11:42 am
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Completely agree, Culprit.

TP, that's an extraordinarily simplistic claim.

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think positive Libra

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 03, 2015 12:56 pm
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David wrote:
Completely agree, Culprit.

TP, that's an extraordinarily simplistic claim.


No, it's not.

For the most part, it's true.

Next time your in a food hall, or the supermarket, have a look around. Check out what the tubbys are chowing down on, check out what their parents are chowing down on, check out what's in their trolley.

Up until at least 10, parents supply the majority of the food kids eat, and also, control the amount of time spent in front of the idiot box, or outside playing, or wether they are involved in any sort of activity.

Just like the majority of over weight adults, it's incorrect nutrition, and lack of exercise. Simple maths, what goes in should only be equal to energy expenditure, if you over indulge, you get fat.

The worse part is, not the actual spare tyre, it's what that spare tyre Is generally made up of, simply carbs, ie sugar, and processed saturated fats. That right there is the stuff that kills you. Clogs your arteries, strangles your organs, and if applicable, feeds tumours.

You can carry on about hurting people's feelings all you want, but Obesity kills. It also drastically effects quality of life. And yes, it adds massively to the countries health bill.

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swoop42 Virgo

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 03, 2015 3:12 pm
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Some children are just genetically predisposed to be overweight like there parents.

Some children develop eating disorders which puts there life in immediate danger but hey they're nice and thin.

Personally I'd rather by carrying an extra few kilos and enjoying life than being someone overly obsessed with body weight, exercise and everything that goes in my mouth.

Parents like that could well be doing psychological harm to there children that carries through there life if they're not careful.

Being slim isn't a guarantee or necessarily a sign of good health either for a variety of reasons and who knows what dangerous stresses are being put on ones brain, heart, lungs as well as bones and joints by people who engage in obsessive exercise regimes over years and decades.

Being morbidly obese isn't a healthy or an attractive situation to find one self in no doubt but for me anyway nor is the complete opposite of vanity and weight obsession that results in ill health.

Rather be a little fat and jolly than skinny and miserable unwilling to sample some of life's delights.

Now someone pass me a New Yorker.

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