Let’s Start Arresting Parents of Obese Children for Child Abuse

When are people going to get it through their thick skulls that fat people aren’t happy and fat kids are not healthy. How can we as a society allow our children to eat their way to certain death. Something needs to be done and quickly. I have been accused on more than one occasion of being a little too radical but I want people to start taking responsibility for what is going on around them.

Children need to be disciplined and develop discipline. Parents today only want to be friends with their children and allow them to create dangerous environments that have long lasting affects on the rest of their lives. Parents need to get in the game of raising their children and part of raising them is not allowing them to eat themselves to death. You are the parent they are the child…you make the rules.

For a longtime now schools have been the only parents for a majority of the children out there and are the first line of defense when it comes to abuse. Why is it then that when a child comes to school with bruises on his body, or has “ratty” clothes on or looks a little thin, social services is called in right away and the parents are investigated and if wrong doing is encountered the child is often taken out of the home. Childhood obesity is abuse in the form of neglect and should be taken seriously by parents, schools and social services.

I’m not saying we should take the child out of the home right away like “The Brits” are doing…or maybe we should. A health official from London said “Child abuse is not just about hitting your children or sexually abusing them, it is also about neglect,” and two doctors also stated: Dr. Colin Waine, the director of the National Obesity Forum in Nottingham, England, called Connor’s lifestyle “extremely dangerous,” adding he is at risk of developing diabetes in his early teens, and cardiovascular and nervous system problems in his twenties. “He’s really at risk of dying by the time he’s 30,” Waine said.

Pediatrician Dr. Michael Markiewicz agreed. “I’m not saying they can’t care for him, but what they are doing is through the way they are treating him and feeding him, they are slowly killing him,” he said.

What I would like to see is someone stepping in and informing these parents that they need to educate themselves on proper eating habits, proper exercise for their children and engage in extra curricular activities so that their children can keep the weight off and live a healthier life as they grow into adulthood. It sucks but no one likes to be proactive about obesity as is obvious by it’s skyrocketing rates.

The threat of punishment is the only clear way that parents will get the message. I wish it didn’t have to be this way but I don’t think we have a choice anymore.