1. Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!

DHS takes obese kid from home

Discussion in 'News & Current Events' started by Gina B, Nov 28, 2011.

  1. Gina B

    Gina B Active Member

    Joined:
    Dec 30, 2000
    Messages:
    16,944
    Likes Received:
    1
    http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/11/obese_cleveland_heights_child.html

    Note that later on, the reasoning for not removing ALL obese kids is that there's not enough foster parents or money. Not that you can't go around taking away all kids who are overweight!

    It's also interesting to note that the state is not only paying for foster care, they're paying for extra services and now looking into a personal trainer for the kid, rather than offering these services to the parent and keeping the kid at home.

    The goal of DHS is SUPPOSED to be to offers services to families in need of them and try to keep families united whenever possible. And it certainly seems as if it would have been a much better idea to do that.

    Dang. If they ever start taking away all the overweight kids from their families in this state, I think 90% of the kids will be in foster care. YIKES! I've run into 8 year olds who could crush me, and I'm not small. There's some big ol' kids like I've NEVER seen in this state!
     
  2. plain_n_simple

    plain_n_simple Active Member

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2011
    Messages:
    1,887
    Likes Received:
    6
    Welcome to the overzealous world of Social Services. Get them in the system and everybody makes money. Everybody gets a promotion, the system gets more money from the state, and politicians get re-elected. Foster parenting is quite a money maker, strange how half of all abuse comes from foster care.
     
  3. Bro. Curtis

    Bro. Curtis <img src =/curtis.gif>
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Oct 25, 2001
    Messages:
    22,016
    Likes Received:
    487
    Faith:
    Baptist
    I worked at a "secure treatment center" for juvinile delinquents for nine years. I have seen the absolute worst of it, so perhaps I am a little jaded. Kids who are a danger let out due to lack of funding, kids who were not a danger kept, because the funding was there, beds funded but not meds, meds adjusted & changed...

    We often had kids removed from their homes due to abuse, or neglect, or "Chins Petitions", placed here for weeks at a time. Let me tell you, you do NOT want your kid ending up in a place like this.

    It is scary to think about.
     
  4. annsni

    annsni Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    May 30, 2006
    Messages:
    20,914
    Likes Received:
    706
    My daughter is almost 9 and I can't imagine her being ripped from her security and family and thrust into foster care. Do they do that for parents who smoke? NO.

    Work with this family. Don't tear a child from his home. He's going to have WAY more problems with having had this happen than from being obese. :(
     
  5. freeatlast

    freeatlast New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 1, 2004
    Messages:
    10,295
    Likes Received:
    0
    First off the state has no business even getting involved in this unless the family ask for some help and the family should be able to stop it any time they so desire.We are heading for a socialist government no different then under Stalin.
     
  6. jaigner

    jaigner Active Member

    Joined:
    Nov 19, 2009
    Messages:
    2,274
    Likes Received:
    0
    I take the point that government may be overstepping here, but it is nothing short of abuse to allow a child to become so obese.

    Of course, that's assuming there is no underlying health issue.
     
  7. Amy.G

    Amy.G New Member

    Joined:
    Sep 25, 2006
    Messages:
    13,103
    Likes Received:
    4
    According to a news report this morning, DHS did work with the family for about 20 months before taking the child.

    Having said that, I do NOT believe they have the right to take a child from the home. Government needs to get it's big nose out our personal business. That is NOT the role of government.
     
  8. Gina B

    Gina B Active Member

    Joined:
    Dec 30, 2000
    Messages:
    16,944
    Likes Received:
    1
    Yep, they did, but what gets me is that they are offering the foster parent help that they did not offer in his own home. From what I've seen, DHS's concept of "working" with a family is investigating, threatening, and bullying the family into doing what DHS wants them to do, whether it is reasonable or not and at the family's own expense. Which would be fine if it they didn't turn around and take the kids if the family couldn't afford it, then go ahead and pay for the services anyhow once the kids are in foster care.


    I'm in a support group with many other parents in similar situations with mentally ill children that require 24 hour monitoring. There are many DHS run programs that "help," but that help most often goes to foster and/or adoptive parents. Even parents who just need professional respite care maybe once a month can't get it...but foster/adoptive parents often can get x number of hours per week. There are many parents who reach their breaking point with lack of help and could really use that break in order to hep them stay sane and to HELP PREVENT CHILD ABUSE because a child who requires 24 hour attention is EXHAUSTING and exhausted, stressed out parents are more likely to snap or lash out.

    So when these parents call the agency set up to help families, DHS tells the parents that their only option is to surrender the kids to DHS. At that point, they will be put into foster care and the foster parents will be able to receive respite care for the child. The parents? They will be charged with abandonment.

    Many people who hear of parents snapping think "why didn't they just give the child up for adoption instead of doing that?"
    Well, you can't just do that. I have an acquaintance with a mentally ill son who promised to throw his newborn sibling down the stairs and kill him/her (not born yet) and has been very violent in the past. After trying everything on earth as far as therapy and such, the woman feared for her life and the life of her newborn, so the parents asked about adoption and got that answer! "Sure, you can bring him in and do that, but you need to be aware that you'll be charged with abandonment." She was left with the choice to either risk having herself hurt and her newborn killed unless her and her husband took turns sleeping or give birth in prison and then most likely lose custody of the baby. Worse, DHS would try to keep the siblings together in the same foster home or at least make sure that the siblings had visitation with each other.

    Yep, Children and Family Services. That's what they're called. That's not what they do.
     
  9. plain_n_simple

    plain_n_simple Active Member

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2011
    Messages:
    1,887
    Likes Received:
    6
    It's an amazing backwards thing Gina. I believe they started out ok with the right thinking that some families are breeding grounds for abuse, and some are. But I think the system became jaded over the years and suspects anyone and everyone of some sort of guilt. Bad doctrine.
     
  10. Benjamin

    Benjamin Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2004
    Messages:
    8,423
    Likes Received:
    1,160
    Faith:
    Baptist
    This subject was already being discussed before it got derailed with off topic bickering.

    http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=75397

    I would seem people here aren’t realizing the seriousness of the health detriments this child is facing at his level of morbid obesity. The poor child is only 8 years old and because of parental neglect to provide proper care his quality of life has been severely diminished. He will suffer from all sorts of pathologies and is in danger of losing his life at a very early age. I understand attention was brought to this situation because his mother took him to be treated for obesity caused sleep apnea; that alone will harm him and could kill him. He would be better off if he was starving to death, yet no one would have a problem taking him from the home if he unconsciously wasn’t being fed “enough”. But whoa to standing up against harming a child by grossly overfeeding him! All these fear mongering comparisons which claim it will lead to unscrupulous taking of other kids from their homes is simply irrational rhetorical nonsense.

    And frankly, it is a common type of nonsense driven by those who have bought in to society’s political correctness that any offense against obesity is a taboo. These kinds of defense attitudes against the clearly unhealthful effects of morbid obesity are typical of the root problems of why our country is in the shape that it is. Excuses, denial of the problem, lack of assuming responsibility, attack anyone who goes against the taboo of raising or addressing the subject of the health deficits of obesity and attempt to make them out as bigots. …I don’t have time for the nonsense going on here but I pray about it and for those whose lives are affected by it.


    PS. plain n simple, you are repeating the same arguments which have been addressed more than once, and sir, you are part of that "breeding ground" I speak of that is doing harm to our society by means of rhetorical fear mongering while you ignore the facts of this case and carry on in denial.
     
  11. plain_n_simple

    plain_n_simple Active Member

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2011
    Messages:
    1,887
    Likes Received:
    6
    Perhaps Benjamin I have some experience with how CPS treats people in general. This case is a sad one and should be addressed you are correct. No one should let a child over eat or under eat, you are right. However the documentation goes on for miles for each state recording the unjust ways CPS repeatedly breaks up families for no good reason, if you care to look. Lawyers, judges, former employees, social workers, former foster parents and families involved all have testamonies of this ongoing tragedy compiled in a massive data bank to urge legislators to police these agencies. If you think this is only a fear tactic you are sadly mistaken and have done zero research or interviews with real participants to form your rather flipant opininion. That is doing the real harm to our families sir. Get some experience.
     
  12. freeatlast

    freeatlast New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 1, 2004
    Messages:
    10,295
    Likes Received:
    0
    We could debate how agencies like CPS do good and how they do evil all day and both sides would hold some truth., The issue is not about if they are doing good or evil for a particular child or issue. The real issue is that they are a government entity that has taken away the rights of the people in the name of doing good as they override the constitution putting themselves in place of our freedoms and rights. The same with the TSA, homeland security, and other government entities. We the people are very close to losing every bit of freedoms and rights we have because people support these non constitutional government agencies because of the false claim they are doing more good then harm. The idea that the government knows best is a downward slope on a fast track state run government backed by the military.
     
  13. Benjamin

    Benjamin Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2004
    Messages:
    8,423
    Likes Received:
    1,160
    Faith:
    Baptist
    That's the point, this case is justified.
    So this statement is simply untrue. By making untrue statements such as this you and others are supporting a type of child abuse! I have been outraged at some of the actions of the CPS in the past myself, but again, to use untrue statements in defense of this case amounts to misguided uproar (fear mongering) where there shouldn't be.Your acusations are false because you make them in regards to this case, that is denial of the problem or sticking your head in a hole at best , and outright lying and defending abuse at worst.
     
    #13 Benjamin, Nov 30, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 30, 2011
  14. Gina B

    Gina B Active Member

    Joined:
    Dec 30, 2000
    Messages:
    16,944
    Likes Received:
    1
    I'll check out the other thread later today if possible.

    If I'm not mistaken, aren't you a social worker, Ben, are somehow involved in the agency? That certainly does lend you some experience, although you have to admit that there are some departments are great, some are terrible, just as individual social workers are vastly different. I believe that corruption is often allowed to go unchecked. For example, I knew of one family that had social services threaten with removing their children if they did not let them in. They came in, stripped and photographed her child completely nude, claiming it was for the purpose of having proof or lack of it on claims of the child being physically abused.

    You can't tell me that when they remove a child and take the required photos, they all remain perfectly safe and away from any perverts.

    Nobody can tell me it's okay to perform invasive checks on female minors when a charge of s*x abuse happens, but they do and say it is in the name of clearing the family and keeping the child safe.

    It's ridiculous that this agency has the power they have. It is NOT necessary for them to have that much power. It is not okay for anyone on earth to be able to make an anonymous call and have that result in the government removing children from classes at school to interview them, then going to family's home to investigate based on an anonymous accusation that isn't accompanied by any proof at all. That is crazy.

    It's ridiculous that they can automatically remove a child from a home based on an anonymous call claiming s*x abuse, in the name of protecting the child. Yet they can do that and perform personal physical examinations.

    It's messed up that even if the person identifies themselves, they can refuse to let themselves be named to those they accused. I strongly believe that at the least, a person must provide the name, but if the charges turn out to be false, the falsely accused should be told who their accuser was and appropriate charges be made against the false accuser.

    They have gone past their job and into doing more harm than good now. SO much time and money is being wasted on responding to these crazy calls.

    And seriously! When this idiot called on me and they spent all this time and effort to investigate "she treats the ones different than the others" and they did what they did and then came to my home, looked in my refrigerator and cupboards, demanded to know everyone's medical history and list of medications...this is good? This is okay? This wasn't a violation of my privacy? It's okay that I have no recourse and that the idiot who called doesn't have to face any repercussions for wasting government time and money, for making false accusations and for putting my job at risk, scaring my children, and disrupting our lives?

    Don't defend them. They're wrong.
     
  15. freeatlast

    freeatlast New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 1, 2004
    Messages:
    10,295
    Likes Received:
    0
    CPS is ruled by a group of people who no regards for the constitution and what it stands for. Their constant seeking to turn the nation into a socialist state run government is alarming.
     
  16. Benjamin

    Benjamin Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2004
    Messages:
    8,423
    Likes Received:
    1,160
    Faith:
    Baptist
    No system is perfect, BTW, a particular subspecies of a false dilemma is a common rhetorical ploy which is something called a “perfectionist fallacy”, when a plan is under consideration is goes like this: If policy X will not meet our goals as well as we’d like them met (i.e. perfectly), then policy X should be rejected. The principle downgrades policy X simply because it is not perfect.

    On that note, what does any of your arguments have to do with whether or not this abused child should be taken from his home for his protection? Does your fallacious “argument from pity” concerning an unrelated matter offer valid reasoning why this abused and neglected child should not be protected from further abuse by removing him from his unscrupulous home?

    Speaking of fallacy, do you have any idea how fishy it’s getting around here with all those who bring a topics into a discussion which distracts from the original point (i.e. should a child be removed from his home if his health is in danger because of an irresponsible parent is causing him to be morbidly obese?) yep, to be specific I think this smells like red herring to me.

    What else you got to support your view that morbidly obese children, whose lives and well-being are in danger, should not be taken from their neglectful home? How about: “If we let X happen, the first thing you know, Y will be happening” Ahhhh, …. let me think about that one……BZZZZZTTT, nope, slippery slope fallacy.


    I’m six months away from getting a license in Physical Therapy, God willing. My experience comes through learning about pathologies, neurological disorders, orthopedic management, and performing exercise and well-being therapeutic interventions on patients. When it comes to down to the root cause of the disorders associated with the need for rehabilitation what do you think is the most common cause? That’s right! Obesity, so my experience is surrounded by this epidemic.

    You continue with making comparisons of taking a morbidly obese 8 year old away from his neglectful parent and base your argument on how this will amount to the CPS abusing a child by invasion of privacy while checking to see if they have been sexually abused? Further claiming they are taking pictures and using them for perverted reasons, and this is your reasoning to take up offense against this child being removed for the abuse that's happening to him?

    Your argument is based on getting others to accept your position by use of a “scare tactic” which is, once again, fallacy.

    But let me humor your comparison of how by granting the power to remove a child from his home in order to contend with the irresponsibility of a parent raising him to a detrimental life altering stage of morbid obesity to your suggestion that this is leading up to invasion of privacy to determine sexual abuse or not.

    I’ve seen the effects of morbid obesity first hand and how terrible it can be. Let me give an example of one of my clinical practicum patient’s from last summer:

    A 400lb 27 year old woman who got the flu and because of her overburdened immune system ended up in a coma. This woman, after laying in a coma for weeks did not have the strength to get out of bed (because of her weight) she laid there and deteriorated with atrophy, drop foot, joint stiffness and loss of range of motion throughout. She could not participate in PT or make progress so was discharged from it because Medicare will not continue to pay for treatment if no progress is made. Oh, let’s not forget! The government is flipping the bill for this woman to live with 24hr skilled nursing care (that’s you and me that are paying for her bills BTW!) for over a year, so far.

    Anyway, people battled to get her another try with PT and she became my patient. I knew that I had to document progress or she would quickly be dropped again. She was uncooperative and content where she was at, it hurt too much to move and she didn’t believe she would ever walk again anyway. It seemed hopeless.

    You want to talk about invasion of privacy? She went to the bathroom in a large diaper where she laid. She couldn’t even wipe herself. This wasn’t a one time thing either, this was everyday, and all this was brought on because of obesity.

    You’ve got to know me to know what it means when I say the battle was on! Everything was a battle with her from not being cleaned up, dressed and ready, to simply getting her to begin by just getting her to put forth some effort to move each joint 10 times. If you think it was fun for me to roll this woman, which I didn’t even know, on her side and hold her so a nurse could wipe her clean (oh yeah, not to forget, and let the nurse take advantage of the situation to treat her yeast infection and bed sores) just so we could get clothes on her …it was not! I did not what to see that and at times I had to fight back gagging from the vision, the smell, and the slimy feeling of her skin as it wrapped around my hands and arms.

    Treatments were 1 hour and I was lucky to get her to attempt to move hip, knee, ankle, shoulder, elbow and wrist joints a couple times each and then attempt to sit up in which I proceeded to push her up and get her legs off the side of the bed while she cried so that I could document a transfer “supine → sidelying → sitting edge of bed with max assist of 3 people” and show some therapy took place, and that was the extent of the first therapy session with her which run into my lunch time, not that I wanted it anymore.

    We managed a sliding board transfer to her wheel chair a week later (after lots of “discussion”) and this was the first time she had made the transfer a wheel chair without a Hoyer lift in over a year. A 60” safety gait belt wouldn’t fit around her so I had to put two of them together while doing this. Out of breath I quickly wheeled her down to the gym, had her do a few leg extensions and stopped on the way back to her room so she could tell a couple friends of her “huge” accomplishment (sliding across a board to a chair with three people helping).

    I continued to schedule her before my lunch and used my time just so we could get a few things done. After 5 weeks I had her on a routine that was regularly showing progression and she stood with me for 5 seconds after helping her up and then just holding the gate belt. That’s how I remember her as I last worked with her before leaving; can you imagine the detrimental effects of obesity bringing you down to the level of a major milestone in your life being able to stand for 5 seconds. I can.

    I had two other patients in similar condition I doubt either is alive now.

    I had an obese Total Hip Arthroplasty patient that needed back surgery and the other hip replaced also that was one year younger than me.

    Overweight diabetic patients were very common, many with amputated toes and feet. (BTW, cases of diabetes are expected to double in the next 10 years and the cost to treat it is expected to triple…and again, these people don’t work and who do you think is going to be paying for their treatments?)

    I am leaning toward working in an outpatient clinic and treating people with diabetes which highly focuses on helping them to make lifestyle changes. Why, because their weight problems are what is causing the pathology.

    Don’t defend parents who allow their children to get to this condition, they're wrong.


     
  17. Gina B

    Gina B Active Member

    Joined:
    Dec 30, 2000
    Messages:
    16,944
    Likes Received:
    1
    Okay, I'll get to this exact case at the end of this post, Benjamin. I seriously thought you were a social worker...there is a guy on here who is and I remembered wrong. Perhaps he's no longer on the board.

    I have to agree about the vast differences in children that was brought up in the other thread. They don't all fit into the growth chart. For some, being off the chart size-wise may or may not be perfectly normal for them.

    My own children are excellent examples. They all are given the same food, but all are very different in body build and weight. The heaviest one is the one who exercises frequently, jogs, plays team sports, etc.. The skinniest one is the least active. It's interesting to see!

    Now a 200 lb 8 year old? It's not uncommon here in Oklahoma to see some VERY large children and yes, I've seen kids who appear to be that age and size in the schools.

    What should parents do about this if there are no underlying physical causes?
    I see a few reasons why a parent might have a very difficult time dealing with a child who has this issue.

    1. Poverty. Poor people tend to buy foods that are cheap and filling. That includes lots of pasta, cheap white bread, peanut butter and jelly, etc.. The most affordable and filling foods are heavily processed and often contain chemicals and hormones. This is heavy and contributes to obesity.

    2. Lack of exercise. A child is sitting in a classroom for the majority of their waking hours, five days a week. Gym is often no longer a requirement. Then they go home and do homework. If they're not self-motivated to exercise, what is there to do? I live in a major city. After school, the caregiver usually has worked all day, come home, and is in the house preparing dinner, doing housework, helping with homework, etc. and is not going to have the time to take the child out to a park to exercise or do exercise videos i the home.

    3. What the parents know. Decent cooking is all too often a thing of the past. I repeatedly find parents who have no clue when it comes to preparing meals. They aren't teaching their kids how to cook either, because they don't know themselves. When my one daughter to take a home-ec class, I thought it was pretty cool. She came home TICKED because learning to bake a home-made cake consisted of learning to follow the directions on the box of cake mix. When they made tacos, the meat was precooked and they just heated it in the microwave. They baked a frozen pizza. On and on. That's how people are being taught. This is what Americans are doing...using unhealthy, prepared foods on a regular basis.

    Add in single parents, lack of jobs, high stress, tons of demands on families for time, and then...add in the fact that many forms of discipline that may work on a child who refuses to follow a dietary plan are considered abuse. I know of one family with a child who was thin and getting unhealthy because they tried to feed him healthy and he decided to just not eat. The doctor told them to give him what he wanted so he had SOMETHING in him. Child wins, gets his way, stays unhealthy. Parents were told that it was against the law to withhold food in that case.
    It goes the other way too. Kids who are overweight and refuse to eat healthy, sneak food at home, steal it from other places. One child I know with OCD hoards food and is addicted to sugar. She will steal it from anyone anywhere, get up at night and steal. The parents installed video cameras and alarms, but then DHS told the parents that it was an invasion of her privacy and asked the family to take down the alarms. While spanking and using a switch is legal in the state, it can't leave a mark and doesn't help. The social workers told the family that if the consequence makes the child uncomfortable (they were trying power sitting at the time) then they shouldn't use it.

    The point is that DHS is overstepping, making rules that help make children unhealthy and disrespectful because it teaches kids that they have power over the parents because all they have to do is pick up the phone, and DHS comes and the parents get in trouble.

    In this particular case with this boy? Let's pretend that DHS had a right to step in. Okay, great. They are to step in and offer services. Did they? It certainly doesn't appear that they did as much as they could. The parent was taking the child to a doctor and to a weight management program and what was accomplished in the program began to fail. DHS then removed the child, put him in foster care, and offered the foster parents help for their ward of the state that THEY DID NOT OFFER THE PARENT for the same child.

    Since the goal of DHS is *supposed* to be to offer parents help they need and educate parents on proper care when the parents show a lack of knowledge for proper care, why did they not do that in this case? If the foster parent is better than the parent, why does DHS need to offer the foster parent options and support that they did not offer this child's mother? Logic says that if the parent is being abusive and the foster parent is not, then the child should thrive in foster care without services from DHS or at least only the same amount of services that DHS offered the family. The mom apparently was doing something right. This is an honor student. Honor students rarely just happen to pop up out of homes that are truly abusive. This, along with the mother's working with DHS as much as she did, leads me to believe that this is a parent who simply could have used the same services that DHS is now offering the foster home. Then when those services work, DHS will use it against the parent to prove that removing the child was beneficial and further proof that he was neglected in the home.
    That's wrong.
    The family should have been offered the same services first in this case.

    Why didn't that happen?

    Now, I do have to add something about parenting. When it comes to food, where do we draw the line on what is abuse and what isn't? We can SEE overweight. We can see underweight.
    We can't physically look and see if a kid who appears to be perfectly normal is really quite ill inside from a poor diet or at risk of becoming so. I have seen school lunches that are simply horrid. I believe that my stepdaughter's school abused her and caused her physical harm during a party where she came home stuffed with cookies, cake and candy. She knew better than to eat all that, so when she came home with her eyes glazed over and very quiet, I wasn't sure why because she didn't tell me until later. Now I know that next time I see her like that, I need to take her to the doctor because she very likely had a dangerous amount of sugar in her blood. Some of the parties at school are insane in what they offer kids. I've seen a table for a class of 24 kids, 7-8 years old, loaded with stuff each kid brought in. Each one expected to bring in 24 servings. Cupcakes, cake, packets of candy, cans of soda, cookies, chips, donuts, you name it. The kids end up with 24 different junk foods, and you know that the serving sizes are typically way too big for the average 7-8 year old.

    Why isn't DHS stepping into the schools to stop this insanity?

    What about the epidemic of kids reaching puberty at ridiculously early ages and the refusal of many to relate it to what it is...a diet of foods pumped full of growth hormones, chemicals, and other drugs? People have little to no control over what is sold in the grocery store. In TONS of places, buying organic is too expensive for an average family to afford. Even a kid on what appears to be a healthy diet may actually be very unhealthy. There are kids who eat nothing but junk and don't get overweight, but they do have vitamin deficiencies and/or are causing long term damage to their bodies. This is just as bad as being overweight or underweight, provided that the definition of over and under is not just according to the growth chart, but takes the child's body type and family history into consideration.

    Not exercising is bad for a kid. What about a child who is out of shape? What about a child whose eyes are being destroyed by hours of video games and television? There are so many ways to be physically unhealthy in ways that will have ill effects on the body, so why focus only on the ones that can be suspected because of physical appearances?

    Maybe, just maybe, the problems in this country with overweight kids could be helped not by DHS workers, but could start with better regulation of the nation's food supply. Stop giving animals growth hormones and drugs, stop with genetically modified foods, and by all means make sure that foods have warning labels that let people know this is what the food contains and is so that people know what they are feeding their families.

    That's where to start. Not with DHS. DHS is not the solution to overweight children.
     
  18. Benjamin

    Benjamin Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2004
    Messages:
    8,423
    Likes Received:
    1,160
    Faith:
    Baptist
    Ha-ha, hope you know I was poking fun and I’m trying not to be too offensive. I don’t want leave this but I will have to hurry because I’m preparing for some killer finals. This is getting long and I'll try to lighten up.

    I’ve been thought of as worse. ;)

    At this extreme one doesn’t even need a chart, only his eyes and common sense.



    It IS interesting how some can seemingly eat more than others without the extra weight gain, but it is still not an excuse to eat more than one needs. You probably be surprised at how many extremely overweight people have told me they practically don’t eat anything (but lettuce) and still gain weight, but I know better and have not only busted many quite a few times, but had them admit they were not being honest about it.


    This is of no surprised and it is a tragedy. Oklahoma ranks 6th in the nation in obesity and their percentages have been steadily rising by about ½% a year for some time. This gives insight to the rising epidemic and supports what I said earlier about the cases of diabetes double and the cost to treat it tripling in the next 10 years. This should be a big concern for everyone.



    They should educate themselves about the philological and psychological reasons this epidemic is getting so out of control and why and how it is affecting their families and care enough to do something out it.

    Not a very good excuse. I could buy much more nutritious food on the same budget that they spend on junk. It is easy to plan better meals and there is a lot of help out there to get started, the crux of the problem is that people just aren’t willing to make the effort. Another common argument is that they don’t have enough time, but that too is an excuse and I assure you if I were to spend a few days with them I could find plenty of time to prioritize for the task.


    It aggravates the heck out of me that our society doesn’t value physical fitness more as an important part of education. It goes along with the mindset that denies the urgency to address obesity. They will say there is not enough money, yet the rising production levels from the kids that learned to live healthier lives lead to a much more lucrative society for many reasons.



    No argument from me on that. You outta hear me rant about the way people eat and what they buy and eat from the grocery stores. We have become a society that only cares about the quick fix whether it be of food or of pharmaceuticals to temporarily fix the health problems associated with the poor diets and lifestyles while they disregard the side effects from both.

    Poor parenting is not an excuse, simple as that. I guarantee I could take the steps necessary to gain control of the food intake of any child in my home.
     
    #18 Benjamin, Dec 2, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 2, 2011
  19. Benjamin

    Benjamin Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2004
    Messages:
    8,423
    Likes Received:
    1,160
    Faith:
    Baptist


    That is nothing but scapegoating. My teenage children would laugh at such a notion or the thought of even attempting such a thing.



    I don’t have to pretend that DHS had a “right” (obligation) to protect this child’s well-being. This parent was worked with for over a year after taking the child to the doctor for breathing problems which were dangerously associated with obesity caused sleep apnea, yet she still failed to take on the responsibility to give vital care to her child in all that time.


    I don’t have time to get into the logical conclusions of your statements, but it sure isn’t logical that this parent was providing the intervention needed to raise this child safely and this lack of responsibility certainly can not be blamed on the DHS.


    Yes, the responsibility of providing a proper diet goes beyond what we can see on the surface.


    I agree diets are horrible but this does not excuse the condition this child was in or give reason why he should not be protected.


    What about it? Poor parenting which allows children to sit in front of video games all day does not justify not taking this child away from an abusive and life-threating situation.


    I couldn’t agree more that the nation’s food supply regulations are faulty and misguided. Unfortunately a lot of this is due to supply and demand and the people in our society which are buying that crap and thereby enable it to keep being produced.


    Correct, DHS should not have to be the solution, that responsibilty should fall on people addressing the problems of obesity themselves instead on denying it, making excuses, and considering the subject a taboo to even bring up, but there are cases when I am glad the DHS is there to intervene when a child is in danger and this one of them.
     
Loading...