Can an overweight child be considered abuse?

[Anonymous]

I have a friend who is obese and has a daughter who is eight years old. And I'm just so sad for her little girl. I know there are worse things a parent can do to their child but her daughter suffers socially and physically! Her daughter gets bullied at school for being overweight and the stress of her joints and the unhealthy lifestyle can shorten her life! And it breaks my heart for her mother to say being overweight is okay and she gives her daughter some candy. I'm just so sad that all of the junk food and unhealthy lifestyles are being passed down to children that are so damaging. People consider an overweight pet abuse. Why can't it be abuse for a child?

[Anonymous]

1. The parent might not know how to be healthy, how to keep their kid healthy. There is not enough free health education and it's not as obvious as it seems to most people.

2. Being healthy is a lot of time, work and money. She might not have the money to afford all the good foods, the time to cook them all and prepare them or the know how or ability to do it.

3. It's also a disease. There are actually genetics involved in a person's weight. The mom certainly isn't helping the situation but that girl might have been passed some bad genes from her parents that are making it even more difficult.

[Susan123]

While genetics plays a part and some people are predisposed to being bigger then others, obesity is not. There may be extremely rare diseases that cause you to put on weight easily it does not account for the epidemic of obese people. It's through eating bad foods but then as you say rightly good foods cost and there is so much processed foods out there.

[Susan123]

Yes it is for sure. Kids need to be encouraged to eat well. It's bad for their health and they risk problems.

[sketchy]

Yes, it is abuse - even in the eyes of the law.

Here in the UK, obese children have been taken into care because of their weight, and their parents have faced jail time.

It doesn't help that the media are still sending out seriously mixed-messages on the subject - there are a lot of shows basically saying "Its okay to be fat" (eg. there's one just starting, about a bunch of obese people putting on a production of Swan Lake).

[Anonymous]

not unless the child is very overweight like on the Internet or on Dr. Phil but even then if you would take the child on a show like that and explain that the child has a serious addiction to food they wouldn't call it abuse

[Anonymous]

I think once a kid is maybe about 14, no. When they are little, yeah. There's parents that out chains on refrigerators.

[yaddayaddayadda02]

It certainly is abuse.