The main question i have about this article for everyone is: Is it okay for the government to take children away from their parents purely based on the weight of the child?
This article talks about how a Third grader in Ohio was put into foster care because he was over 200 pounds. The county social worker claimed that his mother was not doing enough to control his weight. They said that the 8 year-old was considered severely obese and was in danger of having certain diseases such as diabetes. The mothers attorney is arguing that the boy was a honor-roll student, and that much worse than his weight is going to be the emotional impact he will have from getting taken from home. His mother had been trying to manage his diet and weight, but siblings and friends were sneaking him midnight snacks and other foods.
Also in his foster home his mother is having trouble keeping up on doctors appointments, and the foster parents are getting financial help from the government.
I wonder why it is that they did not just financially help the birth mother, and scheduled a nutritionist to come in and help the family with his weight? If any child is not being abused emotionally and physically, its going to make everything worse. Obviously This child needs help, but is taking him away from his mother and family the help he needs?
18 comments:
I feel like for the boy to reach such an unhealthy weight took a lot more negligence on the mothers part than shown. The child is probably well over 100lbs over weight. At even 100lbs or 125lbs, didn't the mother consider controlling his weight? I mean, I feel like this issue has been ongoing for a while and there's been negligence and that it takes more than just curbing his diet. As far as taking the child away from her, although there appears to be no physical or psychological abuse, there does seem to be negligence. I don't believe taking the child away was the correct thing to do though. As Hailey stated, it would probably be better to help the mother, check in monthly and see if his state gets better.
Although I don't agree with the decision to strip the child away from the family, his mother obviously lacks the responsibility of keeping her son's weight in check.
When a child is 8 years old, their diet is based solely on their guardian's judgment. At this age, the poor boy isn't aware of the dangers of his physical state, and his mom is essentially poisoning him with every extra cookie she lets slide.
You cannot gain 200 pounds overnight, so we know that the cycle of appeasing her son's whims must have been going on for years. Even though you want your son to be happy, letting him get that big is setting him up to die early, not live happily ever after.
Unless there is an apocalypse and all food is wiped out, this kid is only set up to fail.
According to this article (http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/national_world&id=8446740), Family Services worked with the mother for over 20 months, so the mother got ample opportunity to improve her son's state. The idea of someone's child being taken away from him or her makes me upset but so does the idea of a child being in an environment that allows him or her to develop life-altering or perhaps life-ending conditions (the boy was already on a breathing machine for his sleep apnea.) Moreover, the boy was placed in temporary foster care, i.e. they plan to return him to his mother in the near future. The main argument against the boy's placement in foster care that I have read is that his medical problems do not pose "imminent danger". But is it really worse to take custody now than to wait until he is already in serious danger? I think a more credible argument is that the psychological repercussions of being taken from his mother could exacerbate his addiction to food. Even so, he's not getting better at home and something should be done. It's the state's responsibility to protect its citizens.
The birth mother does not seem like the responsible mother she should be. Letting a kid get that fat at such a young age is putting him in danger. She might as well be giving the kid cigarettes and alcohol because that is how dangerous it is. It is her responsibility to make sure that her son is healthy. Also, if Family Services worked with her for 20 months and she still wasn't able to get her act together then I think she deserves to have her child taken away. It may sound cruel, but it is better for the child in the long run.
Obviously the mother was irresponsible in her choices of food for her child. Having a government agency hire a nutritionist would spend taxpayer dollars that could be spent somewhere else. There is no need to hire a nutritionist when a switch for a child to a more able and responsible guardian would easily solve his weight problem. Taking the boy away from his mother is probably the best decision for both the child and mother. Staying with the mother would have eventually killed the child, and also the mother now has time to consider what she did wrong and figure out how to grow as a mature and responsible parent.
It seems everyone likes to blame to mother for this. How hard is it to explain to an 8 year old, "if you continue to eat like this you are really going to die"?
If the mother and this obese child himself failed manage to regulate his eating habits to prevent himself from dying, evolution will take care of the problem.
Enough has been said.
While I do believe in Tim's view (to a lesser degree), and really do believe the mother and the child are at fault for this (I'll cut the kid some slack since he's a kid but the mom I don't think has an excuse), for argument's sake or to keep this discussion going I'll give them both the benefit of the doubt.
Its mentioned that the mother did try and curb his diet, and even had help from Family Services (as Adrianne said)to do so. Yet the child continued to gain weight. It is also mentioned in the article that his friends were sneaking him midnight snacks and such. So instead of blaming the mother, in my opinion I would blame the kid and his friends for continuing to feed him. Why would the friends bring him food? Probably because the kid himself asked them to.
I also find it hard to believe that even someone from Family Service's, working with the mother for 20 months, couldn't reduce this kid's weight. Maybe its something other than his diet? Maybe something is wrong with his health other than the obvious? Even 20 months with a Family Service member should have some kind of impact on his weight.
Blaming aside, does the government have the right to intervene and remove the child from his mother's care? I'd argue yes. All efforts to have this kid lose weight haven't been successful for one reason or another. Whether it be the mother, the friends, or the kids own fault for not being able to lose weight, the fact remains is he's still getting fatter. So a change in setting or enviroment may be required to have the kid lose weight, similar to people going to addiction clinics and staying there untill they lose their habits. While this might cause some mental stain on the kid's mental well being its better for him in the long run as colin said. It as kenny said is best for both mother and child.
{If you don't want to read all this, skip to the bottom.}
Though Timothy Leung is technically right about the evolution aspect, I'd have to disagree with the rest of his comment.
For one, 8 year olds are kinda stupid. Sure, you could explain that they'll die if they eat too much, but I highly doubt that they'll keep that in mind when eating at all, especially since 8th graders are still too young to fully understand abstract ideas like death (as determined by Piaget).
Secondly, though allowing the kid to die would indeed remove his and the mothers genes from the gene pool, it would do so at the cost of other people's dollars. With the child's health declining, he will likely be hospitalized for whatever disease the obesity has caused. Then someone has to pay the hospital bill. If the mother has insurance, that's nice, although it will raise insurance rates for everyone else. If she doesn't, and I assume she doesn't given her already shown lack of concern for health and long term planning, then the cost of keeping the child alive will fall largely on taxpayers (the mother likely can't pay all on her own, since statistics show a negative correlation between wealth and obesity, meaning the poor are on average fatter). It would be very hard to convince the hospital to let the kid die, as the Tea Party lacks the necessary influence to have its way in Ohio.
Furthermore, I don't even think is a primarily legal issue - I think the most important part of it is the culture in which she thought it was fine to let the kid end up like this. Unless she had some logical reasoning to do this, like she wanted to have a son that was a celebrity for being on The Biggest Losers or breaking a world weight record, she obviously felt that health concerns and even what the social workers said were both unimportant enough to be ignored. So why did she think that? I think Philip Zimbardo, organizer of the famed Stanford Prison Experiment, has a good view here. On an episode of TED talks, he discussed how good people do evil things because the situation they're in lets them - sort of a clarified combination of nature & nurture. I think this relates to America's values on individuality and individually achieved happiness. The US's value of individuality tends to encourage people to do what they want with less regard to what other think. In this case, the kids wanted donuts and the mom wanted him to be happy (albeit temporarily), and so the mom ignored the advice of the social workers.
Of course, she should've known the consequences of eating too much and considered them too, but some people are just going to be dumb, and that's much harder to fix than a cultural view of individuality. So what Zimbardo believes is the cure for such a situation is basically outside exposure. Like the way he realized the Stanford Prison was horribly wrong when given a fresh perspective, I believe the mother would have been likely to consider taking the social workers advice if someone she really trusted got her to look at the kid's state objectively, or if she lived in a community that was composed entirely of more health conscious people. Basically, she needed a stronger outside influence to break the individuality-so-ignore-what-others-think trait.
But of course, other people in her society likely had similar values on food, and were influenced by her in the same way she was influenced by them. Perhaps putting fat kids in a more health conscious environment (aka a foster home) will produce more health conscious communities in the future. Until then, I guess legal action like this is what we've got.
{summary: I think the mom's value on individuality caused her to let this happen, and we need a more health conscious society to stop this. Also, we can't just let the kid die, as that would cost more money to taxpayers}
Just to clarify, in light of Calvin's comment about the mom trying to help him, I don't believe she really tried very hard. I mean, it was kind of obvious that he was still fat, and she could've stopped his mid-night snacking and such if she really tried.
I agree with previous comments made about the fault being on the mothers shoulders. An 8 year old can't be held responsible for knowing how to take care of himself if such values were never impressed upon him as a child and clearly, they were not. this child needed to be taken away from his mother because she has poisoned not only his body, but she instilled in him habbits from which he will not soon recover. In order to take care of the weight problem in the United States, issues such as this need to be confronted directly and efficiently.
In agreement with all of the other comments, especially Brynn's comment. From what is currently known, it was right for the child to be taken away from the mother. The child's obesity may definitely reflect the mother's incapability of properly raising her child. However, going back to Calvin's comment, there is the possiblility that the child's weight may not be entirely the mother's fault. I think more information is needed, such as the child's diet and whatever family medical history that can be provided in order to make a final judgement.
I agree with Colin. This story is so interesting, and it brings up a really good debate. Personally, I feel like putting the kid in foster care isn't going to do much. Foster care might be good for him and his weight, but foster parents are not his own parents, and getting taken away can put stress on him and that can lead to other problems for him.
I feel like the mother should have gotten a fair enough warning in advance to try to turn his diet around, if she didn't. If someone told her that she was going to get her son taken away, she might have been a little more serious about cracking down on his food intake.
In addition, I feel like she should have gotten more money from the government to get a professional to come to their house (not going to the doctor) or to buy some healthy food (which can get very pricy) because her situation is a little more serious than other peoples.
Being 200 pounds as a 3rd grader is a lot, but when you think about it thousands of children eat fast food every day but still don't get overweight as he seems to be. I feel like his weight problem is probably from a hormonal imbalance or some other problem going on in his body that is leading to his weight.
I don't think that taking the child away from his mom was the right thing to do. Yes, the mother does lack judgment regarding how she originally cared for her child, but it isn't fair to place all the blame on her (it mentioned that siblings and friends were sneaking him food). It is also possible that the child has a hormonal imbalance, as said before. With the child in foster care it will only increase his problems. He should be returned to his mom and receive other forms of medical attention.
I'm having the same thoughts as Hailey: why not help the mother instead of sending the child off to foster care? Since the child has already "bonded with the mother", it would be somewhat easier for the mother to manage her child's weight with the help of a nutritionist. From reading the post, it is not completely the mother or child's fault; the child's siblings and friends were giving him midnight snacks in addition to his (probably) three meals a day. The child is a slightly at fault for accepting the food instead of rejecting because it will fuel his obesity problem. It's really his decision whether or not he wants to fix his obesity problem. The mother's attorney does make an interesting point about his grades, and the question of how the boy will react to having to live with foster parents.
If taking the child to a foster care is going to help the child, I think it's better that he's taken away. I'm sure the child will thank the government for helping him in the long run. If I was put in this situation as a child, I'm sure I would feel anger and bitter towards my mom when I get older. Imagine how the kid will feel when he's just a few years older. He'll realize how much of a danger his mother was to him. He'll see how disgusting his mom was for putting him in a situation that may take years to get out of. When health becomes an issue, I think the government has the right to intervene.
I feel split on this issue. I know that if a child is in danger, the government is legally obligated to take the child away and place them in a safer environment. At the same time however, the child was being taken care of. Of course he was drastically overweight, but by being removed from his mother will cause emotionally traumatized. It's hard to say on issues like these. Either way something had to change.
I believe that it is completely wrong to take away the child from its mother, just because of his weight. This is completely unfair. They should of at least gave the mom a warning or just helped her out with getting the kid a personal trainer and a nutritionist. Taking the child away from its parent should be the last resort. It might even put more damage on the kid. I strongly disagree with taking away the kid from his mother.
Though this child is at a high risk for developing an illness, it does not justify taking him away from his mother. I agree with Marissa, if he is taken away from his mother it will have an emotional impact on him that will keep him from improving his diet. Obesity should be dealt with carefully, and certain measures should be taken in which the mother is forced to change her method of parenting rather than taking the child away to a foster home.
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