I heard a passing comment on the T.V this morning which made me think about child obesity. I think this definitely fits in to the category of being bad, not the children themselves but the parents. Childhood obesity has doubled in the last 10 years so now 1 in 4 children in England are obese! This obviously will lead to severe health problems for these children as they grow up, so why the hell won't their parents do something about it? As a mother myself, I would be disgusted with myself if I let my child become obese. This is the point, a child will eat anything that is bad for them if you let them. The job of being a parent is to guide and protect your child, not giving in to them when they beg you for more chips, cakes or sweets! There are parents out there with chilren who are severly obese but simply laugh it off as 'puppy fat' or say that they just want to make their child happy. Well, I'm sure that when that child reaches their 20's with a weight to match their age they will be running (hmmmm) to thank them!
Of course I'm not disputing the fact that there are conditions out there that can cause or make worse a child's weight gain such as Prader-willi syndrome, but this has just led to every
inadequate parent screaming 'oh my god, that's what my little one has!' simply as an excuse. At the end of the day how many obese children would you have found 100 or even 50 years ago? It all comes down to feeding them unhealthy food as and when they want it or when it is simply more 'convenient' to do so, and the basic understanding that a child also needs exercise- not just plonked in front of the telly! It angers me that parents can constitute this behaviour as nurturing, thinking they are making their child happy, when the fact of the matter is they are essentially killing them.
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