Should parents lose custody of their overweight/obese children? Currently, the court of public opinion is running amuck, with the recent debate of an Ohio mother losing custody of her 8 year old child who weighed in at an unimaginable 200lbs, when the average 8 year old weighs about 60lbs.
Cuyahoga County removed the child because case-workers considered the mother’s inability to get the child’s weight down, and classified it as a form of medical neglect. The county’s Children and Family Services agency said they stand by their decision to remove the child, which was approved by a judge. “We have worked very hard with this family for 20 months before it got to this point,” agency Administrator Patricia Rideout said.
There should be no debate when we’re talking about the welfare of a child, bad parenting is bad parenting. If the parents are physically abusive to a child we would have “NO DEBATE”. If the parents were starving a child we would have “NO DEBATE”. If the parents were on drugs and not caring for a child we would have “NO DEBATE”. When the parents are slowly killing a child with food we have a “DEBATE”. Why doesn’t NEGLECT mean NEGLECT like NO means NO?
A judge in Texas was suspended from his job and prosecuted in the court of public opinion for abusing his child for illegally downloading music, was this abuse or discipline? No matter how we look at this situation or the mother in Ohio’s situation, neglect is neglect and abuse is abuse.
I believe what people should be debating is, at what point should the state step-in to save a child’s life not debating the fact that the state did step-in to save a child’s life. Should the state have waited until the child developed a preventable medical disease or had a near death experience before this action was taken?
We all understand removing a child from a parent can be a difficult decision for anyone, based on the emotional effects this will have on the child. Overlook the effects of a child being removed from his or her parents for a moment, and think about the harm that can be caused by not removing a child from an unhealthy environment. The ridicule alone from a child being obese would be too much for most adults to handle; we need to consider the seriousness of childhood obesity, it’s become an epidemic. If we would just think about the overall welfare of a child, we would have “NO DEBATE” about removing a child!
By Adrian M Williams
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