22 Sep 06
Originally posted by 7ate9Why not prosecute parents who don't teach their kids to drive very well? Or what about prosecuting parents who push their kids into too many activities? Or we could prosecute parents who let their kids stay out late, or have a glass of wine at the family table, or who allow their kids to smoke, or watch too much TV, or play computer games, or spend time on myspace, or spend too long on their mobile phones ....
Was listening to some talk-back radio where they were talking about prosecuting parents who had over-weight children.
It went along the lines that it isn't that much different from people who bash their kids as the children do suffer consequences and those parents should be treated as criminals. If your child exceeds a set weight based on certain variables such as height and age then the parents get prosecuted.
Come to think of it, why not prosecute parents who raise their kids too liberal, or too right wing, or too red or too blue? or who raise their kids to be Buddhists or Muslims or Christians? Or .....
The reality of parenting is that it's a lottery. Some are good, some not so good. Some things parents do cause harm, or may cause harm. Some things don't.
Surely the intent of the parents has to be a pretty major factor - in fact, probably the only factor.
Fat kids don't get that way because their parents are out to harm them. The harm is an incidental side effect. We shouldn't be alienating groups by prosecuting - we should be educating. teaching people how to be good parents ...
22 Sep 06
Originally posted by 7ate9so youre saying its the parents fault kids are fat?
Was listening to some talk-back radio where they were talking about prosecuting parents who had over-weight children.
It went along the lines that it isn't that much different from people who bash their kids as the children do suffer consequences and those parents should be treated as criminals. If your child exceeds a set weight based on certain variables ...[text shortened]... to have obese children and at the same time, is it immoral to prosecute parents of those kids?
22 Sep 06
Originally posted by 7ate9thats true i think, the kid doesnt know what obyss is and the parent can prevent it at an early age in many ways.
I was listening to talk-back radio. This was the topic.
My views i'm unsure of, so i wrote it up here to discuss.
Yes, they were pushing that it was the parents fault....
22 Sep 06
Originally posted by 7ate9Not necessarily, although if someone kills someone else accidentally, but through some sort of stupidity or negligence - which is what I take it you mean by manslaughter - I would think we should treat such a person with some degree of pity.
i guess the point is sometimes love isn't really love, and ignorance towards obesity in children developing life skills/habits can result in the early deaths of one of the biggest killers(heart disease).
i get the feeling your standards would eliminate manslaughter from the justice system.
A case in point where I live recently.
A teenage boy, just having got his licence, driving too fast, hit a tree. The passenger, his best friend, died.
Now he's been facing charges over this and has plead guilty to something - I can't remember exactly what - vehicular manslaughter maybe. I wouldn't agree with a jail sentence in this case. He's been living for 2 years (took a while for the case to come to court) with the knowledge of having killed his best friend. He'll have to live with that for the rest of his life. He should be punished - but I don't think he needs to spend time in jail where he may well learn to become a criminal, which at the moment he clearly is not.
Anyway, back to parents.
Let's say a parent feeds his/her kid a diet of crap. They get fat and later on die of a heart attack.
Okay, firstly there's the burden of proof. Did the diet of crap actually cause the heart attack? Many fit and healthy people die of heart disease each year, and a few fat ones live to ripe old ages - so proving a direct link back to the diet is going to be tricky.
Assume we do prove it.
Are the parents to blame for this?
Well, they fed the kids the diet, but why did they do that?
What if it was all they could afford? Who's to blame in that case?
What if it was all they knew? Do we transfer the blame to the grandparents?
It all becomes a morass of blame and probabilities and social attitudes and so on.
My suggestion is not to blame anyone - blaming just gets people defensive. My suggestion is to teach people - parents and children that good food, healthy food, a balanced dite, is in everyone's interests.
22 Sep 06
Originally posted by amannionyeah but if i was fat i would want to die going to school, cuz the kids would make fun of you. i think the real issue about being obyss is what other people think of you; it probably doesnt help your self esteem much.
Not necessarily, although if someone kills someone else accidentally, but through some sort of stupidity or negligence - which is what I take it you mean by manslaughter - I would think we should treat such a person with some degree of pity.
A case in point where I live recently.
A teenage boy, just having got his licence, driving too fast, hit a tree. ...[text shortened]... nd children that good food, healthy food, a balanced dite, is in everyone's interests.
22 Sep 06
Originally posted by EcstremeVenomDo you mean 'obese'?
yeah but if i was fat i would want to die going to school, cuz the kids would make fun of you. i think the real issue about being obyss is what other people think of you; it probably doesnt help your self esteem much.
I think the self-esteem issue is important but can be beaten up a bit nowadays. The truth is that everybody is different. There aren't too types of people - 1 fat and the other not fat. There are hundreds of different body types and variations on body types.
And for many people with what we might arbitrarily call fat bodies, they don't have an esteem issue. They are who they are.
They get called names maybe. Maybe not.
But most people get called names at some point in their lives for some reason or other.
At primary school (elementary in the US) I was taunted with the moniker 'Onion'. Why do you think? Did my family eat lots of onions? Did I smell onionish? No. My surname - Mannion - vaguely rhymes with onion, and the kids were off.
Anyway, the point is, it's not just fat kids who get taunted, or bullied for that matter. And sometimes it isn't the fat kids.
22 Sep 06
Originally posted by 7ate9I don't think it's our inability to educate, or our inability to learn.
I didn't to listen that long, but some of the views were similar to yours... where the approach should be one of education. lol, while travelling back from the alcohol and drug centre...
This is in NZ and not America and was in general targeting the Maori and Pacific Island communities in Auckland. As usual, it's very specific and it's hard being partly a P ...[text shortened]... ple in NZ and needs different ways of educating... although some things would be the same.
We've gotten pretty good at teaching people, and we humans are pretty natural learners.
I think it's a twofold interconnected problem:
1. We don't place enough importance on the issue.
2. There are so many other 'problems' that divide our time.
There's terrorism and security, global warming and environmental issues, drug addiction, crime and our responses to it, economic issues, and so on and on ...
We need to prioritise these things of course, but we also need to recognise that we can work at solving many things at once ...
22 Sep 06
Originally posted by 7ate9That's the reality of entering a classroom every day. You come face to face with 20 or 25 or 30 kids who all have different stories to tell about their home lives.
Yes, it's a common problem among humans NOT to look in our own mirrors. We like to consider ourselves perfect while critisizing those around us. I believe that's your answer to your first quote where the majority under democracy allow killers like heart disease to sneak in for the sake of our own majorital perfect image.
Prioritize YES! But, i think we need ...[text shortened]... and we don't really understand them. Especially when we think we know it all... Nobody does.
We train and then practic3e our training over months and years in order that we can learn to teach people. Or perhaps I should say, we learn to teach people how to learn - because this has to be our main goal as teachers ...