Should the mother of this obese girl be punished?

[EvianBaby]

http://www.dailymail....utdoors-6-months.html

The reports of her weight are speculative but it's obvious this girl has huge problems and she will be lucky to make it to her mid twenties. It's incredibly sad that a young girl is not able to live any kind of normal life, especially as she seems so well liked.

Of course it's the girl who choses what food to put in her mouth but reading the details and looking at photos of her younger years, this is not a new problem.

Should parents of children like this be punished for what I consider is effectively abuse?

[Prudie]

When I read this my thought was how could anyone get to this size by 19 and why wasn't it tackled earlier. It can't just be from overeating surely.

[EvianBaby]

I'm sure she has probably had thyroid tests, etc and when she went on a bootcamp I'm America she had fantastic results so I do think it is solely down to food and no exercise.

[tinkerbell23]

I think so yes- when she was a child she was seriously overweight- possibly educated and supported when it comes to the parents xx

[China Doll]

Yes, I believe she is a victim of child abuse. However she is at an age where social services would have to listen to her wishes, and I imagine that the joint sadness they share over her father's death would mean that she would never want to be seperated from her mother. Equaly, she clearly is known to the community teams as she has health visitors etc... and her age means you can't force her to do what she should be doing. I seem to recall something about her being a carer at a young age to her mother or soemthing, and this puts an enormous stress and responsibility on to children.

I don't know if there are any simple answers but I do agree she is a victim of child abuse and has been for a long time in terms of what she was being fed at ages where her parent should be in control of her eating habits. I think this sort of thing is being recognised now but I'm not sure how recognised it would have been ten years ago. I also think that seeing this kind of extreme overeating as a mental health issue, like annorexia, is quite a new and modern thing. In terms of punishment, I'm not sure what more you could do to punish the mother, her daughter could die, I don't think anything could be much worse.

[daffy654]

The pictures of her as a toddler are very telling. A 2-3 year old does not buy and prepare their own meals so the fact she was already obese at that age means her mother was stuffing her full of junk food at every opportunity.
When the girl came back from fat camp after losing a lot of weight her mother gave her fish and chips as she hadn't had time to buy anything healthy.

[TheNovice]

the shame is she was sent to the States for treatment and ot was working, came home - no follow up and was left to fend for herself. Just think this is a very tragic case and she needs major intensive specialist physical and physcological treatment

[EvianBaby]

I think so too Tinks in the first instance. Try and get the parents to understand what will happen and help them change the habits. But what if it's all ignored...

[TOWIE]

If the girl can't get out of the house, then she is captive and totally reliant on her Mother, so yes, I think the Mother is to blame. You could say she is a 'feeder', like on a documentary recently where men feed their wives up.

[EvianBaby]

In a way I agree china but on the other hand say a speeding driver loses control and kills a child. That grief and self inflicted punishment would also remain with most people for the rest of their lives, yet we don't say oh well it's done now, not much we can do. We put them in prison. I'm not necessarily saying that's what should happen to the mother but surely she if she's ignoring the fact she is killing her own child something needs to be done. I do take your points about the girl being her mothers cater and the joint grief of losing the father though.

[tinkerbell23]

I think there should have been a care plan for her (probobly is) as shes an adult now its hard to punish - if she had been properley educated regarding food things would be slightly better!?

Think the thing is with punishment how much control do parents have? Certainly as a toddler it should be tightly controlled but when she gets to school age she probobly had more controll than her mother as to what shes been eating.

Tricky one isnt it. Xx

[wolf63]

I am about 20stone and this impacts on my life. I can't imagine how difficult it will be for the girl to get around, bathe or go to the toilet.

The welcome home fish and chips was frightening though - has mum learned anything from this situation?

[flip_flop]

Yes of course the mother is partly to blame, but this girl has been able to make her own choices for years now and has chosen not to, so she is just as much to blame as her mother - probably more so in fact.

This whole story has really irritated me - from the reported £100k spent to get her out of her house, to the fact that she is being depicted as a victim, and she seems to relish the victim status because it absolves her of blame.

Nobody forced this girl to get to her extraordinary weight. She wasn't pinned down and forced fed bargain buckets of fried chicken - she chose what to put in her mouth. 63st it simply mind boggling - it is almost beyond comprehension.

Frankly, I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever.

Also, as an aside, why is it that the morbidly obese always seem to be considered victims, and that their diabetes and heart disease are simply a corollary of an underlying problem which has caused their weight, whereas smokers who get lung cancer have nobody to blame but themselves?

Diseases from smoking are just as self-inflicted as diseases caused by being fat.

[tinkerbell23]

I dont think so wolf- she probobly just sees a beautiful child and has probobly blocked out that she is a good part responsible for the state her child is in. Awful about her grief over her husband but she will be alone very soon visiting her daughters grave aswell if things dont change. Youd think theyd want to avoid that, mabye theyve both gave up without him. Poor souls xxx

[China Doll]

You have to tackle the problem when the child is young, and it's often the parents that have to be managed too. But it's a new thing. One of my consultants has a patient who is very large but is doing nothing about it despite several different services offering appts and is actually using it as a way to control the family situation which is quite chaotic. That the patient got that big at a young age is a wasted issue, there's no point in dealing with that now as the problem is now that the patient is that big and what the patient is doing to help or not help thier own situation. So you can throw all the services at the problem, including social services, but you still can't make a patient, at an age where they're entitled to an opinion, do what is necessary for their health. It's incredibly difficult. This girl is in the same situation, a massive amount of help thrown at her which she just will not accept, and I don think that this is more to do with her mental health than lazy-itis. Although I do admit to personally finding it incredibly difficult to emphasise with people with eating disorders, be they overeating or annorexia. BUt my lack of empathy doesn't change the fact that eating disorders are essentially a mental health problem and not just a 'get off your lardy arse and do some exercise, it's all your own fault' situation. (There are cases like that too, but when they're this big, it's clearly something else going on too).

I once read something that said that some of the obese toddlers are actually as malnourished as children in third world countries because what they're eating provides them with nothing to aid their development. So if we consider deliberately starving a child as child abuse, then surely deliberately depriving them of nutrients is also child abuse in the form of neglect. But you then have to prove that you have offered every education and service possible and that the family have still continued to not engage before social services can act to put them on a child protection plan, or indeed in extreme cases remove them from their home. But I definitely think that at young ages, we should be looking at over-feeding your children crap as a child in need with the potential to prosecure and remove children should after everything failing, the parents still refuse to act.

Blimey... that was damn long winded of me for a saturday morning!

[d9f1c7]

they need help mate, not punishment.

[friedgreentomato]

If she was aneroxic (sp) she would be hospitalised under the mental health act and force fed, can the same not happen to this young lady but force to diet?

[daffy654]

The father died when this girl was 5, she was already obese by then. Using grief over his death as an excuse is pathetic on the part of both mother and daughter.

[TOWIE]

http://www.thesun.co....-junk-food-meals.html

Does anybody remember watching the channel 4 documentary on this lad Billy in the USA - his mother fed him up, even when he was in hospital after a gastic bypass she sneaked food into him. The problem was the mother - she gave him anything he wanted as she had lost a son as a baby, so it seems she could'nt stop nurturing him.

[China Doll]

I do agree with that too daffy, I find it so hard to feel sorry for this girl but I can see she clearly needs help so then I feel a bit guilty that I don't feel sorry for her... if that makes any sense! :-S

[daffy654]

That isn't nurturing in my opinion TOWIE. I believe in many of these cases it is deliberate on the part of the parent, they can't face being alone when the child grows up and leaves home so they feed the child into obesity so they remain dependant on them for the rest of their lives.