Memo to parents with overweight kids:

Your children are fat because you made them that way.

Lil Jimmy or Lil Susie watch you shovel that crap you call food into your pie-hole while you’ve firmly planted yourself in front of the TV and then, and then get this . . . they mimic what YOU do. Can you understand that? YOU, parents, are role-models. Act like it! Start with your diet; it’s killing your children, seriously. No more blaming “society” for the poor physical and emotional shape your kids are in. Take a step back and look at yourself, if you can see around your own fat ass, and try to understand how your poor habits are potentially abusive to your children. Nice job stacking the cards against your own offspring.

The positive flip: You can fix it if you want to. Will watching Idol really matter tomorrow? Go out and throw a ball or take a walk with your child. That will matter for years to you and them.

Signed,

AC

Reason for the rant:

A few weeks ago I wrote about how children were being praised and expecting thanks without actually earning it. (Failure Free Society) My point was that parents need to be responsible for educating, disciplining and praising their children when appropriate with the end goal of raising a productive member of society. In my opinion, and I may be way off base here, setting an example through your actions should be an understood yet unstated component in all of that.

In an Associated Press article, “Overweight kids face widespread stigma”, I’ve found more evidence to support the fact that I may not be completely ignorant in regard to developing people. The article starts out with a lot of good information based on 40 years of research:

“Overweight children are stigmatized by their peers as early as age 3 and even face bias from their parents and teachers, giving them a quality of life comparable to people with cancer, a new analysis concludes.

Youngsters who report teasing, rejection, bullying and other types of abuse because of their weight are two to three times more likely to report suicidal thoughts as well as to suffer from other health issues such as high blood pressure and eating disorders, researchers said.”

Continues…

Lynn McAfee, 58, of Stowe, Pa., said that as an overweight child she faced troubles on all fronts.

Her mother, who also was overweight, offered to buy her a mink coat when she was 8 to try to get her to lose weight even though her family was poor.

Her mother could have saved years of emotional abuse to Lynn had she simply set a better example rather than try to bribe her. The last line brings up another interesting question. Was her mother overweight because she was poor or was she overweight because she may have been less educated which resulted in her being poor? Might I also suggest that similar questions surround the demographics of smokers? Chicken or Egg scenario, I guess.

I’ll leave you with this: Just take responsibility for your lot in life. If you don’t like something about yourself only you can change it. Very few, about 1%, have actual medical reasons for being overweight (ie hypothyroidism, Cushing’s syndrome and depression). The rest just need to break some difficult habits learned at a very young age. Good luck to anyone on that road; my best wishes are with you.