get him off the carbs and his weight would plummet.

There is no reason that child was not placed on a program a long time ago to lose and control weight. It is like placing a child in the middle of a road and then just walk away. No responsible parent would let her/his child becoming so dangerously obese. Might as well just give him a loaded gun to play with.

Maybe this child will now get some responsible adult to start helping him to live his life. At this point of time, that child just exists. It is horrible.

No – Have you tried controlling teenagers? 14% (265 votes)

Fail.

I’ve heard/read that the state tried other methods of intervention and the mother would/did not cooperate.

IS there a source for that? The only place I’ve seen it is in unsupported third party claims here. According to her lawyers the state’s primary claim about her ‘refusing’ to cooperate is the situation where the single mother working two jobs managed to get enough time off to take her son to another state where they’d been offered a slot in a very good program- only to be turned away at the door when the program administrators realized just how big the kid was- and the administrators of this 30,000 dollar, fully supervised, residential program told her they couldn’t help her. IF those experts couldn’t help her, how is a working mother with two jobs supposed to have managed to control what a 14 year old boy eats- especially when the school is letting him eat a plurality of lunches every day?

Having a fat child is one thing – but letting a teen become disabled due to morbid obesity is parental neglect/abuse.

It’s not a felony. It’s not a good reason to charge the mother with a felony and punish the kid by putting him in foster care.

Can’t say it should be criminal but I do think he should be removed from her care because it appears tha5t she is unable to properly care for him

I totally disagree that the state should remove a child for behavior you do not consider criminal. I find it appalling to give the state the right to remove children from parents who have not committed a crime.

Ragspierre- Her lawyers say the kid was eating extra meals at school, more than one lunch. It’s obvious he wasn’t SKIPPING lunch, nor it is likely he was limiting himself to one lunch, so yeah I am inclined to believe them. Far more inclined to believe them than CPS.

And, look, if mom tried everything she could, does anyone here think that anybody would be messing with her?

Uh, yeah, I sure do.

Richard, I do believe my friends Mom was a single parent, if I remember correctly.

Geronimo on July 22, 2009 at 2:49 PM

And your point is?

There are exceptions, yes, but don’t you think a healthy society depends on a strong family unit?

Not every screw-up (verb or noun) is a government problem with a government solution.

We’re already halfway there, socialized medicine pretty much has to evolve into behavior control in an attempt to keep costs down. What looks like an extreme case here (what’s the saying about cases that make bad law?) could very quickly become the norm as the “single payer” decides it has to get your costs down.

I thought picture was Obama, post-Porkulus, getting ready for his Presser tonight.

Parents who do not keep their kids reasonably fit are unfit.

profitsbeard on July 22, 2009 at 7:01 PM

Bastard!

Regardless, it’s none of yours or my business at all. Keep your nose out of it and encourage your representatives to do the same. It isn’t wrong because of some slippery slope argument. It’s just wrong. Some of you just like dicking with people because you don’t approve of them. You don’t know her. You don’t know him. You don’t know how to mind your own business. Turn that spotlight around if you’ve got that much energy and start scrubbing the stains from your life.

I can’t believe we’re having this argument on HA. Who are these pesky Orwellian hellhounds?