Ohio puts 200-pound third-grader in foster care

[Seedersandleechers]

Source: Kansas City Star via AP

An Ohio third-grader who weighs more than 200 pounds has been taken from his family and placed into foster care after county social workers said his mother wasn't doing enough to control his weight.

The Plain Dealer reports ( http://bit.ly/t68M7D) that the Cleveland 8-year-old is considered severely obese and at risk for such diseases as diabetes and hypertension.

The case is the first state officials can recall of a child being put in foster care strictly for a weight-related issue.

Lawyers for the mother say the county overreached when authorities took the boy last week. They say the medical problems he is at risk for do not yet pose an imminent danger.




Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/11/27/3288807/ohio-puts-200-pound-third-grader.html

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I really don't know what to think about that. Abuse of power or neglect ?

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Not enough information

I hate these kinds of stories. Folks get outraged and they don't have all the details. Sure it seems wrong that the kid was taken away but what if you found out his health really WAS bad and his family was ignoring that?

Not enough information.

[Seedersandleechers]

2. Here is another link that gives more information

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/11/obese_cleveland_heights_child.html

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. 218 pounds and sleep apnea

Wow.

Still hard to say if it was justified to take him away from his mom. Very sad story.

Thanks for the link.

[Name removed]

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[joeglow3]

24. My 8 year old weighs 71 pounds

That is what he weighed in at his wrestling tournament. He also plays baseball, basketball, soccer, swimming & football. I understand not everyone can afford the time to participate in these (all of the places he participates at offer free sports for low income). That said, there would have to be some pretty fucking HUGH special circumstances for this to not be justified. And any of those special circumstances would be so in your face, I can't imagine them being missed.

I agree we need to see all the facts, but I would bet my life savings it was the best decision. In this case, I do not give 2 fucks about the parent and any negative consequences the kids face are outweighed by this thing called living (let alone living a happy life).

[proud2BlibKansan]

30. Sounds like your child isn't leading s sedentary life

:)

[liberalmuse]

3. WRONG!

WTF is Foster Care going to do for this child? I swear, there needs to be a more compassionate dialogue on obesity. If his parents are over feeding him, then the reasons behind this need to be addressed. In too many instances, food = love. Or it could be that this child's metabolism is functioning outside of the norm. I don't know what to say - I'm just too fucking overwhelmed with all the injustices and lack of common sense and human decency when it comes to cases like this.

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

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[roguevalley]

21. he didn't get to death's door by himself. If this were a kid whose

parents gave him alcohol or drugs there would be no argument. Their weapon of negligence is food. For me, not a problem. If they love that kid enough they will recognize that a third grader at that weight is a death waiting to happen.

I taught those grades. 210 pounds is a death sentence sooner rather than later.

[Old Codger]

4. Not yet?

"Lawyers for the mother say the county overreached when authorities took the boy last week. They say the medical problems he is at risk for do not yet pose an imminent danger."


They say he is not at risk and is not in "imminent" danger, might as well wait til he is then they can pay the hospital and Dr. bills along with the rest that goes with it... they need to take him and teach her then return him after she has learned how to care for a child properly.

We are foster parents and believe me it is not any fun at all having a child like this come into your home and have to deal with teaching them how to eat correctly, and then deal with the chaos created when the child is going through what amounts to food withdrawal. There is no way to know how long they have been attempting to to teach her to be responsible, usually they do not jump in very fast, a good portion of the time way too slow.

[FarPoint]

5. My opinion is that the social workers need to work harder.

Separation anxiety for the boy will only increase his need to fix his feelings with food. They could call in a registered nurse or nutritionist to work with the family.

[Exultant Democracy]

7. I would be surpried if they had the resources to "work harder."

My guess is that we would be shocked by how tiny their budget is in relation to the job they are supposed to be doing. If we paid social workers to help kids in America like we pay black water thugs to kill kids overseas we wouldn't be having this discussion.

[get the red out]

12. +1

Exactly!

[FarPoint]

29. The county budget should not take priority to the "family".

I recognize that the budget is tight...but, this child is now removed from the only family he knows...because he is fat...that bring devastating shame....he no doubt feels responsible for the family separation because he is fat,; or, it's his fault this all happened, or, " I's all my fault"; is the thinking now, that he cause the family pain. All this will have a life long affect....

Clinically, the red flag is appropriate, I agree there needs to be a healthy change...but this I feel that foster care is not the solution and it opens up more devastating trauma to the boy and the family....This was not so well thought out in my opinion.

[Exultant Democracy]

31. Budgets are moral documents, if we want families to take priority we need to allocate resources

While agree that family services working in the home with the family and the child would be a lot better, the fact is that if they had the man power for that they could have intervened before it got to this.

Unfortunately we live in a country that values a lot of things like war and bankers higher then families. Leaving a kid to die isn't an option and while I agree that removing the kid will be a emotional trauma that he will have to deal with for a long time, at least this way he gets a chance a having a long time to deal with it.

[Exultant Democracy]

6. 200lb by 8, no way to say that these parents weren't killing the kid.

Unfortunately our family services and foster care system are a mess so it is hard for me to expect that the kid will actually do better elsewhere.

I think we have some very hard questions to deal with when it comes to American families. In the system that we had before modernity with large extended families, children had a lot more resources and people to depend upon if their parents were dipshits.

We have to face the fact that we don't live in that mythical past anymore and that in a system with dislocated and isolated nuclear families children are far more dependent one only one or two people. Sad as it is children require a lot more protection from their parents then they get today and we should be funding our family services like we do our military so that they can intervene early and monitor situations like this well before it come to removing the child.

Also as long as I'm on a high horse, our schools should be temples.

[McCamy Taylor]

8. Overfeeding one child is a form of Münchhausen by proxy.

I.e. parents give a child an illness, because they derive some sort of benefit from the sick child. For instance, the mother can adopt the role of doting parent who gets lots of praise for how well she treats her disabled child. The child's illness may bring in money in the form of disability payments. Family members may be able to scapegoat the "sick" child as the source of all their problems.

I recall a family in which one child was morbidly obese and another suffered from malnutrition and was underweight. Each child would gain or lose weight appropriately in the hospital but once they went home the parents went back to stuffing one and starving the other. This was in the days before children were taken from their homes for anything other than extreme abuse. Eventually, the overweight child became Pickwickian---he would go into a coma from sleep apnea. Doctors performed a tonsillectomy to try to open up his airway. He was sent home with a special post op liquid diet---and then died (bled from his surgery and then choked to death) when his parents gave him solid food to eat.

[KT2000]

14. Maybe the case you mentioned

but often the cause of obese children is poor diet and poor supervision by the parents. Too often I have seen obese families. I'm sure the child's life is not full of friends and happiness. They suffer physically and psychologically.

[lunasun]

27. I was thinking mental illness factor too(parent's)

In the Cleveland Heights case, county workers believed that disconnecting the boy from his family, at least temporarily, might help. And he has lost a few pounds in the last month.
It may have been for 'his safety' in a way other than judgement call on weight alone . Who is more sick?

[elocs]

10. Yes, I read about that earlier this afternoon here at DU:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=2388208&mesg_id=2388208

[Donnachaidh]

11. And this same lawyer would sue the pants off the school if the kid dropped dead in class

I'm sorry -- a third grader with sleep apnea?

I guess the lawyer wants to wait till the kid winds up in the ER after stroking out? Sleep apnea is dangerous in adults. And while I don't think the state should interfere with families, there is probably a lot more about this story that we're not hearing.

[greiner3]

13. Dude;

Me thinks you protest against lawyers too much.

[Donnachaidh]

23. not a *dude* DUDE

touch a nerve, did we?

:rofl: :rofl:

[Odin2005]

15. OMG, that poor kid! Why would any parent allow that to happen???

[alp227]

16. How about rehabilitation instead? Foster care seems only to make things worse.

And why can't they wait until the mother is convicted of abuse/neglect?

[quakerboy]

26. If they wait

Then its "why didn't you remove that child before x happened?". Think about it this way. If it was a dad someone had video of sexually assaulting the child, would you still want to argue that they should wait until a conviction is reached, before removing a child from the situation?

The system has its flaws. For the caseworkers making the decisions, there is no winning side. Someone will always be angry at them, more often than not all the parties involved will be. Often enough, they don't get to know about their successes, but even the most minor failures will certainly be revisited upon them. Its inherently not a job I would ever want, even if they had great pay and all the necessary resources made available to ensure their success. .

[Demeter]

19. Does this family have the resources? If not, why not?

Can this family buy and cook healthy food? Can they get this child medical attention outside of the emergency room? Is the family in good shape financially and medically? Is there some form of exercise they can do that is safe and cheap and available? Does the family have a clean safe home in a clean safe neighborhood?

If not, what the hell is foster care going to do differently?

The point of this exercise was to break the family, not help the child.

[AndyTiedye]

33. The County Will Give the Foster Parents More Help than they Ever Gave the Real Parents

But now lawyers for the mother say they've been told that the foster mother who has the child in a neighboring suburb is having trouble keeping up with all of his appointments.
There was even a discussion about getting the foster mother additional help or moving the child again, this time to a foster home with a personal trainer, Amata said.
"I wonder why they didn't offer the mother that kind of extra help," Amata said.

More than likely taking the kid from his family won't help at all, but will just make the kid and the entire family miserable.

Just in time for the holidays too. :cry:

[lib2DaBone]

20. Ohio should put Gov Kasuck in foster care.

[NashVegas]

22. Hey! Look! Pizza's a Vegetable

A government that doesn't slam down on the marketing of junk foods has no business taking a kid out of his home when his parents do everything their tv tells them to.

[Name removed]

25. Deleted message

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[JoeyT]

28. I wouldn't say it's abuse of power or an overreaction,

but it's probably the wrong reaction.

A better path would be getting the kid involved in activity programs after school. Of course those may not be available in the area, or his health may be too bad to participate in them.

It's also hard to say if it's neglect or not without more information. He could have one of several disorders. He might be seven feet tall and malnourished for all we know.

[Nihil]

35. We know that this particular "guess" is wrong though ...

> He might be seven feet tall and malnourished for all we know.

... as he wouldn't have been described as "obese" by the OP in that case! :hi:

People really should learn that "spherical" isn't a good shape for a human ...
:shrug:

[JoeyT]

36. Yeah, that was a joke.

Mocking the people that respond to the most straightforward stories with "But we don't have enough information! Stop judging that (usually a cop) person!"

[Sivafae]

32. What we don't know is if the child is receiving proper medical care from the doctors?

I've been to doctors seeking medical treatment for excess weight and got a lecture instead of treatment.

And it seems that the mother was seeking medical treatment.

[totodeinhere]

37. In fairness to the doctors, they always try lifestyle changes first. Only after it is

obvious that it isn't working do they move on to other strategies. After all, surgical remedies can sometimes have severe side effects so it's best to try something else first.

[crim son]

34. Given what I read in the three links provided

I'm inclined to believe the State may be doing the right thing. The kid isn't a teenager yet and his mother should still have a great deal of control over his diet. She states that it's a "lifestyle change" and that it's "hard" but seriously, what must that poor kid be eating/doing to weigh two hundred pounds at eight years old? I have three kids and I know what 200 lbs would look like on a child. As for the kid being "at risk" for health problems, that strikes me as a ridiculous understatement.

V. sad, especially as the boy has been doing well in school and being pulled from his home will be terribly stressful.