An eight-year-old boy who weighs more than 200 pounds has been taken from his family and placed into foster care after social workers said his mother wasn’t doing enough to control his weight.
The Cleveland, Ohio third-grader is considered severely obese by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and at risk for such diseases as diabetes and hypertension.
County officials who were monitoring the child’s health said the boy’s weight was caused by his environment and his mother was ignoring doctor’s orders on food and exercise, seeing this as medical neglect.
“This child’s problem was so severe that we had to take custody,” said Mary Louise Madigan of the county’s Department of Children and Family Services. County workers had been aware of the problem for more than a year and had been working with the mother to help bring the boy’s weight down.
County workers were alerted to the boy’s weight early last year after his mother took him to a hospital for breathing problems. The boy was diagnosed with sleep apnea, which is characterized by pauses in breathing during sleep and can be weight-related, and he was given a breathing machine.
“We have worked very hard with this family for 20 months before it got to this point,” the agency’s administrator, Patricia Rideout, said. The Associated Press reported that a judge approved the decision to put the boy into foster care.
The identity of the boy and mother have not been revealed. The mother did speak to the newspaper and is obviously devastated.
“They are trying to make it seem like I am unfit, like I don’t love my child… Of course I love him. Of course I want him to lose weight. It’s a lifestyle change, and they are trying to make it seem like I am not embracing that. It is very hard, but I am trying.”
Lawyers for his mother, who is a supply teacher, say the county overreached its mandate by arguing the boy’s health is in imminent danger. Lawyers are also questioning the emotional trauma of being taken away from his home.
What do you think about this? Severe or necessary?
Should parents lose custody of their very obese children?
6 Comments
I think it is severe, unnecessary and an abuse of power. The harm they are doing to this child and family is not outweighed by the potential risk of disease, nor is this in any way a resolution to food and eating issues that may be in that home. Horribly invasive.
I believe its both. It’s necessary yet extreme. I want to know, did they do follow ups? Was the mother told to change diet and incorporate more exercise in the child’s life and she refused? Was she given time to incorporate the above mentioned?
When your 8 year old weighs 200lbs something needs to be done and I’m sorry, if you, a parent, can’t control your child’s diet then something needs to be done about it. The lawyer said that he didn’t have any obesity related diseases “yet”. Wow, so he would be okay with the kid being taken away if he had those other disease? How about we PREVENT diseases instead of treating them after we have them.
If he was just taken out of the home without the mother being given a chance to make changes then its severe. If the mother wrote the doctors orders to her balls then its good they took him. Maybe someone else will care enough to get him on track.
The child was in COURT ORDERED medical program at a childrens hospital. The mother was not complying with the programs directives. The child was back to gaining weight again.
There was a MEDICAL issue — the child has to use a CPAP machine at night so he does not suffocate from his massive weight.
The mother STATED that she and the father are over weight. OBVIOUSLY there is a significant problem in this home. Being taken out of the home may be the only REAL chance this child gets in life to heal and get healthy.
I also believe that while letting your child reach a weight that is beyond unhealthy can be traumatizing for the child…it is even more traumatizing to remove them from their home and put them in foster care! We live in a society where we find it easier to “get rid of” a problem instead of trying to remedy it, and this is causing even more problems.
The mother and her son, should have been OBLIGATED to attend programs or some sort of treatment center where they could both LEARN how to make better choices and live a healthier lifestyle. They should have been forced to do this TOGETHER, by separating them, they’ve increased this child’s stress level and have added abandonment issues into the mix.
Now all they’ve done is punish them, and this will not work. MAYBE this child didn’t know any better when it came to eating right and just needed to be educated..problem is, NOW food and weight have become and EMOTIONAL issue and it will be even HARDER for him to ever have a healthy relationship with food.
We need to stop PUNISHING and start EDUCATING.
I have an obese son and he’s also on a machine for sleep apena.The psychological effect this would have on my family and my child is
undescribeable. It’s harder to battle a child obesity than eveyone would think, especially when your are working parents and have other children and school to deal with. I thought my child would thin out because he’s very active, but to my surprise he just kept getting bigger. BUT, what I really want people to understand is that his dad is not over weight and he has sleep apena, I have extremely over weight people in my family and other then the weight they do not have any health problems. This may not have been medical neglect, but a problem that a mother needed to get a handle on like so many other problems mother face with children. This social worker has done more harm then good, my child would be damaged for life and he would not ever fully recover from a incident like this. When I told him he was on a machine due to wieght he stopped eating and strated getting sick, children can be very fragile. What was tha state thinking,what ever happen to looking at the whole picture and putting the child first. BRING HELP TO HIS HOME DO NOT TAKE HIM OUT.
I agree with Marci. I think this scenario does further harm to the child. It would be best if he and his parents/caregivers were supported and better educated to meet health and weight-loss goals. Punishment isn’t going to improve his health.