The Face of Neglect

Here is the face of neglect:

You might not realize she is neglected.  We didn't know either since we lavish her with love and attention and she is oftentimes found in our laps giving and receiving hugs galore.  But, as it turns out, she has been the victim of parental neglect.

This all came to light a week ago when she had her annual checkup with the pediatrician.  I wasn't there, B had taken her since I had taken LM the week before to his annual and a few days before, I had taken time off of work to bring them both to see the dentist. 

Our baby is overweight, as in "fear child obesity" levels of overweight.  She is in the 90th % for weight to height ratio and we were read the riot act.  No juice, no chocolate milk, less sugary snacks, and make sure she gets a good hour of exercise a day and don't depend on daycare for providing it!

I am watching The Biggest Loser this season mainly because my beloved Jillian Michaels is back on it (please don't criticize her, as I have told B, I have an excellent sense of humor about many things but not MY Jillian).  This season they are focusing on childhood obesity and they have 3 kids who are more tweens/teens on the show.  In one episode, they made a point that most parents of obese and overweight kids think their kid is normal weight or even underweight.  Guilty!

I look at my daughter and see nothing but beauty and love.  Sure she has a chubby round face, but I always did too.  I considered it genetics.  But I also have much less desirable genes too and they are hitting her young.

Now, coming from a fat childhood, I had some ideas of how not to handle things.  For starters, my parents banned sugary snacks from the house so what did my brother and I do?  We stole coins from the coin jar in my parent's room, saved up, bought bargain bags of candy at the drugstore on the corner near our bus stop and gobbled hand fulls of it on our walk from bus to home, hiding the evidence deep in the trash when we got in the house.

The other extreme was my doing something called Diet Workshop with my mother as young as 9.  Now to be honest, I have great memories of that as time spent with my mom doing something together.  But, I also have memories of these nasty chemical laden "diet foods" and liters of diet soda which I still think may have played a hand in my mom's cancer.

It was hard deciding what to do and I am sure we will change as we go.  It is all complicated by the fact that we have to go through extremes to keep weight on LM.  His ADHD medicine makes him not want to eat during the day so he eats a large dinner and then has to have a calorie laden "bed time snack" about an hour before he sleeps.  This, mind you, is also doctor's orders.

Since the kids have a very ingrained sense of what is and is not fair, you can be sure A has made it known that she too must have a night-time snack and some nights we indulge her and give her a smaller portion of what he is having.  It is typically wheat crackers with peanut butter and jelly on it and a banana or a bowl of cereal and milk, that sort of thing.

Balancing the needs of the "needs to eat more" kid with "needs to eat less" one has been rough.  We tossed out all the juice and chocolate powder and went from having one sugary thing a day to one every other day.  This has been met by some resistance but so far so good.  They seem to understand that sugar is not good for their bodies and is something they can have, just not every day.  I have started packing more fruits and veggies in their lunch boxes, and nighttime snacks for A are now relegated to a few times a week instead of every night.

But exercise, well that is another story.  This is where being a full time work out of the home parent is a real detriment.  If she is not getting exercise at school (although I think she is because they do a lot of physical activities with the kids), just how am I supposed to make sure she gets an hour a day in the few hours I get her in the evening?  They are starving when I pick them up, and after LM's homework is done it is pretty much bath, books, and bed.

Here is a little pet peeve of mine.  As I have confessed earlier, I am bad with money.  As such, we are focused on the following:  paying the bills, paying off the credit card debt, and saving for a house down payment.  Some things have suffered in this, and one of those is extracurriculars for the kids.  I would love to be one of those parents who have their kids in a sport, learning a language, and playing an instrument but (spoiler alert!) I'm not.

I even threw a tiny bit of a tantrum because I already pay for a weekly dance class at A's school and their only other offering is Spanish class which costs $150 for 3 months.  I had declined it thinking that it was a lot of money for a 3 year old to learn Spanish for half an hour a week.  I considered it the equivalent  of watching Dora the Explorer which she can do for free! (Please note, I am not intending to be a racist asshole, I am just saying if a 3 year old gets exposed to a few songs in Spanish for a tiny bit of time once a week, is it really worth $150?  Is she really going to learn anything that way?  Discuss!)

Anyway, you know what happened?  She was the only kid in her class NOT in Spanish which meant that every week when the Spanish teacher came, A was escorted downstairs to play with the younger kids while all her friends stayed behind.  Guess who cried because of that?  Guess who had to pony up $150 so her daughter could learn to count to 10 in Spanish?

It is winter here.  It hasn't snowed enough to make sledding a regular thing and it has been arctic cold. This makes staying home all day very inviting on the weekends and has not been conducive to providing the kids with the hour a day of exercise they need.  This means I have to either enroll them in a gym class or pay to take them to one of those inside ball pit bouncy house germ factories every weekend.

Unfortunately since it is winter, and people can't go out, all the other parents who aren't neglectful, have already filled all the weekend spots in the classes.  I must have called 20 places (mostly dance and gymnastics) before I found a class with one spot left for her age group.  Today was her first gymnastics class and don't you know that she bitched about it the whole way there and I had to bribe her with TV to get her to try it but after one class, she is hooked!

Sadly, so is her brother and there aren't any spots for his age range anywhere until March.  He is angry, my friends, angry!  It is that fairness thing again. 

Anyway, please let me know if you have any suggestions on how I can best deal with this situation.  How would you suggest we go about it with one kid who needs to gain weight, and one who needs to lose it?

 

 

Comments

[Shannon-from-old-job]

Oh man, forget your pediatrician reading you the riot act! That's awful! She's so young! And she looks so freakin' cute, I can't believe she's in the 90th percentile. That's crazy. I think you're doing great with getting her the dance class at school and now also the gymnastics. Is there any way to gently ask at school to make sure she's getting exercise there?

I wish I had something actually useful to say, but I think I'm going to hear a similar riot act in a few years - from the same pediatrician who's been on my case about my little guy not gaining enough weight. Oy. ;)

Little Miss A is so adorable. I think tossing the sweet drinks and limiting other sugar to an occasional treat is fantastic. I don't think you need to freak out as much as the pediatrician said. Good luck to you!

[Melissa]

Oh my god, that child is not neglected. Look at her! She's beautiful and happy.

Have you read any of Ellyn Satter's books? She is very big on the division of responsibility: the parents choose what food is offered and when, the children choose what (or whether) to eat. We follow her principles with the kids even though I think most people (definitely the grandparents) think we're crazy for not forcing them to eat their vegetables. My kids are still very picky eaters but they are finally beginning to try new things here and there and we never have fights over food. I also recommend this blog: http://thefeedingdoctor.com/ . The woman who writes it is a nutritionist who follows the same principles and I find her attitude so refreshing.

Do you have a Wii? There are lots of games to get the kids moving. Just Dance is one of my favorites. One song and I'm sweating!

[colleen]

You need to get a new doctor. That child is beautiful.

[Tami]

That's a tough situation. I think A looks adorable.

I had two sisters, and the cry "it's not fair!" rang pretty regularly through our house. My mother often said, "I don't give you each the same thing, I give you each what I think you need." Right now, I'm spending a lot of mental energy telling myself that I am the sort of person who eats fruit for snacks, instead of telling myself that I'm not allowed to eat cookies.

FWIW, my best advice, (and it stinks because it requires internal fortitude, which is tough to find after working a full day and requires listening to grizzling children until they have resigned themselves to the new reality and can no longer remember a day when things were different): Using salad plates instead of dinner plates, having lots of water available because often people mistake thirst for hunger, picking snack time and meal times and sticking to it, having carrot sticks in the fridge, teaching portion control and worst of all, modeling that behavior (at least when the kids are awake : ) ). My kids still think 2 cookies is a serving because that's what's on the Pepperidge farm container.

Would it help to think it's a good thing this was brought to your attention when A is little, and you control so much more of her world? You can institute changes without talking about fat or obesity and focus on health and healthy eating. Before LM has his snack - could one parent set up a cool puzzle, quick craft, cool iPhone game, or special story for A? If she's in a different part of the house, doing something with one parent, maybe she won't clamor for the snack-or at least be a bit more distractible. If you think that's not workable, give her much smaller portions at dinner and finish the meal quickly and have one parent do an activity - bath, reading, whatever, right after the meal, while the other cleans up. That way, if you have to include her in snack, at least she won't be completely doubling up on the calories.

It might be worth it to talk to the daycare - ask them to encourage running around. I'd be hesitant to talk about weight control - as sometimes well meaning people can really say dopey things to adults and kids about weight. I'd probably link it to wanting A to get a good night's sleep.

Good luck!

[Kathy]

Wow, that's scary and crazy and must be really difficult. I wish I had some more helpful suggestions for you! It is sooo hard to keep kids active and feed them all the right foods especially when you are so busy! I hope that with just the few small changes you are talking about that it will be easy to get rid of the excess weight and keep A feeling healthy and good about herself. It is SO hard to be a parent these days!

[elizasmom]

Huh. First of all, I think that's crazy. I don't see an overweight child in that picture, either.
Whatever the case, I read your dilemma with interest — Eliza has been a beanpole since birth and Lucy has always been more chunky, and I suspect we may one day face the same problem.
As for the Spanish thing, it sucks you have to pay money for it, but I can tell you that Eliza was in a preschool environment that included some exposure to Spanish, and while she didn't come out speaking it, she caught on in no time once it became part of the curriculum — and she certainly didn't get that from us...

[-L]

your doctor is an idiot. i hope he/she didn't say anything about weight in front of A (who is totally adorable).
kids do the squash and stretch thing. plump, then growth spurt, plump, growth spurt and on and on.

as for indoor winter exercise... we play 'hide the animals'. one person hides stuffed animals, or we also use animals from a 3d puzzle thing, all over the living room and the other people have to find them.

it's not a marathon but it keeps a little one bustling about. jack will play this for an hour or more.

[Bon]

Why on earth are you assuming this guy is right because he has some freaking chart? Sorry, but my experiences with the medical community the past few years has led me to the conclusion that a goodly portion of them have their heads firmly implanted up their own rectums.

And, oh yeah! The chart! A chart which is just about as much BS as the whole, deeply flawed BMI horse apple. If you really feel, as a mother, that this is a priority then great! Do something about it, but it sounds to me like this doctor strummed pretty hard on your maternal guilt and has you chasing a red herring. To NO REAL END other than running yourself ragged and feeling like a crap parent, and possibly feeding this normal looking kid the subtext that she has a weight problem.

If you ask me, a new pediatrician is in order. Last time I checked, the 90th % just means that out of 10 kids, she would be one of the biggest... biggest, not fattest.

[kate]

my doctors have always said that if children are in proportion (height and weight) then there is no need to worry. all my kids are tall (off the chart!) and 3 of the 4 have been been chubby babies/toddlers/preschoolers... (they have hearty appetites and love fresh fruit, salad and vegetables - i'm not feeding them junk). when they get to school (and get more active with organised sport and general playground activities) they slim down naturally. only once did i have a doctor tell me that i needed to be concerned (with my littlest) but i ignored her because of the experience i'd had with my older two... and sure enough, now my youngest is four she is starting to slim down and i know that by the time she is six she'll be as lanky as her older brother and sister. your daughter looks beautiful and healthy - i honestly wouldn't worry too much!

i wanted to add that i found your childhood food experiences interesting - i had a mother who was obsessed with "healthy eating" so i learnt to sneak sweet treats (just like you!) and would gorge on them whenever i had the opportunity. i don't think her healthy eating stance (to the exclusion of all other foods) did me any favours. we now try to do a "everything in moderation" in our home - no bad or forbidden foods, plenty of choices, lots of healthy options, regular family meal times. i like ellyn satter's philosophy too - which empowers the kids somewhat and cuts down on battles over food. i understand your situation is tricky - but i can also understand why your daughter would feel deprived if she sees her brother having food that she is not allowed. it's a tough one :(

[Chickenpig]

GAH that is called being between a rock and a hard place, my friend. My guess is that she is going to have a growth spurt...soon. All my kids do this, (except for Nate, who is tiny all around), they put on weight, then height. If Addie was measured right now she would be in normal range, because she is gaining height. At another time, maybe not. The fact is that height/weigh ratio is constantly shifting. In the picture Annika doesn't look any rounder/pudgier than Adele or any of the boys and girls in her class. We are in a similar boat because we have been told by Nate's nutritionist to feed him fats, calories, and anything that he desires to get him to grow. This isn't fair, and I have been basically sneaking him extra dessert, extra scoops of ice cream, and giving him something different to eat if he won't eat dinner. So far the other two aren't wise to this, but it's only a matter of time...

I have found the Wii very helpful for indoor exercise. Addie and Don jump, run in place, dance, and basically wear themselves out.

[Meredith]

Thanks everyone! I really appreciate your comments and feedback!

So about the pediatrician, we actually really like her. She has been very helpful and has gone out her way to get LM seen by the right people throughout the years regarding his ADHD meds and tics, etc. We have been with her since we moved to MA and prior to this, I never had anything remotely critical to say about her which is why I think we are taking this news so seriously.

I agree that it is early and that this is all based on a chart but there is also the part of me that just doesn't want A to be a fat kid because I was and I know how hard that is yet I don't want to make the wrong moves because I don't want this to be an issue wherein it could impact her self esteem, etc.

Part of this is just parental paralysis. I don't want to make a mistake by doing nothing and I don't want to make a mistake by doing the wrong thing but hard to tell what the right thing is.

So this is what we have done - we are limiting sugary sweets for both kids. Up until this point, they had been allowed to have cookies or ice cream as a dessert for dinner and of course, on weekends, if there was some sort of event they would eat the cake there and then have ice cream at home at night.

Now for both kids, we offer them the sugar of their choice (ice cream or cookies) every other day with the understanding it is because it is not very good for our bodies. Since I don't eat sugar AT ALL and they know this and comment on it, I think this is ok since the rules are for the house.

I am packing more fruit and veggies with their lunches and they are allowed to have as much fruit and veggies at home as they like.

The "nighttime snack" we left open but the choices are healthier - whole wheat toast with some cottage cheese and a dollop of grape jelly or plain greek yogurt with some walnuts and a dollop of honey. Wheat crackers with no sugar peanut butter. We make A's portions smaller and some nights she simply is in bed before the nighttime snack happens which is nice too.

We do have a wii and we never use it except for streaming netflix! I am looking up the dance game, thanks for the suggestion on that!

I also think that a lot of this speaks to my own insecurities of being a sub par parent. I know we are good parents - our kids are well loved, they get nutritious meals, clean clothes, toys, and loads of hugs/kisses. But, we haven't offered them the same level of things as lots of their peers who have at least one parent stay at home or working part time. Their friends are, like I said, in sports, learning an instrument, and usually also a language. Do to money/time/energy, we haven't provided this and I have felt subconscious about this for a long time.

But we are making the weekend classes more of a priority now - A loves gymnastics and we are looking into it for LM for March. We are trying to get them out every day that the weather is appropriate. I signed LM up for baseball in the spring and this summer they will be at the same camp where they will both have swim lessons daily.

[Shannon-from-old-job]

I also heard good things about http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003TK1HSM - and there are three Just Dance Kids games too!

Glad you overall like your pediatrician, and glad that the snack thing seems like it might be getting better too.

I still really admire you for your non-sugar-ness. Such dedication!

[Sha]

The f***?!?

My 2 cents: your child is not overweight. Period. Not to mention, show me anyone who doesn't gain weight during a snowy cold winter.

Arg. I'm sorry you are having to deal with this. :-/