Childhood Obesity Revisited

The other day, my kids reminded me of the dessert policy I instituted when they were young. They could choose to either have: 2 small items, like two cookies, or 8 M&M’s. Don’t ask me how I came up with this crazy formula. But I do remember firmly adhering to it and except on special occasions they knew never to even ask for special dispensation.

When they were too young to know any differently, there were no sweets or junk food in our house, at least not for them. As they got old enough to know better, I declared that complete abstinence would create cookie monsters, so “that food” became permissible but only in a natural, controlled rhythm. I do admit to sometimes finding empty candy wrappers and chip bags under couch cushions and under beds, but I allowed these digressions to pass without confrontation. I attributed it to youthful spunkiness and small acts of rebellion - allowing the guilty parties to believe that they had gotten away with something. Instead, maybe it should have been my wake up call.

By the time my kids became adolescents, they could easily have been labeled “chunky”, or “full”, or dare I say, overweight? Although I knew they weren’t skinny, they were very active, avidly playing all kinds of sports and most importantly, they had great self esteem, lots of friends and definitely no body image issues. Today, when I look back at their pictures they were definitely “overweight”. Back then I grappled with how to deal with the problem. Or was it a problem? They were far from obese, lead busy, active lives and quite honestly were very happy. The last thing that I wanted for my kids to believe was that their size mattered. Who's problem was it really?

So we framed it with discussions about eating healthy and the importance of being fit. We always had healthy meals and rarely ate fast food. Removing the sweets and chips from our cupboards was not the answer. I believed that teaching my kids how to eat in moderation and to enjoy food - every type - was a life skill they needed to learn. Removing temptations, instead of learning how to manage them, is no way to enjoy life. Perhaps this approach was a leap of faith, and either it worked or they just grew out of it. As they passed through adolescence, they eventually shed their extra weight.

But how would have I felt if their pediatrician actually labeled them “fat” to their faces at their annual physicals? I am positive I would not have welcomed this harsh reality check. Not only would I have been insulted, I never would have condoned such callous and insensitive behavior from our pediatrician. The American Medical Association has recently proposed such a recommendation:

"We need to describe this in medical terms, which is 'obesity.' When we talk to an individual family, we can be a little more cognizant of their feelings and more gentle, but that doesn't mean we can't discuss it," Washington said. "The evidence is clear that we need to bring it up."

In our ambitious attempt to confront these important issues, physicians still need to be mindful of the power in which they are vested. All adults, for that matter, cannot underestimate the potential damage their words can cause. Stigmatization can do as much harm to children as their overweight bodies. All my kids are average weights now. But they each have gone through different weight phases in their short lives. Had there been intervention by a teacher, a physician or even the government it may very well have had a detrimental affect on them. Who is to say what the best practice is?

It is crucial that we act on the obesity epidemic in our country. However, this call for action needs to be balanced ever so carefully with our responsibility to protect our young people from living a lifetime of never feeling good enough unless they are a size 2 or flaunt a sculptured body of muscle and fine lines. It’s a balancing act on a tightrope that requires master skills to gently make the way unfailingly across that wire or we risk raising an entire population of unhealthy as well as unhappy adults.

Children deserve time to be kids and to not feel like failures because they are overweight - especially when it’s not their fault. Parents, media, schools, economics and social factors are what is responsible for who they are and who they will become. They deserve to be healthy and to have a chance at living happy, normal, productive and fulfilling lives. Fixing the obesity problem in America is far more challenging than we may even begin to imagine.

Child's Accident and the California Fires

It is now known that a ten-year old boy accidentally started the Buckweed Fire in Los Angeles County last week, one of 15 fires that in total forced 640,000 people from their homes. The Buckweed fire charred more than 38,000 acres and destroyed 21 homes and dozens of other buildings in northern Los Angeles County. Five people were injured. The emotional impact of the losses, has surely also had a devastating impact on the Agua Dulce residents as well as those in the surrounding area.

The boy was living in a trailer home on The Carousel Ranch where one of his parents is a ranch caretaker and helps care for the horses. They have lived there for about a year. The Carousel Ranch is a non-profit organization, which is dedicated to, according to its website, “providing developmental therapeutic and recreational programs for disabled and disadvantaged children through horses”. This is a supportive environment to say the least; it is evident from the website. Ironically, and somewhat eerily, at the bottom of the website is a news feed, with the #3 story headlined as: SCV Fire Started By Boy Playing With Matches.

Here’s a description of Agua Dulce, where this boy lived and went to school.

Agua Dulce has the best of everything that California has to offer. Great climate, peacefulness, beauty, opportunity, low to no crime, great school, Air park, and, we're only 30 miles from "the city". … relax, kick your shoes off and loosen that tie; when you come to Agua Dulce you've come home. 


If you go to the school district website, and browse the two elementary school pages it is evident that a lot of effort goes into creating a supportive and enriching environment with high academic and behavioral expectations. It sounds like an idyllic community. This boy probably attended one of these schools. He had friends and teachers. It seems like until that fateful day on October 21, he lived a pretty normal life. The director of the ranch has described the family as peaceful and those who know the boy say he has no history of behavioral problems. Even his fireplay was not terribly abnormal. According to Dr. Jeff Victoroff, associate professor of clinical neurology and psychiatry at the University of Southern California,

“At least one study suggests that if you take a population of boys between kindergarten and fourth grade, 60% of them have committeed unsupervised fireplay, which is to say that fireplay is a common and absolutely normal part of human development.”

The director of the ranch asked that the boy be removed. He is living with relatives somewhere in California. How do these parents begin to sort out all these issues? Even though he had no malicious intent, his actions had grave consequences. How do they help this child understand the devastation he caused to his neighbors’ and to strangers lives while protecting him from the psychological burden of living with his actions for the rest of his life? “He acknowledged that he was playing with matches, and accidentally, in his words, ‘set the fire’”.

How many times, as adults, have we done something really stupid and wished we could take back that one-second mistake? I remember so clearly wishing I could, while in the emergency room with my then 3 year old daughter who had fallen out of a shopping cart, onto a cement floor, flat on her back. I knew better than to allow her to stand up in that cart and if I could have only taken that second back -- but it was too late. Fortunately she was fine, but it could have changed all of our lives forever.

This boy could not take that second back either and his and his family’s life is changed forever. Although doubtful there will be criminal charges against the child, the parents may be facing civil suits for millions of dollars that they are clearly in no position to handle. Since they have lived in the area for only a year, you have to wonder if they have any close relationships with the people in this community… and it’s that very community that their son set fire to. As much as Agua Dulce is in need of support, and their devastation is not in the least bit minimized, this family also needs assistance.

Sorting this out is not an easy task. How the authorities and citizens of this community handle the upcoming weeks and months will require a lot of soul searching. The losses have already been great.

Parental Growing Pains

Since some of us are sending our kids off to college around this time of year, I thought it would be a nice idea to have my first blog entry (EVER!) be about what I've learned since my son went off to school.

He left for college a week after his eighteenth birthday. That was almost 2 years ago. I marveled at the ease with which he seamlessly glided through the transition from being a stereotypically clumsy adolescent dependent on us for his meals, clean clothes, money and once in a while for emotional support, to a legal adult directing his own course. I was thrilled for him and couldn’t wait to share his enthusiasm and hear about his classes, his new friends, and his observations and experiences of his new life as a college student. Only it didn’t happen.

We barely heard from him. When I sheepishly gathered the nerve to call him I would hang-up, disappointed by our one-sided conversations and his one word responses to my questions. What had I done wrong? It felt so forced, so unnatural, so awful. Had he been waiting all his life to leave? I was dying for information. My daughters would communicate with him on Facebook or AIM - and I would breathe a sigh of relief, knowing at least that he was safely at his computer somewhere on campus. He would occasionally email my husband, asking for some advice or a quick read of one of his papers. But I got nothing.

I have no memories of how my parents felt after I left home. By the time I left for college, my mother and I were great friends- best friends. I have to believe that she missed me terribly but it never even dawned on me to ask. After all, I was the one leaving, growing up, moving on – it was all about me and my new found independence…my new life. It’s a strange notion, that our first act as a newly knighted adult could be to show concern or compassion for our parents, but instead we choose, subconsciously to behave as a child. Developmentally, I guess it makes sense. It’s like reversion back to the egocentric world of a toddler. Everything revolved around our own wants and immediate needs. But just as a toddler is trying so hard to assert some independence, so is our adult child.

What is it about turning eighteen that suddenly transforms you into an adult? Kids turn eighteen every day – I turned eighteen 30 years ago and I am sure that I must have been waiting with youthful anticipation for my 18th birthday to arrive. But quite honestly, I don’t remember. I became an adult overnight. I could vote, I was legally responsible for myself and back then I could even buy alcohol. It wasn’t all that life-changing. I registered to vote, I opened my own bank account, acted as a responsible citizen, had a glass of wine or beer once in a while and soon graduated from college. The years passed quietly. I got a job after college, got married, went to law school, and had kids. Turning 18 was not a major turning point in my life. In fact, from this vantage point, it was pretty unremarkable. I have to believe that it was no different for my son.

But being a parent of child who has turned eighteen, is very significant. I am astounded that 20 years have passed so swiftly and my son is an adult. Turning eighteen is a really big deal and it was a major turning point - in my life.

So, two years later, this is what I have learned. Patience. I am a different parent to my son than I am to my three daughters. I want to believe that it is not because he is a boy but because he is my first. I have learned by now that patience is the best virtue any parent can have. It serves you best when your kids are young and you are attending mostly to their physical needs and it serves you best when they are older and you are attending mostly to their emotional needs. I learned throughout these times that if I wait long enough, “this too shall pass”. And this too, has passed.

There were times over the past two years, when I would become impatient and believed that I needed to approach this milestone differently - that I had to be proactive about building the foundation for a new kind of relationship with my adult child or I would lose him. But, I decided instead to trust my instincts, and trust my son. He needed his space. We had him for eighteen years and we taught him all we could about growing up to have an inquisitive mind, an open heart and a generous spirit. And lately, I see him coming back in bits and pieces - a gift for my birthday this year, an invitation to come watch him run in a track meet, a trip to our house with his friends for dinner, and an entire car ride home from school last Spring with non-stop conversation, just him and me. It seems like baby steps but that’s okay because he can take all the time he needs. 

I remember when he was turning four, my husband said to him, “You’re growing up too fast, you can’t be turning four already!” and his response was so clear: “You have to change numbers, Dad, that’s the deal”… He was pretty wise, even back then.