http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/28/9072934-opinion-officals-wrong-to-take-200-pound-boy-from-mom

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Opinion: Officals wrong to take 200-pound boy from mom

Cuyahoga County Officials took an eight-year-old boy, weighing over 200 pounds from his mother, and now a court will begin the process of deciding what's best for the child next month. Bioethethicist and msnbc.com contributor Arthur Caplan discusses.

An 8-year-old Ohio boy weighing 200 pounds was taken from his family last month and put into foster care by officials who said his mother wasn't doing enough to control his weight. That was the wrong call, says Arthur Caplan, an msnbc.com contributor and professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

"I think it's a bad policy," Caplan told Tamron Hall, host of MSNBC's NewsNation. "Moving kids out of the home is wrenching for them, they're going to live with strangers. You're creating emotional turmoil."

Caplan, an msnbc.com contributor, says the solution is working with the entire family to change behavior. "The problem with an overweight child doesn't end with the child and moving him out of the house because he's going to come back to the house. You're going to have to figure out ways to change bad habits with the whole family."
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Caplan noted that the child may also be indulging outside of his mother's watch. "This parent, unless you're going to monitor the kid 365-days a year, 24 hours a day, who knows where [he] may be getting the food. [The parent] may be making the effort to get the kid to be less obese."

Not only is it bad for the child to be taken from his home, it's bad for the foster care system as well, he said.

"It can't be the right answer to turn to foster care. There are too many overweight kids. You'd overwhelm the foster care sytem if this became the policy."

Caplan also fears that children from low-income parent homes with limited access to healthy foods will be targeted.

"Does anyone really think a 200-pound kid in a rich family household out in the burbs is going to be put into foster care? Because I don't. I think it's going to fall mainly on the single moms, on the poor since they don't have the resources to resist this. Plus, we have no reason to think this will work. There's no study that shows taking kids out of the home and putting them somewhere else is going to make him skinnier."

Totally agree with the professor.

Another case of overstepping. I do hold parents responsible for their obese children, but I fail to see how placing them in the foster care system helps anything. I can imagine, though, it exasperating the problem.

Outrageous. You don't take children away from parents based on what might happen, "at risk" does not equate to the here and now or it being so. Why would anybody think this kid is better off in the foster system? Clearly the judge who made this decision was more concerned about showboating than acting in the best interest of the child.

I guarantee you that the child would not have lived more than a few years if they were still under the care of the parents. The role of a parent is to guide their child into adulthood. How can this be possible if the parent is basically killing the child through indirect means? I don't intend to be malicious, but I am seeing both sides of the argument. I do, however, agree that placing this child in foster care will not permanently solve the problem at hand. Hopefully this action will act as a catalyst for the parents to start taking the right responsibilities to ensure that they get their child back and keep him living healthy (for the long-term).

Foster care was too extreme....but unless it's something medical, like a thyroid condition, I can't be mad at some kind of shakeup happening in the home of a child that is morbidly obese. How the hell do you let your 8 year old child balloon to the weight of a 6'3 man? Maybe when she gets the boy back, she'll seriously reevaluate cooking and eating habits because that shit is totally unacceptable.

Marc™ wrote:

Foster care was too extreme....but unless it's something medical, like a thyroid condition, I can't be mad at some kind of shakeup happening in the home of a child that is morbidly obese. How the hell do you let your 8 year old child balloon to the weight of a 6'3 man? Maybe when she gets the boy back, she'll seriously reevaluate cooking and eating habits because that shit is totally unacceptable.

Maybe this was just the judge trying to shock everyone into seeing how unacceptable this kids weight is with consequence.

Marc™ wrote:

Foster care was too extreme....but unless it's something medical, like a thyroid condition, I can't be mad at some kind of shakeup happening in the home of a child that is morbidly obese. How the hell do you let your 8 year old child balloon to the weight of a 6'3 man? Maybe when she gets the boy back, she'll seriously reevaluate cooking and eating habits because that shit is totally unacceptable.

I agree that an intervention was needed but rather than placing an obese child in foster care, a social worker should have been assigned to work with the mother and his pediatrician to set up a program to help him drop weight and become healthier. I can't see how this will have a positive outcome in any way.