Yesterday I was getting caught up on reading my newspapers that I haven’t had time to read in the last four weeks due to everyone in the house being ill and getting a new foster placement. I was using the express reading method; I look at the legals, since they post hearings for foster children in them, then the obituaries and police reports. But an article caught my eye about an eight year old child that weighs 218 pounds that officials are considering removing from his parents for neglect. He is at high risk for developing childhood diabetes as well as numerous other health issues caused by obesity. In the article the mother said that if she didn’t give him the food that he wanted he would sneak it into his room and hide it for later. If you need a point of reference for the weight my seven year old child weighs 49 pounds and my nine year old child weighs 65 pounds.

It brought to mind the times we’ve caught our children hoarding food in their bedrooms and we were able to root out the probable cause as childhood depression. Trust me we have rules at our house about where food can be eaten because we don’t like ants crawling through the bedrooms or mice; children are notoriously messy especially when you get nine of them living under one roof.

In the case of my now adult son, he felt that his stepmother treated him unfairly and his father didn’t do anything about it. He hasn’t spoken to them in six years, since the day he turned 18. He struggled with childhood obesity, though not to the extent of the little boy in the article, hoarding and being made fun of by peers. We finally resorted to a change in the custody and visitation arrangement from joint-custody to every other weekend. We enrolled him in team sports where children were guaranteed to play half the game regardless of skill level and encouraged him in hunting and fishing. Today, he sports a six-pack, lifts weights daily and eats only health foods.

The cause was a little more obvious with our now adult daughter. She was already taking several medications and wanted to try to wean off a few of them. The first medication that seemed logical to try to stop was Wellbutrin; a medication commonly used to treat depression. After all she was happy, doing well in school, maintaining a part-time job and participating in extra-curricular activities; not a likely candidate for depression. I thought things were going fine for her without the Wellbutrin, until the day she said she had a confession to make and lifted her blankets off from her bed. There sat the biggest pile of garbage I’ve ever seen anywhere other than in a garbage can or a dump. When we got it all cleaned up it consisted of 80 Mountain Dew cans and enough chip and candy wrappers to fill a thirty-gallon garbage can. She went back on the Wellbutrin and didn’t have any more problems with hoarding or excessive eating until she quit taking it again.

You can read the news story about the boy at the following link if you are interested. abcnews
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