If a child is overweight, do you think the parents are to blame?

Yes. Sometimes the kids are throwing tantrums because of wanting food. So sad.

Yes. Sometimes the kids are throwing tantrums because of wanting food. So sad. Good answer btw.

I suppose for the most part it is. But sometimes it’s a bit more difficult. I know little kids who are overweight but due to genetics as their parents feed them healthy food. In addition, sometimes it’s difficult. I mean, yes, we all say with proper parenting we can teach a child to eat right and such but sometimes children are just too difficult. Some children are such picky eaters and much as yo uwant them to eat healthy, you’d rather they not starve. I know when I was a kid I hated eating. I refused to eat. My parents spent hours trying to feed me one meal, in the end they had to resort to vitamin drops while they continued to attempt to feed me. They explained to me that my body needed food to work and so forth, but I just didn’t truly understand it and just never wanted to eat. It’s not all black and white. I think adults are in charge, yes, but sometimes, the children (who do not understand the dangers of eating bad, eating too much, eating too little) can be unbending and an adult will be left with little choice. However, I have also seen kids who throw tantrums when they do not get McDonald’s or something similar, something like that requires more parenting.

I’m not sure what use it assigning blame. My daughter used to be very skinny. I remember her being in the 80th percentile for height but only the 20th percentile for weight at checkups. Our pediatrician suggested we give her half-and-half instead of milk to put some weight on her (not sure if she was joking or serious). I’m a vegetarian but consciously decided against raising her vegetarian. I didn’t become a vegetarian until I was 19 and her mom eats meat so I was not going to say that there was anything wrong with eating meat. I also didn’t want her to be the one kid who couldn’t eat what all her friends were eating at get-togethers. However, she mainly ate what we prepared for her which was healthy and mostly vegetarian. She loved all sorts of healthy foods. She loved avocado, sweet potato, beans, brown rice and every vegetable she tried. One day when we went out to eat Italian the waiter was amazed because my daughter ate every bit of steamed broccoli but never touched her pizza; he said he never saw anything like it. Then she tasted a McDonald’s Chicken McNugget. Oh my gosh, after she tasted this it was all she wanted. Later she tried a plain cheeseburger and went nuts for that. After this she lost all interest in healthy food and only wanted McNuggets and cheeseburgers. In a few years she went from underweight to overweight. I don’t know if she changed to the supersize me diet because we deprived her of them during her toddlerhood making them irresistibly forbidden or if it was because she tasted them before eating healthy became well enough ingrained but in any case she would eat McDonald’s 3 meals/day if we let her and would probably be the size of a house by the time she grows up. Personally I blame Ronald McDonald for all those commercials selling junk food to kids.