Why Taking Obese Children Away is not The Answer

Over the last year or so much has been made of the parental role in childhood obesity in Australia and world wide. And it's resurfacing.

Doctors, Local Council officials and leading health experts in the UK have all called for obese children to be taken from their parents.

Surely our history teaches us that taking children from their parents is not the answer?!
As a very quick example, consider the damage caused by historical Australian government policies that removed indigenous children from their parents. While at the time, this may have seemed the best policy for the care of the children, it has since been admitted and recognised how damaging and cruel this policy really was.

Given that we know children "comfort eat" just as adults do; that they know when they are full and over-full; and that they can recognise the difference between when they're really hungry and when they are eating for emotional reasons, it seems strange and completely topsy turvy to remove them from their support bases.

Parents do play a very significant role in childhood obesity, however it must be better to educate the parents and the family and support them in lifestyle changes than to remove children from their support network and cause more reason for emotional eating and damage.

From a government spending perspective it must be cheaper to educate parents and families than remove children and feed, clothe and educate them elsewhere, and then need to provide counselling for both parents and children who have been separated. If the governments of this world, and (and as I'm in Australia) more specifically, the Australian Government really wants to reduce the costs of preventable disease, they will be wise to invest in such families and educate and thereby empower them.

Taking obese children from their parents is not the answer, unless we want to encourage a disabled mentality. Effective education and support in these cases should be used in the first instance to empower people and will prove to be a sound investment in the country and it's economy instead of a drain.