10-year-old British girl weighs 24 stone

Or at least have their children taken away for a period until both child and parents learn the basics of healthy eating/exercise...

Allowing your children to get that heavy is nothing short of neglect in my view, as it will take a long period of time to achieve, and the results will be evident (in terms of how big the child looks) long before they reach that weight, which should prompt you to start doing something about it.

It really is a sad state of affairs.

The other issue I think is the rising cost of good quality food as opposed to cheap, additive filled rubbish. I'll be honest and say I have no experience living alone (and so managing a budget) but I'd bet anything that if my family decided to live on fresh fruit, veg and meat for a week, or vice versa ready made microwave meals, their food bill would go up/down respectively... balance that with things like gas prices, mortgage etc, and both parents working full time to make ends meet it's easy to see why some families might not have time to cook quality food and/or get regular exercise with their kids...

I'm no economist either but perhaps the situation could be helped by doing things like raising the minimum wage, as well as relaxing quality controls on things like fruit & veg before they go into the supermarket - basically if it's wonky but perfectly edible then sell it, and lastly encouraging people to grow their own? I don't know if any of that's any good though to be honest.

She didn't just wake up one morning at 24 stone...

Obese = fat = lazy.

Thats my viewpoint. No doubt I'll be shouted down and reported. But that's the problem. We no longer have boundaries in society. Anything goes and personal and family responsibility have been eroded so much that peer and social pressures are no longer allowed as we've turned into a society of 'its never my fault.'

I think the government should have mandatory fat camps for these people.

I think the government should have mandatory fat camps for these people.

However, nothing in the article suggests that the issue wasn't being dealt with. The data shows nothing about the individual cases, and I doubt (i.e. hope not) that nothing was being done about it already.

xxx

There are two ways of looking at this, I guess, with the backdrop that kids these days are generally getting too fat. One is to give objective advice that will probably be ignored by the rubbish parents who overfeed their kids and don't let them run around, and the other is to introduce some scare tactics which will annoy good parents but hopefully get some rubbish parents to change their ways.

What if the 'rubbish parents' try their best, but the child simply does not want to run around?

Dunno, the parents of the 5-year old (rightly) seem pretty sure she's healthy

What I do think the government should do, though, is to simply get kids more active. Sure, getting used to sitting down for 6 hours a day at school is good practice for sitting down for 8 hours a day at a typical job, but their health is of far greater concern. I can't see why a teacher would complain about having to stay until 5 if they got a longer lunch break (and other breaks) along with the kids, and there's bound to be a few teachers willing to do overtime to supervise detentions. Kids like running around, just let them.

What if the 'rubbish parents' try their best, but the child simply does not want to run around?

I'm a (newly qualified) teacher, with a focus on early years (3-5) and KS1. I love physical activity in classrooms. Most early years settings now will have open outdoor areas which are accessible all day to the children, whatever the weather. Although there is still a focus of choice and some children just don't choose to go outside often, the majority of children will run around to use all their energy naturally, and I personally think this ethos should be carried through to the end of primary, certainly to key stage 1.

The school I was in for one of my placements had free flow in the afternoons where outside activities were always available and children moved around to choose activities. Even in the mornings in the more 'typical' lesson format the children weren't expected to sit in one place for very long, they were always moving around to gather resources, work with each other and they tried to plan learning outside often as well. It was good

I would definitely be behind all schools trying to make learning more active for all children (and I think many schools already do a great job of this). I don't necessarily think that a longer school day would help this though, I personally feel children need time after school to do other activities with family and friends which can include very active activities. I do think that it would be a nice idea though to provide sue of the school grounds to children for a time after school in areas where there isn't much green space. In the form of an after school club but focussed on what the children choose to do.

xxx

That sounds good, definitely going in the other direction to what I saw in my school years.



I agree that schools should open up their grounds (unless they get vandalised or something), there's a school near me where they have football cages, but lock the gates even though nobody's using them (weekends, summer holidays etc). Sure, we climbed over the fences anyway, but there was really no reason to lock them.

Perhaps I'm going too much by my experiences in school, but we had our lunch break continually shortened to the point that either you played on an empty stomach and then scoffed your lunch afterwards, or you ate lunch and didn't have time to digest before playing. If parents work, then it'd probably be better if the kids finished later. They can still go to do other things afterwards, and bear in mind that the extended breaks let them play around in school too. It's extra rest time for you as a teacher too, and are you really going to have more of a social life because you finish an hour or so earlier than other jobs?

Off topic but you weigh 8 stone? How tall are you?