You guys are out of your minds. So now parents are solely responsible for the outcome of their child's life? What about FREE WILL?
If your child is obese at the age of say 6, then obviously the parent is to blame. But once that child becomes a teenager, it's up them. I was pretty damn overweight when I was twelve, but became fed up with it when I was fifteen and lost the weight. On my own. Without any help from my parents.
To claim that a parent is 100% responsible for their child's weight and if they are obese they are a failure as a parent is beyond hyperbole. Parent's cannot 100% control everything their child does/eats, even a very young one.
This whole "You're parents are a failure unless you're like me" thing you keep doing is getting pretty annoying. I'm sure you're not intentionally trying to give that message, but claiming that all parents are failures if their child is fat or smokes is absurd. Not only that, but it's incredibly insulting. Thanks for insulting my dead father and my mother and calling them failures 48, really appreciate it.
I have to agree with X here, from what I've been reading many of you think that parents have the time of day to sit right next to their child and hold their hand all day long telling them what they can and cannot do. This is simply asinine and a little shortsighted to think that parents can control EVERYTHING their kids do. Come on be serious for a moment here, in today's world, if it is a two parent house, most times both parents have to work in order to make ends meet. In a single parent home, it's even more difficult. You simply do not have the time to hover over your kids when you have to work just to put a roof over their heads, or to put food on the table.
From personal experience, my brothers and I were taught to be independent probably a lot sooner than most kids were, but we were given responsibilities around the house, and taught that if something needed to be done, we could take care of it ourselves. For instance, if we were hungry, we can go get our own damn food and cook it ourselves. And another thing you also fail to take into consideration is genetics. Now my family from my grandfather, to my brothers and I, all have the same body build, and we may not have a flat stomach with a 6 pack to kill for, but we have bigger midsections that are firm. It looks like fat, which of course some of it is, but it's just the way our genetics are. Even when I dropped down to 180 lbs, I still didn't have a flat stomach, and now that I'm 230 again, it looks like a beer gut again. But fuck it, as long as you are healthy and take time to be active, you'll be fine. I'll never have the washboard abs and I will probably have to wear 34-38 pants for the rest of my life, but it doesn't bother me. People appreciate me for who I am and my personality, not because I'm pure muscle.
Parents should be happy for who their kids are. They are special, and it really pisses me off when I see parents try to make their kids someone they're not. Your child may not be an athlete, they may be a computer person. That's fine, don't push them into sports if they don't want to. Consequently if your kid is eating too many snacks, the best way to handle it is to introduce new snacks and foods that will be healthier for them and do it in a way that will introduce knowledge of nutrition, instead of being a complete nazi about it.
One more aspect of this conversation, you cannot blame the parents for fucking everything that the kid becomes. For instance, my parents raised me right, I was given more freedom then most kids, but they still taught me right and wrong. Can you blame them for me going out and doing drugs or drinking? No because that was a choice I made on my own. They didn't sit me down and force me to smoke a joint, or drink a beer, or light up a cigarette. Like X said, people have free will and it starts sooner than you think, and you will have to accept the fact that your child will make decisions on their own, whether you approve of them or not. What you can do however, is try to teach them proper right and wrong values and hope that they can fall back on those teachings you gave them. If a child goes and decides while you are away to eat all this junk food, then it was their personal choice to. Or if they decide to listen to what you have taught them, instead they may go eat fruit instead. Again, their personal choice to listen to what you had to say.
But by all means, blame the parents for everything, it will just give kids later on in life a great scapegoat when they can't take responsibility for themselves and blame everyone else. I mean really, that's what this world is coming to anyways, it's not my fault, it's on everyone else. I understand that you're talking more towards 8-10 year olds or younger, but irregardless my point stands. You cannot be around your child 24/7 to ensure the same decision you would. To even think you could try something like that would be failure as a human being and as a parent. Again as a parent you have to hope that you taught your kids the right way to do things, and when they stray from the right path, you gently guide them back to the correct path when they need it. The way some people have talked about it here, you want these parents to have a god damn leash around the kid and yank them into a path without letting them make mistakes first. These kids that are forced like that will end up straying far worse then any kid who had the freedom to make the wrong choice. The kids held down while they were kids and teenagers will not know what the world is like when they are out on their own, and will make far graver mistakes than they would have as a teenager. I've seen these rich kids who Mommy and Daddy have basically stifled any exploration if you will hit college. They get into drugs and they have no self control. They don't know how to limit themselves because their parents have done the limiting all their lives. Whereas compared to me, I could handle my shit because I've had the ability to go out and find my limits and when not to cross a certain line. I developed my own boundaries because I had the chance to go out and find how far I could take things, instead of someone telling me: this is the line, you will never cross it.