A mother in Polk County, Florida, may lose custody of her 7-year-old son Justin, who weighs a staggering 254 lb. ( 115 kg)!
Joyce Painter's seven year old son, Justin, weighs 254 pounds. She says the Department of Social Services is threatening to remove him from her home if he doesn't lose weight.
Painter says she first noticed her son's weight gain when he was three, "He played T-ball and soccer, did things just like every other kid, but he was gaining weight." Painter says she's taken Justin to doctor after doctor over the past four years, but nobody has been able to pinpoint the cause of his rapid growth. She's been told it could be genetic, it could be hormonal or it could be his diet. Painter says she's regulated Justin's meals for a while now, "I've got him on three meals a day. A meat and two vegetables, that's it. There's no snacking, I removed all the chips and cookies. I quit buying it." Despite those efforts, Painter says her son continues to gain weight.
Sounds like he may be sneaking snacks.
And the correct spelling is "Holy f~ck".
PS - deep fried Twinkies are not a vegetable.
But that boy has been to 5 doctors and his family has him on a strict diet with food journals and everything.
It would be one thing to take him from the family if there was proof that the family was not doing everything they could to try and help him.
This is sad, but definitely not a reason to take the poor child. I'm sure he gets enough crap from people his own age.
There's no reason for all of you to be insensitive and attack a small child about this.
I don't think anybody is attacking the child. Rather, we consider it very likely that his mother is full of crap, and is shoveling him with food despite what she says.
There are all sorts of crazy (or at least semi-odd) people out there. In gradeschool & highschool, I had one good friend who was *perennially* (all 12 years) the fattest kid in the class by a long shot. This was back when most kids were NOT fat, so "Bob" was mocked constantly (kids are sweet, huh?). Anyhow, for whatever reason, Bob didn't want to be fat and ridiculed, so he actually tried to cut back and control the quality of what he ate. But his mother was intent on making him eat a lot! It got to the point that he asked his friends to lie if his mother asked if he had eaten while he was out with us. We were supposed to say that "we all had pizza". Otherwise, she'd be stuffing him with food as soon as we walked in the door.
Nonetheless, ultimately, it up to these parents to raise their kid(s) in whatever (screwed up or not) manner they feel best. It's gonna be tough for Eric, er... Justin to undo this when he is older, but a lot of us didn't have perfect parents. If you start taking fat kids away from their parents, skinny kids are next, and then kids who climb on rocks and kids with chickken pox. Where does it end?
If it is PWS then three normal sized meals a day will be far too many calories. I've worked with PWS sufferers who've remained extremely fat on diets of less than a thousand calories a day. The combination of a disorder that means the body needs almost no food and yet tells the brain it is constantly starving always seemed very cruel.
I only hope that the cause is something more treatable and that his parents are able/willing to deal with it.
Not to sound like Beavis and/or Butthead, but isn't "Meat and Two Veg" British slang for male genitalia?
HehHehHeh...HehHehHeh