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Lucy Cavendish describes her guilt as a mother of an overweight child in a society that values thinness
I'm not sure when it happened but, somewhere over the past nine years, my son Leonard has gone from being a normal-looking, healthy child to one who is now clinically obese.
And I do mean clinically obese. He has a huge round belly, big chubby hands, large tree-trunk thighs. I look back at photos of him as a two-year-old and wonder how a perfectly normal toddler has turned into an overweight nine-year-old.
To put it in perspective: he wears trousers that are meant for 13-year-olds and even then, they are plus size. His weight affects his health. He finds it hard to run and breathes very heavily when he does. To lose weight, he needs to move more, yet he finds most forms of exercise difficult.
How can I explain the difficulties, the pain of having a child who is overweight? I lie awake at night wondering what to do about it. I have tried just about everything -- endless courses, trips to the doctor, clinics at my local hospital and yet . . . Leonard just gets bigger and bigger and I'm not actually sure why. My antennae are always up.
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle...dler-become-an-obese-nineyearold-3123676.html
I'm not sure when it happened but, somewhere over the past nine years, my son Leonard has gone from being a normal-looking, healthy child to one who is now clinically obese.
And I do mean clinically obese. He has a huge round belly, big chubby hands, large tree-trunk thighs. I look back at photos of him as a two-year-old and wonder how a perfectly normal toddler has turned into an overweight nine-year-old.
To put it in perspective: he wears trousers that are meant for 13-year-olds and even then, they are plus size. His weight affects his health. He finds it hard to run and breathes very heavily when he does. To lose weight, he needs to move more, yet he finds most forms of exercise difficult.
How can I explain the difficulties, the pain of having a child who is overweight? I lie awake at night wondering what to do about it. I have tried just about everything -- endless courses, trips to the doctor, clinics at my local hospital and yet . . . Leonard just gets bigger and bigger and I'm not actually sure why. My antennae are always up.
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle...dler-become-an-obese-nineyearold-3123676.html