Touchy Topic Tuesday: Overweight and underweight children? The idiot things that doctors and CPS do.

As parents, the doctor is a regular part of our lives.

When we are pregnant, the doctor becomes the only one who doesn't get sick of our pregnancy and hearing about our aches and pains and movements and worries.

When the baby is born, we dread the shots, but are actually excited to take our baby to the doctor because we KNOW everyone is going to coo about how she is the cutest baby there ever was, and oh my gosh, she looks just like ME!

Unfortunately, most of us learn very quickly that doctors can be quacks.

I mean, i suppose we can't blame them. They are human, right? (Really, sometimes I wonder.) Of course, they say stupid, judgemental things sometimes. They're just people. And they don't know everything. And I know, I know- many of you probably have spectacular pediatricians who can diagnose strep throat by the way the kid smells when he walks into the office, or who can get rid of lice by recommending a secretly formulated shampoo that is only available to people who come to their office.

Unfortunately, my husband served 4 years in the military, and we had around 12 different doctors throughout the years, and i think that most of them were clueless professionals, so overstimulated by their own self importance that they totally missed the fact that they had no idea what they were talking about. Thank goodness for the sweet nurses, or I very well may have poked some eyes out.

Still, I can't help but wish that maybe they'd get a clue.

Lilly was only 2 months (see above picture) old when we took her in for a well child check, and the pediatrician suggested that in her future she would need plastic surgery to 'fix' the hook on her sweet little nose.

I was only slightly less shocked when he asked ME if I had had plastic surgery because my nose looked like Michael Jackson's!!!

Idiot.

Throughout the years, starting when Lilly (now almost 5) turned 2, I have had at least 5 doctors tell me that I needed to watch what Lilly ate because she was too heavy.

Okay. A few things to know about Lilly.

1. She is tall. Very tall. She is in the 95th percentile for children her age. (She gets this from her Grandpa Mark, Brandon's dad, who is over 6 feet tall. Brandon is only 5 '10" and I am only 5'3", so it certainly wasn't from us.

2. By 'heavy' they mean that she is in the 75th percentile for kids her age. Are you seeing what is wrong with this picture when this fact is coupled with the one from above? A child who is in the 50th percentile or below that, and still was in the 75th percentile for weight would very likely have a weight problem. Unfortunately for the idiot doctors' calculations, this is actually a very healthy coupling because a. This has been consistent throughout her life since she was around 6 months old (she was born 50/50) so it wasn't just a random thing. b. She's taller than 95% of her peers! Shouldn't she weigh more than they do too? I'm not too sure, but in my book, she'd be healthy all the way up to her being in the 95th percentile for weight too. Which she's not. If you look at the picture above, you will see that she's actually very healthy looking.

3. Brandon is 5'10" as I said before. He has a 32 inch waist and weighs an even 200 pounds. Yes. That's right. Brandon is incredibly heavy for his size. And he's not a weight lifter. On many occasions, the military doctors who made sure that the airmen were in good enough shape to stay in the military told him that if they weren't seeing it themselves, they wouldn't believe it. So Lilly must come by it honestly, huh?

And if any of the doctors had taken this into account (you know, like, cracked her chart open for a peak, or asked me about her family history, or about her father, or even looked at the girl for heaven's sake- because, I'm telling you, they were so busy trying to get out of that office and on to other things, that they hardly noticed her at all beyond a heart beat- they would have been able to discern where her traits come from)

Now, I am not a health nut by any means, but I'm pretty good about putting together meals with a lot of fresh ingredients, including veggies and rice and pastas and other things that are generally considered healthy. We are not vegetarians, but we don't eat a lot of meat. When we do, it's chicken, or sometimes a roast on a Sunday. When given a snack choice, my kids will scream for apples and pears or a stick of string cheese before they will take a Fruit By The Foot or a pack of gummy snacks (though they all have a sweet spot for Swedish Fish) Mahone can eat an entire bag of grapes in an hour if i let him. Lilly's favorite thing EVER are blueberries. Not to mention, they have a pretty strict schedule. 3 meals a day, and 2 snacks a day, between the meals. My kids drink some milk, but only with meals, and they are allowed as much water as they want. Juice really doesn't really have a regular spot on our grocery list.

They were telling me to watch what Lilly ate. But I knew what Lilly ate. I was giving it to her. And she was always an active little thing. So I knew she was getting enough exercise. Daily walks were always important to us then. (Now, not so much, but I plan to change that this spring.)

So, I told the docs i would watch what she eats, and then I ignored them. (For the record, I don't ignore them when it comes to the 'important' stuff- like, when my kids are sick or when they need medicines or whatever. I don't know ANYTHING about that stuff, and I know that they do. Or at least I HOPE they do. Once, they gave my son an antibiotic for an ear infection that we found out later was a dosage meant for adults, and my son broke out in what looked like measles. It took an ER doctor off base to confirm that it WAS in fact Rubella (German Measles) not a reaction to the antibiotics as all the base doctors had assured us.)

Okay, so we kind of have a love/hate relationship with our children's doctors. But what's the 'Touchy Topic" for today?

This:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,579297,00.html#

Social workers took a 2-year-old U.K. boy into care after his mother refused to give him junk food.
Zak Hessey was 17 pounds, 6 ounces when his mother Lisa took him to hospital, telling doctors he was a "fussy eater" and not gaining weight.
Doctors said he should weigh 19 pounds, 8 ounces, and advised the mother of five to bulk him up on chips, chocolate and cakes.
When she said no, social workers were called in and her son was put into foster care to assess if his eating improved.
Lisa, 28, and her husband Paul, 48, battled through the courts for four months before they got their son back.
Social workers then admitted in court that the couple, from Bolsover, Derbys, were devoted and loving parents.
Lisa claimed Zak's time in foster care left him a "chocoholic" and only 8 ounces heavier.
"I thought I was doing the right thing going for help when Zak began refusing to eat and lost weight," Zak's mother said.
"Instead they basically accused me of neglect. They said I should give him chocolate, cakes and junk food just to get calories into him."
Chesterfield Royal Hospital spokesman said: "We believe we acted in Zak's interest."

If it were me, I'd have done the same thing. And I guess, if I were at the right doctor's office, I would have lost my child to the great gaping hole of uselessness that is CPS. (Don't get me started on them. That is a Touchy Topic for another Tuesday.) I really don't understand this logic.

Now, for another list, because there are many things wrong with this picture.

1. A 2 year old weighing 17 pounds 6 ounces is technically under weight. But their 'ideal' weight for him was only 2 pounds heavier. It's not like he was supposed to be weighing 30 pounds and he was 17 pounds. 2 pounds people!

2. 19 pounds 8 oz? Who's butt did they pull that out of? I could see them saying 'we feel an ideal weight for your child should be between 19-24 pounds' but specifically "19 pounds 8 ounces?" That's a little hokey sounding to me.

3. Chips, cakes and chocolate, huh? Now, lets think about this here. We are waging a world wide battle against obesity, and these people wanted this mother (who, by the way had 4 other presumably healthy children at home, so let's not suggest that she was naive and inexperienced and didn't know a lick about what she was doing) to shovel EMPTY calories into his dear little body, clogging his arteries, and setting him up for future health problems like heart issues, blood pressure problems, cholesterol problems, and so forth. Why not recommend that the child continue to drink whole milk, and more often? Why not recommend adding more cheese to his diet, or recommend cooking with oils which are calorie dense. Breads are not so calorie dense, but kids tend to like them a lot, and they have carbs, which are great too. How about pastas? Or, for heavens sake, why not keep the kid on a type of formula, which is fortified with all kinds of vitamins, calories and carbohydrates? Babies thrive on this for up to a year. Why couldn't a picky 2 year old?

4. Aren't there supposed to be investigations in the home that occur before Social Services is allowed to take a child out of the parent's home? It seems that doctors, who see our children once a year, or twice or so if they get sick, are becoming the voice of what happens to our children, even though they know very little about them. If the child was covered in bruises and cuts and burns, it would be one thing to immediately remove the child but that never happens. People are losing their children every day to innocent mistakes like taking pictures of them in a bubble bath and then having the roll developed at WalMart, while babies are beaten to death in homes where S.S. don't even try to get into. Everyone cries "there is a process!!!" but it seems that there is only a 'process' when the issue involves a true victim. They're more than ready to yank any normal child out of the arms of normal, concerned parents. No, this child was away from his parents for 4 months, fed the chocolate and junk food that the imbecile doctor recommended, and only gained 8 ounces. Hm. I wonder what the doctor thinks of that? In four months, the child would have probably gained that 8 ounces anyway. But he can't get that 4 months away from his parents and siblings back.

I have to say, too, that I am always slightly afraid to take my children to a doctor. The things that I hear about happening to innocent families on a regular basis shock me into fear. What if my child is a little bit heavy? What if she is a little bit small? What about Scarlet, who is accident prone, and so has cuts and bruises all over her all the time? What if i take her somewhere and a doctor misinterprets what has happened to her, and she is yanked away from me as quickly as this child was from his mother, who thought she was doing the right thing? What if they take ALL my children? Is it becoming such a world where we can't disagree with a doctor, or hope for a second opinion for fear of losing our children? We can't say 'no' because we feel that there is something better for our child, because if the doctor is particularly irritated at us, or just wants to prove that he is the one that is right, he can just call in CPS and off our child goes.

What do you think? What idiot things have your doctors done or told you? What do you think about this case? Was the doctor right or wrong? What would YOU have done if you were in the mother's place?