Is your child struggling with being overweight?
Forget encouraging exercise, fruits and vegetables, and lots of sleep. According to new guidelines released last week by the American Academy of Pediatrics, children dealing with obesity should be treated early and aggressively, including with medications for children ages 12 and up and even surgery for children 13 and up.
This seems like a grave mistake, indicative of our society obsessed with filters and quick fixes.
Health officials admit the guidelines hope to change the traditional view of obesity as “a personal problem, maybe a failure of the person’s diligence,”
said
Dr. Sandra Hassink, medical director for the AAP Institute for Healthy Childhood Weight and a co-author of the guidelines. “This is not different than [if] you have asthma, and now we have an inhaler for you,” Hassink said.
While it’s true that some people may be genetically more prone to obesity than others, that’s not the case with everyone. While some children may be obese due to circumstances outside their control, oftentimes childhood obesity is due to parents’ poor choices. Parents, after all, are usually the ones buying the groceries and preparing the food or not encouraging their children to play outside more. To suggest all childhood obesity is entirely genetic and not anyone’s fault is asinine.
It is scientifically proven that the best way for children to battle obesity is to eat nutrient-dense foods, drink water, get significant amounts of rest, and exercise regularly. Suggesting that all children who are overweight past age 13 should simply have weight-loss surgery, the same as a physician might prescribe asthma medication to an asthma sufferer, seems like a massive leap toward drastic measures and unintended consequences.
Pushing children and their parents toward medication and surgery after ages 12 and 13 removes opportunities for children to learn how to make good choices. If children go right from what their parents are telling them to eat to drastic measures like surgery to fix their obesity problem, how will they ever learn to make better choices on their own?
Medication and surgery are by no means an easy way out, but they might seem that way to a child who has yet to learn to exercise regularly and eat fruits and vegetables. What’s more, what will keep the child from becoming dependent on medication and surgery into adulthood and for the rest of their life? What if, following surgery, an overweight child continues to eat junk, lay on the couch, and play video games all night? How many surgeries should they have going forward?
Healthcare professionals should be encouraging good lifestyle decisions from the get-go, ones that last beyond a prescription or a surgery. There may be some children who are obese due to genetics and really can’t see any progress without medication or surgery. For many others, however, quick fixes and drastic measures are rarely the best options.
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Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She is an opinion columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
