Living in L.A. you see a lot of strange stuff and pratically every type of person that walks this earth - everything from the "fake ‘n’ bakes", real pirates, to living Morlocks hanging out in North Hollywood - but nothing bothers me more than really, really overweight kids. These aren’t the kind that are a little chubby with some baby fat, but who are seriously huge (like the Stay-Puff marshmallow man). And its not older kids like in Jr. High or High School, but toddlers, preschoolers, early elementary age kids. The sad thing is most of these parents think it’s cute to see a pot belly and no neck on a 2 year old. I’m sorry, but personally I think it’s disgusting and nothing to be proud of.
What kind of habits are these parents teaching here? Imagine the problems when they get older. Not only will the kid be a prime bully target, but it's also gross and extremely unhealthy, have you seen the statistics on how many kids are getting Diabetes now? (Diabetes was rare in kids just 20 years ago, now it’s getting much more common). The sad thing is most parents are trying to blame McDonalds and other fast food for this stuff, as if fast food is a new phenomenon that hasn’t been around long. What happened to self-control and being a parent when it comes to sweets and limiting junk food? I know the advertising has gotten pretty bad these days on marketing junk to kids, especially on channels like Nickelodeon, but commercials were around when I was a kid watching Saturday Morning cartoons like GI Joe, He-Man and The Smurfs (yeah, I watched The Smurfs…I always wanted Gargamel to catch one to see what he would really do). I wanted all the junk food, Mr. T cereal, and toys with kung-fu grip but I never got any of it. My parents drew the line somewhere.
We saw a friend recently who is guilty of this; one of her kids is going into first grade and looks like she’s 12 and a perfect circle (if she tripped on a hill she would roll uncontrollably and would only stop if she hit a brick building, maybe). When her daughter wants sweets and junk, well she gets her sweets and junk as a preventative measure to a meltdown. I wanted to shake this friend and yell (like a pimp) “What’s wrong with you woman! Are you on crack?!”
Crack is my excuse for everything these days. Millions of parents are on crack with really fat kids with big cracks.