Let me be plain. I love modern medicine. I love that my child is vaccinated against diseases that wreak havoc on tiny bodies. I love that several of my family members are alive despite having cancer at one point or another in their lives. I love that my labor was not really unpleasant, thanks to the lovely anesthetics running through my peripheral nervous system.
However . . .
I'm kind of at a loss as to the biggest problem my son's pediatrician has with his health. It's his weight. James is in the 2nd percentile for weight for his age group. I could go into why I think this is a load of crap because he was breastfed and we didn't start him on solids for six months and blah blah blah. The real issue I have with this notion is that I am being asked to go against my child's own desires to try to get more food into him.
Because James is now two standard deviations away from the mean weight of children born on his birthday, we are now having to supplement his diet with Pediasure (which sucks, because so far James has really hated Pediasure). It's got 240 calories per bottle and I am supposed to give it to him all in one sitting, once a day. Our previous approach of "feed him more" didn't work so well. He needs to drink more whole milk and get more iron. I am kind of baffled.
Why am I feeding my son when he is not even hungry? Why am I trying to give him a certain amount of food that is completely unrelated to his own appetite? Why am shoving a nasty drink he dislikes in his face to drop straight fat and calories into his system when he is already satiated? What is that going to accomplish? So he can be more like the other kids? Do we even want that? What if these kids turned out like most adults? I certainly wouldn't want that.
Did you know that heart disease is the biggest killer in America? 25% of deaths every year are related to heart disease. Do you know what the biggest risk factors for heart disease are? Having diabetes, being overweight/obese, having a poor diet, and being physically inactive. So, basically, being a fat, lazy American is killing 25% more people than we would have had normally.
Is this the standard I am trying to fulfill? I'm trying to fatten my kid up so he will be "normal," but do I even want him to be normal? The only thing I could do to ensure my child a more quick death would be to give him cigarettes, according to the CDC. Do medical professionals see the irony that they are telling parents to give their kids "x" amount of food, even more food if their child is underweight, and they turn around and tell adults they need to scale back their diet. Am I the only one who wonders if the two are actually related?
So I spend the next few years conditioning James' metabolism and appetite handle more food. I go against his base instincts to bring him up to the standard by which we judge all kids (each other), but when he stops growing and still wants more food, I wonder why my child is getting overweight?
I'm not saying it's going to happen. I am just postulating the fact that maybe one of the reasons we are so freaking fat in this country is because we think we have to have our children weigh something that is based on something arbitrary and stupid. Of the other kids on that chart, how many parents are feeding their kids candy and pop and ice cream and pizza and all kids of other crap that are just packing on the pounds? And my child looks smaller because of it.
Maybe it is time to rethink the paradigm that we should go against a child's base urges to fit them into an unrealistic mold that clearly just results in him being unable to run up a staircase without being winded. Or lose his ability to see his feet over his gut by the time he hits 40. Or whatever. Doesn't his little body, which pumps blood, secretes hormones, converts oxygen into ATP, and eliminates toxins from the system deserve to be trusted in knowing how many calories it needs? And when to stop eating?
I dunno. Guess not.
