I love to weigh in (no pun intended) on issues that I don’t truly comprehend and bitch about them.  From CNN.com today, a story of an 8-year old boy who weighs 218 lbs:

When the boy was 2 1/2 years old, he was too heavy for his mother to pick up and at 5, he weighed more than 126 pounds, said The Journal, a northern regional newspaper. Now Connor, who is tall for his age at 5 feet tall, wears adult clothes and size eight shoes, the newspaper said.

Connor’s mother said he steals and hides food, frustrating her efforts to help him. He eats double or triple what a normal seven-year-old would have, she said.

“If I didn’t give him enough at teatime then he would just go on at us all night for snacks and stuff,” she told ITV.

Connor, who lives with his mother and sister, has difficulty dressing and washing himself, misses school regularly because of poor health, and is targeted by bullies.

“People pick on us because of my weight. They call us fat. It makes us feel sick of the nutters always shouting at us,” Connor told ITV.

Now, yes, there is much debate to get into here.  The local government is threatening to remove the child from the home, citing neglect.  This could be argued both ways, especially when they have not released the child’s full medical history (due to privacy clauses, understandably), so we may not know the full reason for his weight gain.

My concern here is two-fold:

1. This quote: “If I didn’t give him enough at teatime then he would just go on at us all night for snacks and stuff.“  Um, as much as I’d like to fight for parental rights on this, this lady just proved my whole theory of BE A PARENT! in one sentence.  Yes, Lord forbid he compain.. that might be too much.
2. This quote: “People pick on us because of my weight. They call us fat. It makes us feel sick of the nutters always shouting at us.”  Apparently, Connor is so amazingly large that he is referring to himself as two people.

Yes, you may pray for me.