A recent visit to our local dentist led to many thoughts with regard to how parents care for the health of their child, in this case, dental health. My children are 5 and 7 and their teeth are in perfect health. Not surprisingly as I take my job to look after them seriously and I carry it out to the best of my ability. This is the third time we have been to the dentist and again, they said to me directly, well done, you are doing a really good job. Nice to hear yes but no big deal. When she gave the kids a sticker it was with the words “We don’t give too many of these away – the sticker read “Horray – No Decay” Sadly, I could well believe it. It is a dentist that treats those who are eligible for dental benefits under the child dental benefits schedule and it makes $1000 available over a two year period for basic dental services. It is situated bang in the middle of a pretty low socio-economic area, to use a politically correct term. To speak frankly, it is overflowing with scum. When i use the term scum, understand that in this broad sweep of the brush, i do not refer to anyone who is simply poor and lives well, works hard and endeavours to be healthy and to steer their children onto bigger and better things. Here are some examples that may shock or surprise you are you may think so, what is so bad about that? I would be interested to hear your opinions. I can furnish you with many, many more examples.
A place where at the local shopping centre I witnessed a mother walking across a car park with her little boy of about 5 years old saying, without much malice or anger “Come on you fucking little retard”. My husband overheard in the supermarket this weekend a father talking to his approx. five year old son “Mate, don’t bullshit me, I fucking hate it when you fucking bullshit me”. Tattoos adorn horribly obese bodies, hanging out of too tight, too small, too loose, barely clothed bodies. Its not unusual to see entire families without shoes in the shops or standing outside the shops sucking back cigarettes while the kids wait in the car. It is pretty normal to see tots with lollies, soft fizzy drinks and chocolate as presumably part of or the entirety of their breakfast or morning tea at 9am. One look from the poor child being fed this diet of junk to the parent in charge inevitably leads to the mother looking as described above or the other extreme, as skinny and unkempt as any drug addict one has the misfortune to encounter.
All of these sites make me shudder. Not so much because i find them unattractive to look at, which I do, but because i think two things “What the fuck went wrong for you that you have ended up like this?” and “Your child has NO hope”. At a guess, maybe one in one thousand, one in ten thousand kids have the intelligence and drive to pull themselves out of this gutter of a life and create something amazing for themselves and break the mould with their own family, but that is very, very unlikely for the majority. It makes me sad for these children who are born the same as any other, pretty much beautiful and perfect but slowly but surely ruined by ignorant, uneducated, lazy and inadequate parenting.
Never mind that one can only guess at what goes on behind closed doors if this is what they display in public with regard to diet, how they talk to and treat their children and themselves. I simply cannot imagine that when these children start school that they come home every afternoon to a quiet, calm environment where they are encouraged to do their homework of learning to read and write and sitting down to a decent, healthy homemade meal. It can’t be that far fetched to guess that these homes are full of smoke, drink and drugs and god knows what and who else. Certainly no springboard to leap out of the poverty trap.
If you think this is far fetched, please come and take a look for yourselves at the white trash that litter this area. The first time I paid a trip to this particular shopping centre I was truly shocked. This from someone who has travelled the world, seen abject poverty, even survived hard times myself by the skin of my teeth.
This is what I see happening when I look towards to the scum of society and I can completely understand the cycle of poverty, lack of education, motivation, the social benefit safety net being too comfortable to climb out of.
What really frightens me however is when parents that do and can know better continue to feed their children a diet of junk, sugar and various other poisons. Most people I know and socialise with are well educated, well off and have good jobs and do their upmost to be very good parents, certainly nowhere near the description of the lower end of the scale written about already. However 99% of these parents still give their children far too many sweets, lollies, ice creams, chips, fried foods, convenience foods, fizzy drinks each and every day.
We are continually told though the press that we are in the middle of ‘An Obesity Epidemic’ with Australia being the (depending on the year – check the internet for latest stats) about the fourth of fifth most obese nation. Hold on though, it is getting fatter and fatter, faster and faster than anywhere else on earth. Queensland is the most overweight state so it lends some weight to what I observe and using some foresight, its not hard to see that these little kids who are being misguided by the very people who are supposed to set good examples will follow down the same path. Bad diet leading to bad dental health, being fat, overweight, obese or morbidly obese. Not only are these all life shortening states (google gum disease linked to heart disease if you scoff at bad dental health being life threatening) they are very unpleasant to live with.
Occasionally a fat person may shrug off their weight problem and claim that they are happy the way they are but in MY 43 years I have NEVER ever encountered one person say they are happy to be fat. Most overweight people talk or dieting, wanting to be healthier, fitter, slimmer, not about getting bigger and bigger. Actions speak louder than words though as talk is cheap. The hard work of self control with food and exercise is incredibly challenging hard work. Far beyond the reach of most it seems. Generally most fat people are full of self loathing for one reason or another linked to what is that prompts them to overeat and to think that these gorgeous children will likely one day hate their own bodies is horrific.
I sympathise with all the difficulties that lead people to the point of being unhealthy in this way but i feel anger when they subject their children to the same fate. Come on. Put down the bag of chips, put on your trainers, grab your kids and go for a walk. Then, come home, drink water, only water and eat a meal that contains proper, whole and healthy foods. Then do that again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. Then you may feel your self loathing slip away from you as quickly as the fat does and best of all, you will setting up your child for a fresh approach. You yourself will be breaking the mould – one of the biggest achievements a human can attain.
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