Are you kidding me?

[Tiapet]

I just stumbled upon this article linked from somewhere else. I am, well, really unbelievably stunned! I can not believe that they would even consider this. I am, as well as several of my family members and others I know heavy and yes, could be considered obese by standards. 2 of my difficult children are above normal in cognitive functioning, 1 of which is actually near genius level! Other family members are just as intelligent as well. Several being born from obese parentage.

I guess this just offended me a bit because it's like saying "fat people have dumb kids" and in fact the place I stumbled upon it actually had a caption like that. Sad!

 

[lmf64]

I skimmed the article and am completely appalled. They want to claim that being overweight causes our children to have lower IQ scores. That's just crazy talk. My sister in law weighs about 300 pounds. My brother is over 300. They have two of the most intelligent children I've ever met. My nephew is not yet 6, he was reading at 4, and is right now working on learning his multiplication tables. That's right, I said he's learning his multiplication tables and he's only 5. His kindergarten teacher is the same one my son had and she's just flabbergasted that J is so smart. She said in all her years of teaching she's never had a child who caught on so fast and knew as much as he knew starting kindergarten. They wanted to jump him into 2nd grade next year, but we talked them into waiting until the next year. It's a multi age classroom (2-3) and he's the youngest one in his class (7-26 birthday) so when the rest of his class goes to 2nd grade he'll be working with the third graders. Next year he'll be doing reading and math with the second graders. My niece is not yet 4 and has done early head start since she was 2. After 2 weeks the early head start teacher decided she couldn't bring the early program curriculum because B already knew everything they were to spend the year learning. She had her early childhood/pre kindergarten evaluation a month or so ago and at that time they said she was ready for kindergarten, and she still has two years before she'll start kindergarten because of her 9-29 birthday. Don't tell me that obese parents have lower intelligence kids!

 

[keista]

This is the same BS as 'smoking lowers birth weight'. Yeah, OK

I'm happy to report that I now break two sets of ridiculous statistics.

 

[Hound dog]

Obesity during pregnancy does have the potential to cause issues with the fetus, such as increases the risk pregnancy induced diabetes with mom.........and baby, has a higher risk of blood pressure becoming an issue ect.

But this is just plain the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Ok, maybe not the stupidest, but it ranks right up there. Right along with smoking causes low birth weight babies. Know what their definition of "low birth weight is"?? No what you'd expect. It's 5-6 lbs, what was NORMAL birth weight not 15 yrs ago. Just because we're having huge babies, when actually that is not such a hot idea to begin with as it causes another whole area of issues and risks, they view 5-6 lbs as "low" now, which is absurd. It's still a normal healthy weight.

Travis was 8 lbs 2 oz, by the way......(and I thought I'd die those last 2 months he made me so uncomfortable) and I gained more than 50 lbs with him and he has a genius IQ. phht

I stopped paying attention to such "research" many many years ago. Why? Because they're not as accurate as they lead people to believe they are. You can't do such research under the strict control required so there is such a huge spectrum of other contributing factors it proves nothing, except in this group of people right here this is what we saw there to be a tendency toward. Know what I mean?? Doesn't necessarily apply to other people. Which is why you'll see these same "studies" contridicted at a later date.

 

[Tiapet]

My kids were lower weight so I will give them that BUT having said that I will also qualify that with the fact that I have a blood clotting disorder that I had to have daily injections of heparin to my stomach, twice a day at 50,000 units. When I stopped that they failed to gain weight. We proved that and know for fact that was what was the cause so after 3 I have the proof. 1st one 6 lbs without hep, 2nd 5.5 with hep and 3rd with hep 5 lbs. The 3rd one did not go as long in gestation either. The last 2 were c-sections.

Just galls me that it's just one more thing that they throw at obesity. My middle difficult child has cognitive issues but, again, it's due to a suspected brain injury at this point. She wasn't born with these issues, they developed later on in life. Again I have proof of that.

 

[DammitJanet]

Okay...I can put all these statistics right out the window. I am obese, I smoke and my younger two were on ritalin. Their heights run from oldest...6 foot 1, middle 6 foot 5 and a half, youngest 6 foot. IQ's. Oldest 146, Middle 115, Youngest 125.

So...If smoking or ritalin stunted height...thank heavens!

 

[susiestar]

They cite a 3 point drop. On most tests, 3 points is NOTHING. Most tests have a higher margin of error than that. The APGAR score would be significant if the scores were 3 pts lower because it is a 5 point scale. So 3 points is HUGE. But on an IQ test, 3 ponts is meaningless. On the SAT? 3 points wouldn't even be mentioned.

The people who latch onto this as proof of anything (at least as far as the article indicated, and with-o actually reading the actual research report AND the methodology) are the same ones who get thirsty and then latch onto a pointy toothpick. they stay thirsty and can't figure out why their mouth hurts.

Sounds like an ID-10-t error.

 

[InsaneCdn]

Remember, there are three kinds of lies...
... and one of those is "statistics".

 

[donna723]

That's ridiculous! The part about the smoking is ridiculous too! In just a few generations people have gotten bigger, and babies have gotten bigger too! And with my generation, the post-war "Baby Boomers", just about everybody smoked! All of our mothers smoked, and most of us smoked when we were pregnant too because they never told us not to! And both of my kids were well over 8 pounds - my daughter was 8 lbs. 3 oz. and my son was 8 lbs. 12 oz. and he was a few weeks early!

 

[keista]

OK, OK I'll share my smoking baby weights. 10lb 6oz, 9lb 11oz and 9lb 2oz do I win the big baby prize?

 

[Star*]

What about if you are a genius and then gain weight? How does that play into it? Other than - when I was thin and smart - and got diabetes gained tons of weight, and - I had brain fog. But seriously? What a load of manure.

I know lots of really stupid thin people - but they're on crack, and meth.

 

[InsaneCdn]

I know lots of really stupid thin people

I know lots of stupid thin people, too... and they are actually clean and sober in their stupidity. They just overdose on stupidity, I think... Mind you, I know stupid people who aren't thin, too.

Like most things, you can't chalk it up to being thin or thick - in any sense of the term.