There's been a lot of focus lately on the relative fatness of kids today.  First:  letters sent home from schools telling parents their kids are fat.  Then:  watching commercials makes kids fat in the first place.  Next:  even babies are too fat (Jon Stewart said so).  And then: "mystery fat" has even crept into kid's lunches. To top it off:  President Bush's ingenious solution to the fat-kid crisis.  Even worse?  Kids are having bariatric surgery to lop off an extra stomach or two.  And?  Just because you have kids, you're fat too. 

So when I hear there's a study that says that parents of fat kids don't even KNOW their kids are fat, I feel like someone is finally putting two and two together here.  On the one hand, I want to slap some people around and say, "Wake up!  Can't you SEE what your kid looks like?", but on the other, I see that we're fortunately so conditioned to love unconditionally that I can totally see being completely blind to the fact that maybe my kid is fat.  Or ugly.  Or whatever-fill-in-the-blank, because how would our species survive if we DIDN'T love our kids so very much that the shallow things like appearance cease to matter? 

Still, it's a major health concern when 89% of parents of overweight five- and six-year olds hadn't a clue their child was overweight.  Hello? And 63% of parents of overweight 10-12 year olds were similarly clueless.  So what's going on here?  Are we that afraid of damaging poor Johnny's or Jenny's precious-wecious self-esteem that we can't lovingly whisper the words "HEY FATSO!" to our dear precious children?  Is that really doing them a favor?