THIS Is Child Abuse

  This is English mum Aly Gilardoni and her eight year old daughter Coraleigh. It's pretty easy to tell that mum is about 15 kilos overweight, but basically a healthy lady- at least on the outside.

  Miss Gilardoni is very insecure with herself and her image, and has taken to ensuring that her only daughter never suffers from overweight. This is because she's trying to turn her child anorexic, a state of illness that little Coraleigh has been trained for since age two. The disturbed mother broke up with her baby-daddy six years ago, and vowed that her daughter would never have to worry about unpopularity if she didn't inherit the family fatness curse.

  Little Coraleigh now spends her time petrified of gaining an ounce, fixated on her image to her mother and others. Her mother, sworn by God to protect her, is proud of her child's correct "training". Mum muses "With an eating disorder you can get through it with therapy. But when you're fat, you're fat for life" and "Coraleigh getting an eating disorder like anorexia would be preferable to fat"  while telling interviewers about her fat-laden treats and self-hatred.

  As for the wee girl, she consumes a 700-calorie non-fat diet and monitors herself daily. Consuming less than half the nutrition for a child her age, she will suffer a future of psychological and health problems if someone doesn't intervene. She's already inherited her mother's insecurities and will likely suffer greater immune problems and hormonal issues as she grows. She's been given a higher risk of osteoporosis and heart disease in mid-age and she's only in third grade. Without intervention, this angel will probably become disabled or die from a severe nutrient deficiency or heart failure. If starving your child to death doesn't constitute abuse, I'm not certain what does.

  As much as I am in favour of parent's rights, welfare agencies exist for a reason. If overfeeding your child is wrong, so is this combination of deprivation and psychological abuse. This so-called mother should not be anywhere near any child until she seeks assistance to deal with the overwhelming mental issues that she possesses. It is both physically and mentally damaging to put children on low-calorie diets. 80% of girls are terrified of being fat and having weirdo parents reinforce the fear is harmful.

  If Coraleigh were a boy fed this inadequately, mum would be arrested for neglect. We need to stop and think about how we are raising our daughters. Children need not worry about their mothers' idiosyncratic preoccupations, they need to be kids. And no matter how the media treats them, little girls are children too.

Be well.