It turns out that whether your child is overweight or not has less to do with their actual weight gain, and more to do with your opinion of their weight.
According to two recent studies published in the journal Psychological Science, kids whose parents think of them as overweight actually gained more weight in the next decade than kids whose parents considered their weight to be normal.
“Although parents’ perception that their children are overweight has been presumed to be important to management of childhood obesity, recent studies have suggested the opposite; when a parent identifies a child as being overweight, that child is at increased risk of future weight gain,” researchers Eric Robinson of the University of Liverpool and Angelina Sutin of Florida State University College of Medicine write in their paper.
That’s because kids whose parents identified them as overweight thought of their body size in such a negative way and attempted to lose weight, which partially accounted for their weight gain.
“We argue that the stigma attached to being an overweight child may explain why children whose parents view them as being overweight tend to have elevated weight gain during development,” the authors add.
We already know that childhood obesity is a serious issue in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control, of kids aged 2 to 19, about 17% are considered obese, which totals to about 12.7 million children and adolescents.
So, parents frequently find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they know their kid is overweight and needs to shed some pounds to avoid health care issues. But on the other hand, no parent wants to hurt a child’s feelings while trying to help them.
The Research
The researchers studied data from 2,823 Australian families who took part in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. Kids’ heights and weights, along with their parents’ opinion on their weights, were all measured when the young participants were 4 or 5 years old. When asked to consider their kids’ weight, caregivers could select from the following options: “Underweight,” “Normal Weight,” “Overweight” or “Very Overweight.”
Ten years later, when the kids were 14 or 15 years old, they were measured again and asked about their attempts to lose weight in the previous year. The kids were also shown images of different body sizes and were asked to choose the one that most resembled them. Robinson and Sutin found that kids whose parents considered them to be overweight at 4 or 5 tended to gain more weight by the time they hit their teenage years.
According to the researchers: “Children whose parents thought they were overweight perceived their own body size more negatively and were more likely to report attempts to lose weight.”
Robinson and Sutin say that the results couldn’t be explained by other factors like household income, the presence of a medical condition and parents’ weight. Probably the most interesting finding was that mom or dad’s perception affected weight gain regardless of what the child weighed when they started the study. The team of researchers examined a similar study of 5,886 Irish families and found the same pattern.
How Caregivers Can Help
Here are a few ways parents and caregivers can help kids lose weight without telling them that they’re overweight:
- Encourage exercise by making it a family event — such as through daily walks or weekly soccer games at a nearby park.
- “Provide three small meals and two small snacks each day so [he or she] doesn’t go for long periods feeling hungry, which can ultimately lead to binging,” explains Jennifer Trachtenberg, MD. Dr.Trachtenberg also adds that providing lots of fruits and vegetables, and encouraging kids to drink lots of water, are also good habits to start young.
- Get the whole family on board so everyone is eating healthier. This creates a support system for kids.
- “Encourage your child to eat only when she is hungry and not as an activity,” Trachtenberg says.
