Yes, of course parents are legitimate observers and recorders of their offsprings’ weight. However, this does not give them license to make a child’s life miserable by harping on the subject, or to blab about it to friends or strangers.
In a best-case scenario, a mom or dad is reasonable, tactful, sensitive, and several other adjectives that imply sanity, about how and when to weigh the child with a problem. If dangerous amounts of lard are obviously accumulating, what kind of reminder might be effective, and not make matters worse? It would be smart to seek advice from a qualified pro.
For instance, controversy might be avoided by designating a certain day once a month to check in with the scale and make a note on a chart. Although a parent has the authority to be an Overweight Awareness Monitor, and maybe even the ability to intervene reasonably, this is by no means an opportunity for sarcasm, shaming, threats, or any other brand of intimidation.
Parents need to have their stuff together
Just a few years back in Britain, a long-term study of 19,000 families concentrated on the emotional stability of new parents. The mothers and fathers of babies both have concerns, though not necessarily the same ones. The dads might worry more about making enough money to feed everybody and keep a roof over their heads. The moms might be more anxious about the new baby’s birth weight and their ability to figure out how to breastfeed successfully.
In any case, if parents feel shaky about their social, mental health, and economic situations, that can spell difficulty for the new family member. Researchers noticed a subtle difference between dads and moms:
The analysis found that fathers’ distress reported in infancy, but not during toddlerhood, was associated with steeper increases in BMI and excess body fat for both girls and boys. However, mothers’ distress reported in both infancy and toddlerhood was associated with steeper increases in BMI and excess body fat in only girls.
Every time a new subtlety or wrinkle is found in an aspect of parenting that is under the microscope, legions of graduate students rediscover the passion that brought them to the field in the first place, and renewed impetus to figure out exactly what is going on. Here is another quotation regarding this same University College London study, and others like it:
Distress experienced by mothers and fathers in the first few years of a child’s life, particularly during infancy, is linked with accelerated weight and excess fat gain from age 5 to 14 years, according to new research being presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) held online this year.
Next steps
When a child is on the verge of sliding over into the overweight segment of the population, it seems obvious that their parents ought to take an active part in keeping track of the stats, and to qualify themselves as capable of determining when some sort of professional intervention appears to be called for. But as we have seen, their best intentions and efforts may be impeded by problems they could use knowledgeable health with. And sometimes…
There are two words that experts especially regret having to apply to parents: “neglectful” and “authoritarian” — otherwise known as “not caring” and “caring too much” — because in either case, their children just might turn out overweight. And while these parenting styles may seem at first glance to be opposites, they have been determined by highly placed academics to spring from the same source: a lack of emotional warmth.
This was learned by observing the families of 10,000 children. Usually, such reluctance to accept interference is founded in a very basic belief that goes something like,
This is how my parents raised me, and I turned out fine.
Parents can be so defensive that many professionals, even those from such prestigious institutions as Imperial College’s Centre for Health Economics & Policy Innovation, tend to regard the subject as taboo. Naturally, Childhood Obesity News is eager to take a closer look at this thorny problem.
Your responses and feedback are welcome!
Source: “Emotional distress in fathers and mothers linked to heightened risk of overweight in their children,” 05/19/21, EurekAlert.org
Source: “Children whose parents lack warmth more likely to grow up obese, study finds,” TheGuardian.com, 10/18/22
Image by flaviopantera7/Pixabay
FAQs and Media Requests: 
