Pat Hartman | Childhood Obesity News

What Is Parenting Style?

Pat Hartman October 9, 2019 No Comments

For a child, the world has two forms. One part is outside, where obesity hazards exist that are shared with others, like crummy neighborhoods with no play space, and low availability of healthful produce.

That larger world affects babies, but they don’t know it yet. The world they are mainly concerned with, and influenced by, is the one within the walls known as home. It is populated by big people — everybody is bigger, stronger, and more capable than a baby — and the biggest ones are running the show.

Childhood Obesity News has discussed quite a few of what are known as early-life risk factors, of which more are identified every year — or, if not identified, at least proposed as serious candidates for investigation.

A 2013 report from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said,

Risk factors often do not occur in isolation. Further, few studies have tried to capture the complete picture of childhood obesity risk factors… It is well accepted that there is no single cause of childhood obesity, but coactions at multiple levels (e.g., genetic, cellular, physiological, psychological, social, and cultural) determine outcomes.

The truth of this has been confirmed over and over again. Multifactorialism is inescapable reality. Each suspected factor calls for extensive exploration. Society has to know which ones pose the greatest danger, and, consequently, which ones should be allotted the greater share of resources.

The challenge is to recognize the multifactorial nature of the child obesity epidemic, and yet identify and rank the individual factors with due diligence. One of those factors is parenting style.

What is it?

Many thinkers have pointed out that parenting style is not only the decisions that are made, but also, in some cases, the decision not to decide. Canadian researchers wanted to know “how parenting styles and the broader social environment combine” to affect the obesity risk of preschool and school-age children. To this end, they defined four styles or modes:

Authoritative — both responsive and demanding
Authoritarian — not responsive but demanding
Permissive — responsive but not demanding
Negligent — neither responsive nor demanding

Some of the better known childhood obesity risk factors are parental obesity, breastfeeding duration, childhood television use, and nighttime sleep duration. How do those common traits match up with the parenting style categories? Things might have been different in the past, but these days, any kind of parent can be obese.

It seems as if breastfeeding duration would have a better chance among permissive and even negligent parents, than with the other two kinds. Permissive and negligent parents definitely result in more kiddie screen time and shorter sleep duration.

Does this mean that the authoritarian or even the authoritative styles are better for kids? Not necessarily.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Risk Factors for Overweight/Obesity in Preschool Children: An Ecological Approach,” UNL.edu, October 2013
Source: “Childhood obesity is linked to poverty and parenting style,” Concordia.ca, 11/10/15
Photo credit: shrapnel1 on Visualhunt/CC BY-NC-ND

Problems With the Talk Study

Pat Hartman October 8, 2019 No Comments

Here is a postscript to the discussion of the University of Michigan study of how mothers and children talk about food and eating, and how their actions reflect that communication. The researchers came to many conclusions that might uncharitably be labeled obvious, trivial or dull. A lot of factors can affect a project, like too small a sample size; a misunderstanding about what the aim should be; trying to discover too many things at once; or numerous other problems.

Regarding this food-talk study, it seems important to mention that such a task is complicated by the fact that the evaluations of families at the beginning and end of the test period depend on the Child Eating Behavior Questionnaire. Self-reporting is a weak spot in many research situations, and like others before them, these scholars realize that “there is some level of disconnect between observed and reported feeding behaviors.” They go on to say,

This is consistent with prior work that has found that a mother’s stated beliefs about her behavior often do not align with how she interacts with her child around food.

In discussing the possible shortcomings of this study, the authors wrote,

[I]n the current study we were unable to examine associations between food talk and food intake, as we did not assess what families were eating during the specific recording period.

As we did not compare food talk outside of mealtimes to food talk during meals in the current study, it is not known whether the amount and nature of food talk is similar across mealtime and outside of mealtime contexts, or whether associations with eating and feeding variables may differ across those contexts.

They also map out ideas for future studies, noting the importance of testing associations between food talk, maternal feeding practices, child eating behaviors, and weight status. They also stress that findings cannot really be deemed “robust” unless planned studies are able to include larger samples.

Dr. Pretlow’s Upcoming Appearance

In two months, the World Obesity Federation 2019 Regional Conference will take place in Muscat, Oman, where Dr. Pretlow will give two lectures on December 5. This event is attended by scientists, medical professionals, and researchers from more than 50 regional and national obesity associations.

Dr. Pretlow will discuss contributory factors to the increase of obesity and type 2 diabetes in the Persian Gulf region. He says,

It seems analogous to the high obesity rate and type 2 diabetes in Native American tribes. Native Americans lost their culture due to influx of the white man’s culture. Of course they were conquered, but I still think there are parallels in the Persian Gulf countries. Due to discovery of oil in the late ’60s, there are now more foreigners in Persian Gulf countries than natives. The Director of the National Diabetes Center in Oman told me that much of the population sit inside their air conditioned villas, watch cinemas, and eat. With casino revenues, Native American tribes now have ample money, e.g. for healthy food, but obesity persists.

Dr. Pretlow will also discuss displacement activity as the basis for addiction, including overeating and obesity.

Alert! Alert! Alert!

Most of us probably haven’t done much about Halloween yet, and there is enough time to absorb some ideas, and act on them. Rather than crowd up this page with a million links to our extensive seasonal research, you just go up to your search box on any Childhood Obesity News page and type in Halloween.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Family food talk, child eating behavior, and maternal feeding practices,” NIH.gov, 06/03/17
Photo credit: Christine McIntosh on Visualhunt/CC BY-ND

Let’s Talk About Food for a Minute

Pat Hartman October 7, 2019 No Comments

This post continues the discussion of how parents and their children talk about food and eating, in the context of a University of Michigan study. It used the Child Eating Behaviour Questionnaire and other metrics to examine the words and actions of families in an attempt to understand whether discussion of these matters makes any difference. The conclusions fell into six major areas.

The research team defined several varieties of talk. A child might do Desire/Need talk or Food Enjoyment talk. Mothers do a lot of Monitoring talk, and might engage in Overt Restriction talk, and either one might speak in the Prep/Planning mode.

Some of the findings were unexciting. For example, parents and kids talk about food at other times than just during meals. When the object of the reportage is something as ephemeral as spoken words, novelty might be in short supply. For instance:

[A]s hypothesized, child and mother food talk were positively associated with mother-reported child obesogenic eating behavior.

Should we be surprised when a study turns out to prove the hypothesis that inspired it? Is anyone astonished to learn that mothers and children who talk in the same ways about food and eating also turn out to share the same unhealthful eating habits?

Similarly, “Mother and child food talk were correlated” is hardly a world-shaking revelation. This idea is expanded upon:

We also found that similar aspects of maternal and child food talk were positively correlated… For example, mothers’ references to enjoyment of and desire/need for food were positively associated with children’s references to these same physiologic/psychological states.

The team learned that children whose mothers characterize them as highly focused on food are more likely than others to talk about food and its properties, even outside of mealtimes. And kids who talk more about enjoying food “were also rated as being likely to emotionally over-eat.” These findings would be fairly obvious to anyone who thought about it, and this type of old news inspire critics to grumble about the waste of taxpayers’ money.

It is interesting to learn that Prep/Planning talk by mothers is associated with a lower BMI in children. But… when children generate Prep/Planning talk, they are more likely to have a higher than average BMI. So there’s that.

The report explains that when a child tends to deal with emotional stress by over-eating, the mother becomes restrictive, then the child may in turn respond by becoming more upset. This is the “vicious circle” phenomenon that besets so much of human behavior.

A discouraging nugget observes that “child references to satiety were unrelated to mother-reported child satiety responsiveness.” In other words, in this area, mom’s verbalizations can influence the child in a negative way, like wanting more, but not in a positive way, like the perception of having had enough.

On the plus side, it appears that self-reporting about restrictive food talk is more closely aligned with actual behavior than some other categories of self-reporting. The report also says,

The higher prevalence of food talk outside of meals in the preschool-age years suggests a possible context for intervention during early childhood, which has been identified as a developmental period when obesity prevention interventions may be most beneficial.

In general, preschoolers talk more about food than do school-age children. Again, this is hardly a remarkable fact. In the preschool years, parents are the often the only source of both food and communication, and it’s not as if children under five have a fund of scintillating conversational topics on tap.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Family food talk, child eating behavior, and maternal feeding practices,” NIH.gov, 06/03/17
Photo credit: Tamaki Sono on Visualhunt/CC BY

Cooking and Talk

Pat Hartman October 4, 2019 No Comments

First let’s talk about the CEBQ, which we can do eloquently by borrowing the words of the Nathan Kline Institute, a.k.a. the Child Mind Institute:

The CEBQ is a 35-item informant-report questionnaire assessing eating style in children. Eating style is assessed on 8 scales (food responsiveness, enjoyment of food, emotional overeating, desire to drink, satiety responsiveness, slowness in eating, emotional undereating, and fussiness). Informants rate the frequency of their child’s behaviors and experiences on a 5-point scale: 1-never, 2-rarely, 3-sometimes, 4-often, 5-always.

This self-assessment was designed for the parents or caregivers of children between six and 11. Previously, Childhood Obesity News discussed a University of Michigan study of verbal communications between children and parents, about food and eating. It all starts with the CEBQ (and another questionnaire) which was completed by the mothers.

One thing the study authors have realized, is that the family-meals philosophy is really swimming against the current in an obesogenic society inundated with opportunities to snack on energy-dense foods. Another is that parents find it very hard to resist the idea of giving out a snack to “tide a child over” until the next meal. These days, very few children work in fields or coal mines, and some adults wonder how kids who spend most of their time staring at screens manage to work up such gargantuan appetites.

It does not seem to matter what anybody thinks about the food-saturated environment that envelops so much of North America. All kinds of temptations are out there, and short of hiring three shifts of guards, parents are unable to do much about it.

Even parents who fully appreciate the importance of good nutrition are frustrated by the amount of time it takes to prepare meals. In theory, the upper middle class, replete with crock pots and microwave ovens, should find cooking from scratch easier. But everybody is having a hard time.

Kids and food preparation

Before this study of the styles and modes of food talk, other researchers had found that a child who helps to prepare a meal is likely to eat more of it. The lesson parents can take from that is, if you’re going to cook at all, cook something worth eating. Sure, on very rare occasions, make s’mores together, or marshmallow rice squares. But if family cooking is a regular event, use the power for good, by cramming the menu with vegetables.

The University of Michigan study established that lots of food talk goes on during a family cooking session, which leads to the thought that it might be a good idea to purposely take advantage of those golden interludes. The time could be used to plan the next family cook-in, and a child could be in charge of making a nice decorated calendar page with a date commitment and a list of needed ingredients.

Even the dreaded electronic screen could be commandeered into use. Peeling and chopping vegetables can be boring, but the Internet provides innumerable videos about the history, uses, and nutritional values of foods, and listening together to experts can provide jumping-off points for all kinds of family discussions.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The Children’s Eating Behavior Questionnaire,” NITRC.org, undated
Source: “Family food talk, child eating behavior, and maternal feeding practices,” NIH.gov, 06/03/17
Photo credit: mozmamavicki on Visualhunt/CC BY-SA

Cheap Change

Pat Hartman October 3, 2019 No Comments

Recently, we discussed the “Healthy Habits, Happy Homes” program. The source article quoted Elsie Taveras, Chief of General Pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, who led the study that determined the program’s effectiveness. She said,

Our findings demonstrate that relatively simple, no-cost changes in routines within the home can help children maintain or achieve a healthful weight.

A skeptic might scoff, “Improve household routines? Bah, humbug!” On the other hand, we have seen that changing the environment is often a valid strategy. “Healthy Habits, Happy Homes” encouraged parents to remove televisions from children’s bedrooms, so the kids could get enough sleep, which in turn is believed to reduce obesity.

In practice, this suggestion had a drawback. The low-income subjects were lucky to simply be housed, and often lived in such cramped quarters that parents shared their bedroom with a child or multiple children.

Environmental modification

Could a parent alleviate the TV situation by using headphones, so the kids would be more likely to sleep? Conversely, in another household, a child might be driving Mom crazy with a shoot-’em-up video game. “To keep me from hearing those extremely annoying computer-generated sound effects, what needs to happen?” can be a significant life question. “Buy the kid some headphones” can be the answer. Surely, anything that reduces stress in the home ought to be welcomed.

That might be an alternative — except for one thing. It would be a suggestion born of privilege, made by well-meaning people with good-paying jobs who fail to understand that a family’s budget might not extend to impulse buys — which is why the Mass General academics emphasized the importance of “simple, no-cost changes in routines.”

What might some of those changes be?

William Butler Yeats said of one of his poems, “I made it out of a mouthful of air.” According to an old saying, talk is cheap. But that doesn’t mean it is worthless. On the contrary, the subjects we choose and the ways in which we address them can make a difference all out of proportion to the exertion involved in producing the sounds.

Elizabeth Harrington wrote rather dismissively of a University of Michigan study that spent nearly $80,000 of taxpayers’ money on examining how parents verbally communicate with their children about food and eating.

The researchers were interested not only in food talk during actual meals, but in eating-related references in other contexts throughout the day. They broke it down into a dozen “food talk codes” including Enjoyment; Desire/Need; Food Refusal; Indulgence; Monitoring; Overt Restriction; Overt Encouragement; Negotiation/Bribe/Reward; Prep/Planning; Food Explanations; Outside Home Food; and Mealtime Rules and Routines.

The next Childhood Obesity News post will discuss the study’s six main findings and its five highlights.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “In-home intervention improves routines that reduce risk of childhood obesity,” MedicalXpress.com, 09/09/13
Source: “Feds Spend $77563 Studying How Parents Talk to Their Kids About Food,” FreeBeacon.com, 07/22/15
Source: “Family food talk, child eating behavior, and maternal feeding practices,” NIH.gov, 06/03/17
Photo by Ethan Hu on Unsplash

Healthy Habits, Happy Homes

Pat Hartman October 2, 2019 No Comments

In contrast to ParentCorps, another program hoping to slow down weight gain in at-risk families takes a different approach. The home-based “Healthy Habits, Happy Homes” was initiated by Massachusetts General Hospital, and the families involved were not told that the researchers’ aim was to observe the effect on children’s weight over a six-month period.

The study recruited 121 low-income, minority families from four community health centers in the state. What they all had in common was a child between two and five years old who slept in a room with a TV.

The families were randomly divided into two groups, and everybody had an in-home visit from research assistants who weighed and measured the kids, filled out survey questions about their normal routines, and noted other pertinent aspects of the environment.

After that, the treatment was different. The control group families were just sent educational material on early childhood development every month. The intervention group got more attention, in the form of encouragement to have regular family meals, limit screen time, make sure children got adequate sleep, and most importantly, to take the TVs out of the bedrooms.

Concepts such as role modeling and limit setting were promoted. The report says,

Interventions were delivered in four home visits that addressed project goals and checked in on progress, monthly coaching phone calls, and frequent text messages to encourage healthy practices. Mailings included newsletters for the parents and, for the children, toys focused on the program goals — such as stickers, coloring books, a copy of Good Night Moon for bedtime reading, and toys for active play.

So, how did it all turn out? At the six-month mark, the intervention group kids were getting the benefit of about 45 minutes more sleep. Although both groups experienced a slight dip in weekday TV exposure, the intervention group’s weekend television viewing time had dropped, while the weekend screen time of the control group increased.

Probably because of the overcrowding that accompanies poverty, about 80 percent of the parents shared their bedrooms with kids, so most television sets were not actually removed from those bedrooms. Still, “At the end of the study period, the body mass index of children in the intervention group dropped an average of 0.18, while it rose 0.21 in the control group.” It may not seem like much, but at that crucial age, every little bit helps.

One of the remaining questions, which is applicable to the hopes of many programs, is how large of a “dose” of intervention is needed to make a difference. How often do visits need to be made, to achieve the desired effect? Would a phone call be as useful as a visit? All these things cost time, money, and effort, and by minimizing the amount spent on any one family, a program is obviously able to extend its benefits to more families.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “In-home intervention improves routines that reduce risk of childhood obesity,” MedicalXpress.com, 09/09/13
Photo credit: Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) on Visualhunt/CC BY

How to Build Programs, or Not

Pat Hartman October 1, 2019 No Comments

As far back as 2006, professionals were talking about the importance of involving parents in school-based interventions to prevent childhood obesity. Because nobody seemed to be collecting enough of the right kind of data, this necessity for parental participation was difficult to prove to bureaucrats and the allocators of funding.

Yet, simultaneously, there was a feeling that maybe trying to work with parents and kids at the same time was counterproductive. Children are always, to a certain extent and in a certain sense, performative in front of their parents. They are even bigger show-offs in front of the other kids who are also putting on some kind of display for their own parents.

Since time immemorial, kids have impressed each other with how thoroughly they can fool the grownups, and how much they can get away with in subtle ways. Psychologically there is a lot going on, but the role of parents was recognized as very significant, so professionals started thinking about the validity of working with parents and children separately.

It all depends

We saw how ParentCorps works with parents and kids separately, but presumably with benefit to both. Does this mean that other programs are just babysitting while the parents learn things? Or do they need to leave the kids at home, or what?

ParentCorps, by the way, seems to do a very satisfactory job of preparing children for reading, writing, and math, compared to standard pre-kindergarten programs. Analysts found “robust evidence of cost-effectiveness and long-term impact across multiple child domain outcomes.”

By cost-effectiveness, they mean that children whose history was followed did not rack up as many financial liabilities to society, saving the taxpayers an estimated $2,500 each in medical and legal costs. The findings are very encouraging:

During pre-K through second grade, behavioral problems grew at a much slower rate, and emotional problems remained less pronounced among children in ParentCorps schools, as compared with children in schools that did not offer ParentCorps.

By age 8, children who had been in pre-K programs enhanced with ParentCorps were significantly less likely to have emotional, behavioral, and mental health problems than children in standard pre-K programs.

Further on in time, a program called called Let’s Go! 5-2-1-0 was offered by YMCAs in Rochester, MN. Lasting six months, it invited families to attend seven monthly evening classes in cooking and physical activity, and also sent them monthly emails with reminders about healthy habits.

But this effort did not generate the hoped-for results. The intervention kids got better scores on Knowledge Acquisition Survey questions, but the rest was disappointing:

As compared to children in the control group, there was no significant change in BMI or waist circumference or healthy habits in the intervention group.

Conclusion: Our study findings indicate that our intervention resulted in improved knowledge about healthy habits, but did not significantly impact healthy habits or BMI. Potential reasons for this were the small sample size and the attenuated length and/or intensity of the intervention.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The role of parents in preventing childhood obesity,” NIH.gov, spring 2006
Source: “Impact of ParentCorps,” NYU.edu, undated
Source: “The Effectiveness of a Family-Centered Childhood Obesity Intervention at the YMCA: A Pilot Study,” OMICSOnline.org, 02/23/18
Photo credit: Al Abut on Visualhunt/CC BY-SA

Autumn Surprise

Pat Hartman September 30, 2019 1 Comment

Now that school is back in session and Childhood Obesity Awareness Month is coming to a close, many parents have noticed that their children grew over the summer, and not in a good way. Somehow, parents manage to fool themselves about a number of things, and to form a mental expectation that it is easier for kids to stay fit during the summer break, but that is not necessarily true.

Sadly, during the hot months, obesity prevention does not just take care of itself. How can this be? Health Digest News broke it down:

During the school year, many students walk to school, go to gym class, play outside at recess and participate in after-school sports. They are allowed to eat only during designated times, and typically find little or no junk food in modern-day school cafeterias and vending machines…

But during the summer months, many children have relatively little structure or supervision. This is especially true in low-income households that can’t afford summer camps. Consequently, kids get less exercise and may have unlimited access to junk food all day long.

All in all, summer vacation can be a recipe for extra pounds, and many young people return to school in worse shape that when the previous term ended. The tradition of buying new back-to-school clothes is not just based on the natural growth we expect from children, but on the unfortunate tendency to put on extra weight.

It is not solely an American problem. Lauren Ferri wrote for Daily Mail Australia about how the summer break, which is only six weeks long, might be shortened even more because of the obesity problem. According to researchers, kids sleep longer, spend more time communing with electronic screens, and eat more, in comparison to their behavior during the school term.

The daily averages — an additional 40 minutes in bed; an extra hour of TV or computer entertainment; a 10-minute reduction in physical activity time; an extra 100 calories of food intake — do not sound that alarming in themselves, but they add up.

Professor Tim Olds, of the University of South Australia, says the extra weight does not come off when school resumes, and the situation is even worse for low-income families who can’t afford to send their children to summer camp or sports programs.

Conditions are much the same here. So now, the children of America are back in their classrooms and settling into the routine. Can parents heave a sigh of relief? No. A little while back, these words, spoken by mother of five Lyn McDonald and captured by journalist Jacque Wilson, would have been typical:

I have had to deal with teachers who hand out Skittles, candy bars, lollipops and giant frosted sugar cookies to the children in class… before 10 a.m. I think this is setting kids up for failure and un-teaching the healthy habits I have instilled.

Sports practice, which should be a positive step toward obesity prevention, is often spoiled by the unhealthful quality of treats dispensed by parent volunteers. And, of course, in the area of snack and soda availability, either in the institution itself or uncomfortably nearby, some schools never got the memo, and others made a stab at reform and then gave up.

During the Michelle Obama “Let’s Move!” era, some of the more egregious school-connected behaviors were dampened down for a while, but nobody seems to be paying much attention these days.

The point here is that parents, alas, still bear the responsibility for eternal vigilance. We can’t count on the schools to fix things, or the school vacations, either.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Childhood Obesity Spikes During Summer Months,” HealthNewsDigest, 07/20/15
Source: “More school days to fight obesity,” DailyMail.co.uk, 09/29/18
Source: “Why is it So Hard for Kids to Lose Weight?,” CNN.com, 02/16/12
Photo credit: USAG-Humphreys on Visualhunt/CC BY

How Do Parents Change?

Pat Hartman September 27, 2019 No Comments

Yesterday’s post pointed out pointed out how being conscientious about serving sizes can set the stage for later trouble or success. But that is just a part of the big picture. Dr. David Katz wrote about a meta-analysis that reviewed 60 studies to find other instances of the influence parents can exert when they set their minds to it.

The consumption of fruits and vegetables is definitely taught by example, according to researchers in the United Kingdom. Preschool-age children are especially vulnerable to influence, which should come as a surprise to no one. During that stage of life when parents are virtually the only influence, they populate the entire world, and of course a tiny impressionable creature adapts to that world.

Be the revolution you want to see

Apparently, children also tend to fall in line with whatever level of physical activity — or apathy — that they see demonstrated by the grownups. The amount of activity modeled by the parents is considered a direct influence; and there is also an indirect effect, applied by the amount of involvement, support and encouragement that parents show for kids’ physical exertions.

A digression is possible here, that says something about the importance of affordable health care for growing families. Parents who are terrified by the prospect of medical bills are not likely to encourage physical activity, it’s that simple. Everything in the culture has far-reaching unintended consequences, including the perilous state of funding for a broken arm emergency. A family might conclude that the risk of a huge medical bill is a worse threat to survival than one obese child. So, no bike for Jimmy.

At any rate, these numbers are kind of impressive:

In a study involving 1,124 12-year-old children and their parents, researchers in Sweden found that girls and boys who had two physically active parents were four times and nine times more likely, respectively, to be engaged in vigorous physical activity or sports than kids whose parents were inactive.

In the eating department, surely any parent can spare a little time to learn the secrets of cabbage, parsley, and rutabagas. We can peruse articles like “29 Healthy Foods That Are Incredibly Cheap.” We can self-educate about which veggies and fruits are abundant at what times of year, and plan to take advantage of sale prices.

If a family is prosperous enough to have a freezer, it shouldn’t be reserved for pizzas and ice cream. When peaches are in season, buy a crate of them. Scald the skins off, take the pits out, and freeze the fruit in packages of a convenient size. There might even be a child in the household who is interested in preservation techniques. It’s worth looking into. Doesn’t have to be a girl. If a boy happens to turn out to be the next Jamie Oliver, it’s all to the good.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “How Parents Can Control Childhood Obesity,” VeryWellHealth.com, 12/04/17
Photo credit: Visit Lakeland on Visualhunt/CC BY-ND

Let’s Be Conscious of What We Teach

Pat Hartman September 26, 2019 No Comments

In the heyday of print magazines, one of the most often-seen cartoon cliches was the door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman who would dump a heap of dirt on the carpet and then show the housewife how efficiently his machine cleaned it up. Demonstration is the key to sales, and when it comes to parents training kids how to eat like sensible beings, it is also the key to behavior.

Tiny children do what they are shown, so it had better be good, and the earlier this process starts, the better it works. One YouTube video features a little child copying Daddy as he makes an audible sound of appreciation (well to be honest, it’s a grunt) with every bite. Cute, but for other people in the vicinity it probably gets old pretty fast.

In this clip, a mom shows how to bite an apple, which the baby gamely attempts to imitate — turning away with each bite to hide her embarrassing lack of teeth. This one isn’t about eating, but it makes the point. Little kids are in “monkey-see, monkey-do” mode, and we ignore this at our peril.

Whether parents know it or not, and whether they like it or not, they set an example every minute of every day. “Be the change you want to see in the world” is a concept that Childhood Obesity News has been exploring.

Predictors of consumption

A few years back, a number of institutions collaborated on a study of portion sizes that parents serve to themselves and to their children. Needless to say, due to the imitation factor, this also influences the amounts that children help themselves to when they are old enough to manage it. Considering that the report centers on the simple action of moving edible substances from one dish to another, its length and detail are rather imposing.

This quoted paragraph encompasses only a few of the many factors that may be in play:

The amounts offered to children at meals related significantly to the amounts that parents served themselves, which suggests that adults may not consciously focus on offering children “child-sized” portions, may have different conceptions of what constitutes being “child-sized” (i.e., slightly less than they serve themselves), or may have other motivations when serving children’s plates.

In efforts to be efficient, parents may place larger portions on children’s plates to reduce time and effort spent on child feeding and mealtimes. Alternatively, parents may be invested in getting their children to eat more and may decide to actively provide more in attempts to have their children be “good eaters.”

The report goes into depth about cultural differences, parents’ employment status, and several other factors that can influence how much food a parent dishes out. But the main point is this: “Efforts aimed at improving parents’ recognition of developmentally appropriate portions for young children could be useful for future obesity-prevention efforts.”

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Portion sizes for children are predicted by parental characteristics and the amounts parents serve themselves,” Nutrition.org, 01/29/14
Image by Pat Hartman

What Is Parenting Style?

What is it?

Problems With the Talk Study

Dr. Pretlow’s Upcoming Appearance

Alert! Alert! Alert!

Let’s Talk About Food for a Minute

Cooking and Talk

Kids and food preparation

Cheap Change

Environmental modification

What might some of those changes be?

Healthy Habits, Happy Homes

How to Build Programs, or Not

It all depends

Autumn Surprise

How Do Parents Change?

Be the revolution you want to see

Let’s Be Conscious of What We Teach

Predictors of consumption

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

The Book

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Presentations

Food & Health Resources