They Say: Parents Don't Know Kids are Too Fat or Too Thin

re: They Say: Parents Don't Know Kids are Too Fat or Too Thin

charlie — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:10:08 GMT

I agree with Hillary; we need to teach children about what makes foods healthy and what doe not. Look to "prepare" meals not eat "prepared" meals like the ones in a box.

re: They Say: Parents Don't Know Kids are Too Fat or Too Thin

Hillary — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:00:34 GMT

I think your second-to-last sentence is one of the most important here. You're giving your child healthy food and not forbidding her from bad ones. We, as a society, need to do a better job of teaching our kids to enjoy real food, to cook instead of opening a box or zapping something in a microwave. I'm not saying we should throw away all our junk foods -- oh how I love potato chips! -- I just think those things were meant to be treats, not staples.

Genetics do play a role in weight and body type. Certainly, not everyone is going to be skinny just because they eat whole foods. But I do think it would help.

re: They Say: Parents Don't Know Kids are Too Fat or Too Thin

JeanneSager — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:39:30 GMT

I agree BMI doesn't factor in body type, weight doesn't factor in overall health . . . etc. But at the same point, I know as a kid what it's like to live in a family where there are cookies and cakes and all sorts of junk foods lying around, with two overweight parents (who have since had to make massive lifestyle changes since diagnoses of diabetes and glucose intolerance). I was an overweight kid. It's not about being prejudiced, and it's not about hating people for being fat or thin. But parents often don't have a good handle on what is healthy for their kids, and they often set their kids up for a lifetime of food issues - either a series of crash diets or a life of overeating.

I have a heightened awareness of this because of my history, and yet I don't feel like I really know what's healthy. My pediatrician doesn't use percentile charts (prompting a dispatch I did awhile back on how a lot of peds. have stopped quoting percentiles). But he does weigh her, check her height, and then factor those two numbers into an assessment of her whole body. That's what needs to be done - kids need to be looked at as a whole, and then treated as a person, not a bunch of numbers on a page.

re: They Say: Parents Don't Know Kids are Too Fat or Too Thin

Treespeed — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:21:42 GMT

Genetics are a portion of the weight puzzle, but that doesn't show why people have gotten heavier across the board. It may be true that there is a continuum of healthy weight, but it doesn't change the fact that people as a whole are getting heavier.

re: They Say: Parents Don't Know Kids are Too Fat or Too Thin

Manjari — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:31:11 GMT

leahsmom, is it true that genetics is the reason heavy parents might tend to have heavy kids? How do we know it's not eating habits? It's probably both, right? I was adopted within my own family. My biological parents are very thin, and my adoptive parents have always been heavy. I struggle to avoid the bad eating habits I learned (we always ate healthy food and treats, but not really in moderation). I am not quite overweight, but I am nowhere near as thin as my biological parents. I see a lot of my mom's eating habits in myself, and I think that environment has played a huge role in any weight struggles I have.

re: They Say: Parents Don't Know Kids are Too Fat or Too Thin

anne05 — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:26:58 GMT

My child was diagnosed with "failure to thrive" and subjected to a battery of painful and intrusive tests. And at the end of all that, the doctor decided he was just skinny (like his parents). The weight charts are a bunch of crap. BMI should not be what decides who is or who is not healthy.

re: They Say: Parents Don't Know Kids are Too Fat or Too Thin

Knitty — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:19:44 GMT

Maybe the parents simply reject the idea that there's a tiny range of "healthy" weights and the rest of us are somehow defective. Maybe they look at all the studies that show that it's VERY possible to be "overweight" and still perfectly healthy. Maybe they realize that statements like "childhood obesity is rampant" are ridiculous, as "childhood obesity" only spiked when the government changed the range of "normal." And even by their measurements, it's actually been on the DECLINE for the last few years.

Check your prejudices, please. My mother and brother have both been overweight their entire lives, and they eat both LESS and BETTER than I do (my weight is "normal." Which means very little.)

re: They Say: Parents Don't Know Kids are Too Fat or Too Thin

Madeline Holler — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:18:00 GMT

It would be nice if docs looked at height & weight vs. muscle mass, but alas they look at BMI, which doesn't account for muscle mass, only height and weight and age. Object to the alarm and you're a crazy obesity denier.

But I agree, we have gotten rather acclimated to larger sizes. School-age kids that would have been considered fat when I was young are now seen as totally average/normal.

Great post!

re: They Say: Parents Don't Know Kids are Too Fat or Too Thin

leahsmom — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:00:05 GMT

Maybe the parents thought the overweight kids were healthy because, you know, they were healthy! Even the NYT has started to realize that fat doesn't mean unhealthy - health has to do with fitness, good nutrition, good mental health, and good genes - and is only very loosely correlated with weight. You know what is correlated with weight, though? Genetics. Maybe that's why when you see a heavy kid, you might see a heavy parent - and when you see a thin kid, you see a thin parent, and when you see a white kid, you see a white parent, and. . . well, you get the idea.