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| Keep Your Child Active
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| It takes a whole-family approach to helping an overweight child lose those extra pounds. Parents must become active participants in changing the dynamics of the household. Turn off the TV, shift gears from sedentary to active and cast a critical eye on the contents of your refrigerator and kitchen cupboards.
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We eat too much, watch too much TV, get too little exercise and so do our kids. Enthusiastic inhabitants of a strange paradise where sugary sweets are plentiful and there’s a TV in every room, too many children are dealing with the very adult problem of carrying excess weight.
A quick scan of a public beach or walk through the halls of a local high school provides ample evidence that more and more kids are struggling with their
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weight, some troublingly so. Reluctant to use the term obese when referring to a child, experts currently use the terms 85th percentile (corresponding to a Body Mass Index of 25 in adults) and 95th percentile (corresponding to a BMI of 30 in adults) to distinguish degrees of overweight. Kids in the 95th percentile are of greatest concern and at this stage medical assessment is considered necessary.
“In children and adolescents a BMI above the 95th percentile for age and sex is considered overweight, and a BMI of 85-94th percentile is considered ‘at risk for overweight’,” says Dr. Marc Jacobson, professor of pediatrics, epidemiology and social medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, attending physician and director at the Center for Atherosclerosis Prevention, Schneider Children¹s Hospital, New Hyde Park, New York and a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics 15.3 per cent of children age six to 11 and 15.5 per cent of adolescents age 12 to 19 are at or above the 95th percentile. All told, the numbers represent a doubling of cases since the 1970s.
While researchers struggle to define childhood obesity, there are visible clues as to why a generation of children are too heavy.
“Lack of exercise and increase in sedentary activities is one of many factors responsible for the epidemic,” says Dr. Jacobson.
Aside from the significant emotional trauma an overweight child sustains, there are a number of serious, long-term health problems that can result from a growing body carrying too much weight, including risk of type 2 diabetes, orthopedic problems, sleep apnea, hypertension and gastrointestinal disorders. Studies also show that overweight children are more likely to become overweight adults.
Though the guidance of a pediatrician is essential in diagnosis and treatment, effectively dealing with a child’s weight problem must truly be a family affair.
“The best approach when a doctor tells a parent their child is overweight or at risk is for the family as a whole to meet and consider its eating and activity patterns. Treatment is most effective when the whole family tries its best to make healthy food choices (fewer fast food meals, more fruits and vegetables, less soda and juice, etc.) and when the whole family focuses their leisure time activities less on sedentary and more on physical pursuits,” says Dr. Jacobson.
Parents who are willing to institute significant changes, it seems, make all the difference in treating an overweight child.
According to Dr. Louise Baur, professor in the discipline of paediatrics and child health at the University of Sydney, Australia, consultant and specialist in clinical nutrition at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity:
“There is increasing evidence that treatment of pre-adolescent obesity with the parents as the exclusive agents of lifestyle change is superior to a child-centered approach. An Israeli study randomized obese children aged six to 11 years and their parents to either an experimental intervention where only the parents attended group sessions (with an emphasis on general parenting skills), or a control intervention where only the children attended group sessions. There was a greater reduction in overweight in the experimental group, with children in the control group having higher rates of reported anxiety and of withdrawal from the program.”
Dr. Baur emphasizes making an active lifestyle the primary goal. “Families and young people need to be reminded that increased physical activity may best result from a change in incidental activity (e.g. walking to and from school, household chores, playing with friends) and not necessarily from organized activities such as school sport. Children and adolescents should be encouraged to choose activities that they enjoy and which are therefore likely to be more sustainable.”
Helpful Web sites for Learning More:
Parents ought to take a first-things-first approach in instituting suitable changes, says Dr. Jacobson.
“Simple (but not necessarily easy) and proven effective things to do include limiting TV and other screen time to one to two hours per day,” counsels Dr. Jacobsen. “No TV in bedrooms, and regular walks.”
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