Childhood Obesity: Parental Involvement Childhood obesity has become a more common issue in today’s society than ever before. The subject has taken a forefront of attention in both the home and in the schools. A healthier lifestyle for young children should be taken more seriously. First, in order to introduce the issue of childhood obesity, the actual definition must be understood, being obese and being overweight are not the same exact thing. Childhood obesity is when the BMI is at or measured to be above 95% for the child’s age and gender; an overweight child is between 85% - 94% rate. The high rates have surprisingly been on an increasing incline from 1963-70, during this period 4-4.5% of the 6-17 year olds were overweight (Schwartz and Puhl, 2003). While there is great concern regarding these numbers, parents are considered to be the lead treatment and prevention to help children become more responsible for their health. Parents should become more active and involved in the child’s life in the way of taking a positive lead to help children have a healthier future. Parent involvement with respect to promoting and supporting healthier lifestyle habits have somewhat fallen to the side of the road. The precedence of simply surviving has overruled the practicality of a healthy future. Due to mounting pressure of paying bills and keeping a roof over the child’s head, parents have overlooked the major issue of non-physical activity, television watching and bad eating habits (i.e. junk food and restaurant food, etc). More importantly has been the physical effect on the child by the parent’s mindset of overlooking this issue, it has been shown that “twenty five percent of children in the US are overweight and 11% are obese” (Mahshid, Danesh and Merchant, 2005).
Today, parents are forced to work, it is then hard for them to plan and cook a well balanced meal. As a result, they seem to settle for cooking microwavable dinners and purchasing unhealthy snacks. Parents can do a lot of things that can be advantageous towards their children’s health. Childhood obesity has been medically proven to increase the risk of long-term life altering illnesses. There are many factors that play a role in rise of childhood obesity. One is the consideration that many households have or need both parents working in order to provide shelter, food, and clothing in order to care for their families. To just provide the basic living needs is simply not enough to fulfill the need for a healthy family.
Children are considered to be very impressionable and as a result need positive direction to avoid obesity. Children need support from parents, including but not limited to more involvement and better overall healthy choices/decisions. Through the assistance of those influences, the chances of childhood obesity can decline and eventually go away. There is also great concern at the physical effects that obesity have on children, this issue should definitely be addressed carefully and it too should began at home.
Children constantly need guidance from their parents. It is impossible for a parent to constantly have a 24 hour watch over their child. So the idea of embedding healthy morals must come in to work. This practice will help construct positive training for early age school children. The practice will allow parents to promote their child to make healthy decision about food and their lifestyle. The guidance of parents also factor in to the odds of obesity affecting the child by the way they cook, buy unhealthy foods and the permissible time watching television. One issue to be considered is how parents sometimes allow the television to become a babysitter, it has happened more times than not. There are many television programs and stations for children and they are able to spend hours watching television (which require no physical activity). Children rarely participate in physical activity outside of school, in turn leads