Parents Don't Think Their Overweight Kids Are Fat

Posted on Feb 1st 2010 12:00PM by Deborah Dunham

It's hard to fight childhood obesity when parents of overweight children don't even recognize there is a problem. In a recent study, researchers in the Netherlands found that most mothers and fathers tend to think their children are smaller than they actually are -- even those who are overweight or obese.

Scientists at the University Medical Center Groningen evaluated questionnaires from more than 800 parents with 4- and 5-year-olds. They found that 75 percent of mothers and 77 percent of fathers with overweight kids thought their child was a normal weight. Those with clinically obese children (weighing 20 percent over the recommended weight) were also in denial with 50 percent of the moms and 39 percent of the dads thinking their son or daughter was a healthy size. Interestingly enough, even parents with children at a normal weight thought their offspring was one size slimmer than they actually were.

The cause for this misperception? Two reasons, according to Pieter Sauer, lead author of the study and professor of pediatrics at the University Medical Center Groningen. "First, the public perception of normal weight for children has shifted towards a higher weight than can be calculated from accepted growth curves," the authors wrote in the February issue of the journal Acta Paediatrica. "Second, parents of overweight and a majority of obese children do not recognize their child as such."

Do you know parents who are in denial about their child's weight problem? Have you ever been told by a doctor that your child needs to lose weight?

Parents may be part of the problem, but do we also live in a country that caters to obesity?

38 Comment

Tags: childhood obesity, kids, obese children, overweight, overweight children

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Barb 2-02-2010 @ 9:49AM

Babies and very young children are measured against each other rather than an objective scale. A 2-year old is spoken of as being in the x percentile of height, and the y percentile of weight. Well, if all children are tending toward heaviness, then the scale shifts, and being the 90th percentile of weight might not be such a good thing.

betty 2-02-2010 @ 10:30AM

My son is overweight, but so was my brother at this age. My brother grew out of it and is now a strong, handsome, stocky, John Wayne type. He was never put on a diet. NEVER EVER PUT A CHILD ON A DIET! I read a book called "How to Get Your Kid to Eat...but not too much" by Ellyn Satter. It saved my son from a life of dieting. He got fat at age 8, then thinned out at age 10, fat again at age 11 then thinned out, then fat again at this point (age 13), but I know he will thin out. He will likely be about 6'6" or more, since my husband and I have very tall siblings. Read "How to get your kid to eat...but not too much". Your child will thank you.

betty 2-02-2010 @ 10:33AM

Never ever put a child on a diet. Read "How to get your kid to eat, but not too much" by E. Satter.

Carol Beard 2-02-2010 @ 10:30AM

Children should not have to be on a "diet", but they should be eating real food and get exercise. I have worked with kids for over 30 yrs and have found that anymore the majority of kids live on junk and fast food. If that is what they are eating, then of course they are going to be overweight and their overall health is going to suffer. I have 7 children, none who are overweight. My youngest (age 7 )shocks people when we go to the store and she heads for the veggies, wants sprouts and will turn down most sweets. She will even tell you that her favorite foods are veggies. My teenage daughter is the same way. It should be common sense.

Peter Cardozo 2-02-2010 @ 10:21AM

The majority of people seem to be blaming the parents, but that's an easy excuse. I'm a parent of two children and though we may view our kids in a different light then others, I think the main reason the children seem to be getting overweight is the taking away of exercise curriculum in schools like P.E. and recess. Growing up, we used so much energy during those 15 minutes recess periods, usually two a day, and with P.E. we received our daily amount of recommended exercise Monday thru Friday! Being inside, watching T.V. & video games has also taken a large part of the weekend outside activities, like tag, playing running games, climbing and other such regular fun kid things! Keep things up, and "WALL-e" won't just be people in space for over 700 years, but the norm for human beings....Bring back recess. Bring back P.E. Don't let lawyers dictate what activities you can have in school without threat of getting sued should someone get hurt. Getting hurt is also part of growing up. When you get hurt, you learn either to do something different next time or to do it the correct way!

Vinsmom99 2-02-2010 @ 10:40AM

Well said. However, parents must take much of the blame. Oftentimes, because of busy schedules and both parents working, children are fed fast food or prepared food that is microwaved. Such food generally is more fattening. The parents must also take responsibility for the amount of time spent on computers, computer games, and television. We cannot put all of the childcare on the school system - teachers are there to teach not prepare meals and everything else. In addition, many schools are cutting back on P.E. because parents are forcing them to increase their focus on academic excellence so kids can get into the right high schools and colleges. There are only so many hours in a school day and adding academics means something gets cut and that something is usually gym class.

Lucy 2-02-2010 @ 10:39AM

How about not relying on the schools and taking your kids to the park or the beach on the weekends? BTW, I agree about the PE and recess, but the ultimate responsibility lies with us as parents.

ALISON 2-02-2010 @ 12:39PM

Peter, I so agree with you on this. Kids need to get out and play. I know since we have gotten cable, my kids watch more t.v. Before they were always outside playing, jumping, etc.

Faye 2-02-2010 @ 10:35AM

I have struggled with weight my entire life. I graduated from high school wearing size 14 while my sister wore size 3. I did not change my eating habits but took a body mechanics class in college--I lost the weight while my sister gained weight and I must say she is way past the 14 I used to wear! But the problem is my brother's children-they are sadly overweight! They are 9, 12 & 15. They weigh appx 220, 225 and 275. I call it bad parenting because he has excuses for his laziness-he is the stay at home parent!

Amy 2-02-2010 @ 10:58AM

I think that it would be hard to admit that your child is obese. You see them as beautiful, and also don't want to admit that you may be at fault as well. It's so sad that we are moving to a society in which it is often easier and cheaper to eat junk food, and exercise is a less frequent activity. I think it is so different now for kids. While we were growing up, my brother was always a little chubby. He was never in the obese category, but probably would be slightly overweight. However, he was involved in just about every sport he could be (soccer, football, wrestling, basketball), and was actually good at them. Now as an adult, he is in amazing shape. My mother always made us dinner, we never ate out, and we were always encouraged to play sports. She never said anything about my brother's weight, and he grew up just fine. I think that's a big contrast to may parents we see today who are completely naive and allow their children to eat whatever they want and never get any exercise.

Rick 2-02-2010 @ 11:01AM

As an elementary teacher, this is really not surprising. My teacher friends and I see parents all the time who are clueless to their children's problems. Maybe they're too close to the situation or in denial that their children could be anything less than perfect, but we have had children in our classes with such severe speech articulation problems that they were almost unintelligible and the parents can't understand why we're referring them to speech services. At open house night, their child's art or writing stands out like a sore thumb alongside other students' work because they are a year or two below grade level and the parents don't see any difference in a side by side comparison with other children's work. If you want insight into the way our society is headed, ask a teacher; it's scary.

Rosalene Rogers 2-02-2010 @ 3:27PM

Rick is RIGHT ON! I am a School Psychologist and have witnessed a horrifying decline in conscious parenting over the last two decades.

For the sake of our kids and their future, a national campaign has launched to wake up this nation and leave no ADULT behind!

For more information, check out http://www.americasangel.org

Rosalene Rogers

Christine 2-02-2010 @ 11:02AM

I second the motion about Ellyn Satter's book (and anything else she's written). She's a calm, rational, reasonable voice where anti-obesity hand-wringing and finger-pointing has become the norm.

As to the rest of this "article" (a term I use loosely), I'd venture a guess that the majority of "overweight" children aren't considered fat by their parents because they simply AREN'T. While the media loves to bombard us with images of the 200 lb. 4th grader when shrieking about the Childhood! Obeeeeesity! Epidemic!!!!!, the fact is that those kids are rarities. Just as with the adult "obesity epidemic", most of those who are "overweight" are so by only a few pounds. You'd be surprised at now narrow the confines of "normal" have become, with almost no room for natural variations in size. These kids look "normal" to their parents because they ARE normal!

Lastly, you say our kids are larger than kids of previous generations like it's a BAD thing. Vaccinations, improved sanitation and better access to nutrition have made us a larger, more healthy people. Just think of all the diseases and ailments our great-grandparents had to deal with that our children never will - polio, measles, scarlet fever, not to mention rickets and pellagra (both vitamin-deficiency diseases associated with childhood and poverty). My own mother grew up during the Great Depression, eating popcorn for lunch every day because there was nothing else. Is it any wonder she was so thin?

Holding up the children of these previous generations as some sort of size ideal for children of today ignores the realities of the times they lived in, as well as our own.

Jenna 2-02-2010 @ 12:49PM

Yeah we have vaccinations and "better" nutrition (which consists mainly of preservatives, sugar, and sodium)

point is, we may not have to worry about polio, but heart disease is still one of the number one killers in america today... and where do you suppose we're getting heart disease? From being overweight, making poor food choices, and not having enough exercise.

Would it make you feel better as a parent to say your child died from a COMPLETELY PREVENTABLE disease?

CAROL 2-02-2010 @ 11:11AM

I THINK IT'S ALL OF THE ABOVE....I saw an obese child recently denied a fruit candy because it had sugars in it but was allowed to eat half a bowl of chips....
What exactly was accomplished escapes me....

VINCENT FAMILY 2-02-2010 @ 1:25PM

I agree. I was hoping that "All of the above" would be one of our choices. When I was a kid, 45+ years ago, we did everything outside in all kinds of weather. We took our lunches to school from home and even if there was a "special treat", like a Twinkie, we had calisthentics every day, dodge-ball and kick ball at recess so we always worked off any sugar intake.
My kids (4 boys, 32, 31, 20 and 19)were balanced between video games and skateboarding, baseball, etc. The only time any of them gained weight to the point of it being noticeable was just before a growth spurt. Today, none of them have a weight issue and all of us have an active outdoor lifeestyle.

Beaker 2-02-2010 @ 11:22AM

Parents don't see their kids as overweight because parents start out hearing that their kids are this or that percentile in weight. Even when they hit 90th percentile, the doctors will just comment on how well the baby is growing or how tall the baby will be. The biggest problem with that whole system is that the growth charts are based on formula-fed babies. Since formula is the fast food of infant food, it can cause babies to be fatter - significantly fatter. So we end up with breastfed babies being expected to be as heavy as their not-as-healthy peers. (One doctor threatened to send Children's Services to take my 2 month old child away because I refused to feed her ice cream to "fatten her up" to better meet the weight expectancy of formula fed babies). So babies are already expected to be heavier than they really should be - all because of a formula-based weight chart.

Then you get families that are too busy and throw fast food at the kids every night. My kids get fast food about once a month, if that. I don't give them seven course meals - and I sometimes feed them something out of a can or a box. What I see is that the food we eat makes a huge difference. Sure my kids complain sometimes when they can't get fast food as often as their friends (or even their relatives), but my oldest is finally seeing the benefits to my system.

Exercise is a necessity. But I think most younger kids burn off what they need to on their own (when eating decent food) - once they start getting older, you need to push a daily, or near daily, exercise schedule. But it's not the video games, people!! My children play video games like crazy - they are trim (even my teenager who refuses to move unless the couch in on fire).

Lazy parents? That's a joke. Some parents who tend to be lazy can still tend to their children properly (by exerting the little bit of energy they do use on their parenting). In fact, I find the "busy" parents are often the ones guilty of poor parenting - you know the ones who put their kid in daycare at 6 weeks old and never see them again (except to hand them their McDonald's dinner) until they kiss them goodbye on the first day of college.

The real culprits? Excess sugar/carbs/whatever-they-put-in-overly-processed-"food", fast food, lack of proper exercise and parents who refuse to actually parent. (There are ALWAYS exceptions, but they are the minority)

Marie 2-02-2010 @ 3:10PM

I just read this article and I voted in the poll. The results bothered me because the majority of people think overweight kids are the result of lazy parents. I have an overweight daughter (I am not in denial about this), but it is not due to me or my husband being lazy. I regularly exercise and have almost my entire life. My kids know exercise is very important to me, and see the effort I make to do it. I include my 7 year old daughter in on my exercise so she can reap the benefits of it. I have always been able to control my weight through regular exercise and what I eat. My daughter has always been a healthy eater, and also
enjoys sweets. She has also always been an active
child (walking hands free since 6 months old). She
play outside regularly in the warmer months, takes a
1x/week dance class, practices dance for a 1/2 hour/day 5 days/week, and exercises another 1/2 hour a day, 5
days/week. She does this because my husband and I make
it a point to have her do this to get her weight under control. Yes, she does watch tv, gets on the computer,
plays with her DS, etc. but this is limited by us. Overall, she is an active kid (her school does have PE
and recess 1x/day). She is the second tallest girl in
her third grade class - the other is just a little
taller and 1 1/2 years older than her. My daughter is 4'8" at 7 1/2 (she skipped Kindergarten, so she is
youngest in class, but one of the tallest) and she
weighs 87 pounds. Yes, I am very concerned about her
weight and have taken many measures to get it under
control. I do not think I am the exception either. I think there are lots of factors to consider, and not
one source of "blame". Maybe it isn't about blame, but just figuring out what is normal for the times.

Carol 2-02-2010 @ 12:07PM

I don't think that any ONE of the things listed on your poll is a contributor to childhood obesity in itself. Lifestyle without limits; ie, time on video games, eating candy and fast food. No P.E. in school and genetics all have impacting factors, let alone putting those things all together. I'm 50yrs old, when I was growing up we played outside alot, didn't watch too much television, (probably because t.v. didn't cater to children like it does today.) P.E. was a part of a cariculum through out my entire school career. I could go on and on. I guess what I'm saying is, the results of your poll, whatever it ends up to be is not the only reason, just a perceived one. AND I don't like labeling parents as lazy! (Name calling-not necessary.)

Melinda 2-03-2010 @ 9:47PM

My son was 10 and a new Dr. diagnosed him as being "obese" and filed with the insurance co. without even talking to me about it. I had to fight to have that diagnosis removed, as my insurance did not pay for obesity diagnosis (it was a yearly exam). I was livid because my son was 140lbs but was also 5ft 9 inches tall! According to adult BMI tables, he was perfectly in the middle range of where he should be but according to the CDC a child is considered "obese" if they are above 95% in the chart. He was at the same exact place in the chart curve on both height and weight and it did not matter what his height was! Maybe the CDC and Dr.s need to look at the child and not just the numbers! At 12 he is 6ft 1 and is 160lbs and we have found another new Dr.

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