Big decline in perception of parents.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Researchers recently learned that 94.9 percent of parents who have overweight children believe their size to be “just right.”
According to The Washington post, the more shocking news from the current study comes to light when compared to the results from the same survey taken about two decades ago. Over the years the chances of a child “being appropriately perceived by the parents declined by 30 percent,” with African American and low-income parents having the most inaccurate perceptions.
“We have changed our perceptions of what our weight ideals are,” even among kids aged 2 to 5, who were the subjects of this study, said Dustin T. Duncan, an assistant professor in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Medical Center, who led the research.
Most parents can no longer tell what a healthy weight looks like, and their doctors aren’t helping them understand, Duncan told The Post. The study also showed that 78.4 percent of parents of obese children believed them to be “just right.”
“If every other child is obese or overweight, you would think your child [is normal as well],” he added.
As opposed to focusing on small groups of overweight or obese children as most studies have, Duncan’s research utilized a national sample of children and parents surveyed for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1988 and 1994, and others questioned for the same survey between 2007 and 2012. Both samples had more than 3,000 children, reported the Post.
Parents were simply asked the “Goldilocks” question: “Do you consider [child’s name] to be: overweight, underweight, just about the right weight, or don’t know?” Researchers subsequently compared the responses “with the data on standard childhood growth curves.”
The study, which was published in the journal of Childhood Obesity, indicates obesity levels have not hit a plateau and it’s not going away any time soon. With parental attitudes resonating at the same frequency in both surveys and even more overweight children in the population today, the chances of any child being seen correctly had declined sharply, according to the study.
“We know that overweight pre-school children tend to be overweight school children, they tend to be overweight adolescents, and it follows them into adulthood,” Duncan said. “Most people don’t understand what it means to be overweight … and for a parent, I think it’s really hard to understand these growth charts,” he continued.