What parents say to their children can affect them as they grow up. A positive outlook for kids could make children be positive. A negative outlook could turn children having a negative view as well. Parental perception of kids being overweight makes them so as well.
Parents have so much effect on children. This is the case as found by a study made on data from two studies. The data showed that parents who see their kids as overweight will likely have the kids grow to be overweight in the future.
This negative perception grows into the children as they grow up. Body image is a big factor especially when in the teen years, and children who have grown to being told to be overweight by parents would grow up to be one. This has been the position of researchers Eric Robinson from the University of Liverpool and Angelina Sutin from the Florida State University College of Medicine.
In their statement, the researchers point out that the stigma about being overweight is carried by children as they grow up. They would carry this by seeing weight gain later in life. The researchers based this from the data made by the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. The data has come from 2,823 Australian families during that study.
The Australian study had measured the children's height and weight while they were still four to five years old, according to the Association for Psychological Science's site. Later on, the study followed up on the children when they were 12 to 13 years of age. The parents were also interviewed early in the study to find out if they view their children to be underweight, normal or overweight.
The result has found that how the parents perceived their children have affected their weight gain. The follow-up made on the children had them describe how they view themselves based on images that depict changes in body size, as Science Daily reports. Children who had their parents thought they were overweight when they were kids were found to have increased in weight by the time they were 14 to 15 years in age.
The result has been the same for girls and boys. No other factor has been seen that could account for the weight gain. The same pattern has been found when the researchers looked into data from the Growing Up in Ireland study. The result is clear that parental perception of kids being overweight makes them so. A study also shows that young people who are much into social media don't sleep as much.
