Childhood Obesity: A Growing Concern for Parents

By Nandini Pattnaik

Today's competitive world is detracting a healthy lifestyle from us and especially those lying in the danger zone are the infants, who are gullible and succumb to an unhealthy eating habit pattern. Whom to blame for this, the changing working patterns of the world or the parents? It is a difficult question left unanswered.

Research findings have revealed that the leading causes of childhood obesity are: availability of high-calorie snacks available in the markets, the parents' attitudes towards food habits or lack of healthy eating habits, there has been a sudden increase in the consumption of fast foods, increase in television viewing along with computer/video gaming and most importantly because of lack of regular exercise and sometimes it could be hereditary.

Childhood obesity leads to serious health hazards which include heart diseases, diabetes and certain types of cancer. Even though it is a serious concern, it has not gone out of control steps are being taken to ensure healthy lifestyle for the kids. This initiative is made by certain schools, by carrying out frequent health check-up camps in the schools, by providing a healthy food diet chart to every kid based on their body type and other allergies or physical concerns. Parents on the other hand are advised to help the child in maintaining the diet chart and follow it religiously for best results.

Kids these days are becoming couch potatoes as a result of all the technological aids brought before them on their demands by their parents, thus restricting the minimum movement that was earlier made by them. Physical fitness is being inculcated into the daily curriculum of the child, which includes yoga, sports, martial arts, learning of dance forms etc. This aspect is highly essential and helps in shedding those extra pounds at an early stage. Every schools wants its pupils to be fit and fine, academics is important but physical fitness cannot be neglected, so different types of sports are introduced into the curriculum, making it mandatory for all students to be a part of minimum one activity.

Obesity can make a child highly introvert and lower the self-confidence in them, therefore, it becomes very important for the parents and other family members to constantly make the child feel comfortable with their surroundings, especially in school amongst other kids the school management should ensure that the children suffering from obesity are not ill-treated or made fun of by the other kids as it could mar their childhood and leave ugly scars in their minds.