Many parents unlikely to perceive their children as overweight, obese

Early interventions to improve childhood overweight or obesity may be hindered because many parents lack understanding of the problem, according to study findings presented at the European Obesity Summit.

“Childhood obesity is still increasing worldwide,” the researchers wrote. “Early recognition of overweight or obesity in children by their parents is of utmost importance allowing interventions to start at a young age.”

Grietje Lijklema , of the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands, and colleagues evaluated data from the GECKO Drenthe cohort on parents of 2,203 5-year-old children between 2011 and 2013. All parents completed a questionnaire in which they scored on a 5-point scale their perception of their child’s weight ranging from “too light” to “too heavy.” Children’s height and weight were measured by youth health assistants.

Participants were further divided into three groups based on social economic status: low, medium or high. BMI of parents and siblings was used to determine the percentage of overweight family members, which was divided into three groups: 0 to 25%, 25% to 50% or 50% to 100%.
, and 64.6% were used for analysis.

In 85% of cases, parents underestimated their child’s overweight, and 24.5% of cases in which children were normal weight were underestimated.

Parents with a high social economic status were more likely to correctly identify their children as overweight.

Compared with parents with 0 to 50% of family members with overweight, parents with 50% to 100% of family members with overweight were more likely to underestimate their child’s weight (28.3% vs. 56.2%, respectively; P < .001).

“Eighty-five percent of patents of overweight and obese children do not recognize their child as being overweight or obese,” Lijklemia told Endocrine Today. “When parents don’t think their child is overweight, they would not feel addressed to any public health campaign or physical activity program for losing weight. From my opinion that’s one of the reasons we have to work on perception and recognition of overweight and obesity by parents but also we should specify these group of parents so we can target them with health care campaigns to hopefully reach the right target audience.” – by Amber Cox

Reference:

Lijklema G, et al. PO2.132. Presented at: European Obesity Summit; June 1-4, 2016; Gothenburg, Sweden.

Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.