Child Weight Loss: What Parents Should Not Say To Their Children About Losing Weight
Childhood obesity is a rising epidemic. It is hard to correct the diet of your kids as they get older and gets bombarded with ads on fast food outlets. It gets even harder if they have been accustomed to being fed on a diet of French fries and burgers from young. The danger is when they do not realize that they are eating extremely unhealthy food; one that builds fats and toxins in their little bodies.
As parents, it is hard to know exactly how much to say to help change this in our children. If we push too hard, we could cause a strain in our relationship with them. If we do not say anything, then we are not acting responsibly either. We have to find that balance, somehow.
Here are some guidelines on what you should not say to your child, especially if he or she has a weight issue:
- Pushing and recommending new diets to your child. It is much better to help them learn more about nutrition, so that they have the tools to find healthy foods for their body. Diets may seem like the answer, but training them how to eat correctly be being a good role model yourself is a much better answer to obesity.
- Pushing exercise. Although exercise is healthy, pushing your children to hard can be counter productive. Excessive exercising is also of the sign of eating disorders when your child becomes obsessed over his or her body image.
Even athletes can be pushed by their parent to do more and this can cause them to exercise to the point where it is dangerous for their health. Instead, plan activities that you can do together as a family. Walking, biking, and other exercise that you do as a family can be helpful without making an issue of it. Making exercise fun can be the key to helping your child deal with their weight issue.
- Projecting your feelings onto your child. While you may have hated your body when you were a teenager, there is no need to share too much about these thoughts with your child and especially put across in a negative light. This can cause them to have self-image problems. Sometimes it is best to leave those thoughts inside, so that our child can develop their own self-image, rather than us projecting our poor self-image onto them.
- Praising your child for weight loss. You have to be careful if he or she begins to feel that he/she need to lose weight just to earn your praise and attention. This can then turn into an eating disorder which can lead to health complications.
- Comparisons with other children. Comparisons with the appearance of other children can be quite damaging to their self-esteem. Remarks like “You are more big-boned than your sister” are not helpful and can have a huge impact upon how they think about themselves. This is why you want to refrain from making comparisons.
You need to help provide useful information and tools to your children for weight loss or to maintain healthy weight. Becoming like a drill sergeant with their exercise and food can worsen the relationship that you have with them. It is far better to model healthy habits yourself and give them your every support for them in making wise and independent choices in life.
