Years ago, the obese or overweight child faced a lot of scrutiny by their classmates and peers. Taunting on the playground was sometimes even overlooked by teachers that were ignorant to the plights of these children. Back then the obese or overweight child stood out, and like any noticeable difference amongst a group, their weight trouble was questioned and looked down on.
In years gone by, overweight children were sometimes sent to a fat camp where they were treated in ways that many parents would find atrocious today. Their focus was on getting kids to lose weight through an almost drill-sergeant-esque approach. Their focus was on short term weight loss and much less attention was paid to promoting a holistic healthy approach to living life.
Today with the rise of childhood obesity, more and more children on the playground are in fact overweight or obese. It’s almost a half and half ratio. It’s really tough to even say what the average size child is anymore. As a matter of fact, the flip side are the children on the playground whose parents are so paranoid about their child becoming heavy that they are in fact too thin.
Why do we care about all of this? Well, if you are a parent of an obese or overweight child, you might take comfort in the fact that your child may not experience the sort of isolation and ridicule that they once did. As well, you should understand that they may be so comfortable in numbers so to speak, that they don’t see much need to lose weight or grow into their weight.
Ultimately, this boils down to taking a healthy self-empowering approach to childhood obesity. With the help and guidance of counselors at a weight loss or fitness camp, you can help teach your child about proper weight as it relates to health, not appearance. Empowering your child to lose weight helps them not only in their weight loss efforts, but also in peer pressure. When children allow the group to make decisions for them, they aren’t in charge of their lives and are left vulnerable to many potentially harmful situations down the road.
So, while we should be thankful that our children may not experience the same taunting on the playground that obese or overweight kids did when we were young, we need to caution ourselves to take comfort in that totally. After all, we’re worried about their health, right? Not their popularity.
