Merely acknowledging that their husky teen has a weight problem is not enough to make parents implement healthier habits at home, as a new study in this week’s issue of the journal Pediatrics shows.
Dr. Dianne Neumark-Sztainer and colleagues at the University of Minnesota’s epidemiology and community health division wanted to explore how parents behave when they correctly perceive their child’s “weight status” – which, according to previous studies, doesn’t happen as often as one would think. Apparently many parents have trouble identifying whether or not their child is at a healthy weight.
Neumark-Sztainer and her fellow researchers first found that parents are more likely to talk to their child about dieting and exercise after correctly recognizing that their son or d...