Childhood Obesity and Parental Responsibility

One of the most devastating life events is to outlive your children.  This may result from accidental deaths, drunk drivers, overdoses, mishaps with weapons, or childhood disease.

Our society (mostly through government intervention) now goes to great lengths to protect children from accidents and injuries.  Examples include placing rubber tire shavings or mulch under playground equipment, limiting second hand smoke, banning the game of dodge ball in some schools, mandating child car seats, dictating school lunch standards, encouraging helmets and pads for bicycle riders and skateboarders, etc.  It has gotten to the point where today’s grandparents joke about how they ever survived without all these safeguards.  Nonetheless, protecting children is important and a prime responsibility of parents.

So it's ironic that while obesity is linked to so many serious health issues, parents don’t seem to react with appropriate urgency.  Pre-diabetes and diabetes is on the increase among teens.  Diabetes can cause all sorts of problems, including blindness, nerve damage, heart attacks and strokes.  Half of overweight teens face heart problems.  Obesity can also increase the risk of cataracts and complications during medical tests and procedures.  What makes it worse is that younger people will endure the effects of these medical problems for many more years.  Diseases once thought of as common only among older people, such as heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure and even cancer, could begin to show up when our children are in their prime.  A few years from now when young girls are ready to become young mothers, being at an unhealthy weight may increase the danger that their babies develop metabolic problems that lead to diabetes.

When there is a delay between behavior and consequences, even serious consequences, people tend to take the situation less seriously.   Smoking is an excellent example.  What most parents don't understand is that childhood obesity also falls into this category.  Isn’t it time for parents to step up and take an active role in the health and future of their children?   Don't leave it to the government to solve this problem.  First, it's not their problem to solve and second, examples of responsibility among parents on any subject will have a positive effect on their children.