PULLMAN – While factors such as genetics and physical activity contribute to childhood obesity, parenting practices may have the largest impact on a child’s eating behavior.
Thomas Power, chair of WSU’s department of human development, said parents directly influence their child’s eating habits. Parents, he stressed, especially impact the development of a child’s preference for healthy foods as well as their ability to regulate how much they eat. Power and his colleagues discovered in three studies of low-income families that an “indulgent” feeding style is strongly associated with childhood obesity.
“In this style, parents let their kids eat whatever they want and demonstrate a lot of nurturance during dinner, making it a very pleasant experience,” he said. “Our research suggests that these low levels of control are associated with obesity.”
However, he noted, other research suggests high levels of control can also contribute to childhood obesity.
“When parents push children to finish their vegetables in order to get dessert, the dessert becomes more rewarding, other vegetables become less rewarding,” he said. “Children begin to like ice cream better, for instance, and beans less.”
Another component of “high control” parenting includes frequently encouraging children to finish a meal and using excessive reasoning to make them eat more of a specific food such as vegetables, Power said.
Additionally, when parents use restrictions to encourage healthy eating, such as withholding candy, soda-pop and other sweet beverages, children may want to eat or drink more of it simply because they know they can not have it, he said.
“Oftentimes, as parents put pressure on their kids to eat, the kids are focused more on what the parents want and less on their internal cues,” Power said. “As a result, kids are less attentive to their internal cues of being full and tend to eat more than they really need to eat.”
While too much control or not enough control is often associated with obesity, medium control appears to have a different, and desired, effect, he said.
Power works with several colleagues at the Children’s Nutrition Center in Houston, Texas: Sheryl Hughes from the center; Suzie Goodell from the Department of Food, Bioprocessing, and Nutrition Sciences, North Carolina State University; and Susan Johnson from the Department of Pediatrics, University of Colorado Denver. Currently in the process of observing the impact of different parental levels of control on children, Power said the team predicts that moderate levels of control are best.
“Parents should provide availability of healthy snacks and give them choices such as two vegetables instead of one,” he said. “They should also make meals about positive social interaction and quality family time, not about how much food is consumed.”
Power also mentioned that parents should involve their child in shopping and food preparation and should praise them when they select a healthy option. Sweets should also be provided less frequently, he said.
“Kids will eat what they need to eat and eat as much as they need to eat,” he said. “The parent’s job is to make sure they are eating something that is good for them and make it a positive experience rather than a power struggle.”